Georg's entries in the Writeoff.me contests and the stories behind the stories
This is a gathering spot for Georg's entries in the Writeoff.me contests, as well as the behind the scenes story of why I wrote the way I did. It is a compilation, with each chapter being one of the writeoff contest entries or notes on an entry I turned into a full story and posted on FimFiction.net
Like The World Is Ending - The Beginning of the End of the Beginning
Far above the dying world of Equestria, a single star which had once given the planet life spluttered and strobed in its last and final gasps of power. Below, nothing still lived to observe its death. Only the dust of countless civilizations long since dead remained, dust scouring the planet to its bones as the endless wind howled in mindless rage.
A weak flicker of violet light lit the sky, once, twice, then with a third flash turned into a somewhat frazzled alicorn princess who hovered far above the dead world. With tears filling her eyes, she looked down into the whirling clouds of dust obscuring her world, desperately searching for something only she knew, as if she had traveled to the ends of the universe in search of an element essential to her very life.
But it was not there. Only the dust remained
Finally, the young princess let out a sob of mixed fury and sorrow as she stared downwards, screaming one name in her anguish.
“CELESTIA!”
“What do you wish, my Faithful Student?”
The alicorn whirled in place, looking up into the sky where a stream of brilliant light descended. Eons of time had not passed the Princess of the Sun without touching her in the embrace which no living creature can avoid. Very little of the physical alicorn remained except for the glitter of violet eyes and the hint of a smile below. All else had turned into light and pastel rainbows, with even her mighty wings nothing but sheets of coruscating light, shimmering as they rose and fell.
“Princess Celestia! What… How…”
“Be at peace, Twilight Sparkle.”
Even as a being of light, Celestia’s smile brought a sense of calm to Twilight’s wildly-beating heart. She took a deep breath of the rarified air and swallowed, feeling the warm rays of the erratic sun above caress her body as if the blazing orb had missed equine companionship for a great span of years. “I’m sorry—”
“No, Twilight.” One of those huge iridescent wings swept around and held the smaller alicorn up in a firm hug. “It is I who should apologise to you. Although it has been so ago, I remember the day you disobeyed my command and read Starswirl’s forbidden journal as if it were yesterday. For you it has been but mere moments, but I have had to live with the consequences of my decision ever since. You never were exactly the same after you returned from this place, never looked at me in exactly the same way. There was always a distance between us after your trip through time to the end of all things, and I understand now. I was wrong to withhold the knowledge from you. Starswirl was unable to control the powers he unleashed and detached himself from the timestream with his final spell, but you have powers Starswirl could never comprehend.”
“There has to be some way to stop this, Princess. There has to be another way!”
Celestia shook her head, becoming larger and more indistinct as her wings spread. “No, Twilight. You know all things have a beginning and an end, even our kind. This is mine. Goodbye.”
“NO! No…” Twilight watched as the eternal Celestia continued to expand in rays of pure sunlight encompassing the dead world below and the dying sun above. “I love you.”
“As I love you, Twilight.” The words echoed through her head as if the entire universe were speaking. “Always and forever.”
A bubble of violet light surrounded the young alicorn as the brilliance of her mentor filled the entire sky. Even the dying sun seemed to cease its flickering in anticipation of Celestia’s next words.
“Let there be light.”
And there was.
Best Laid Plans - The Frozen Castle of Broken Dreams
In the center of the moonlit span of Equestria stands a tall ridge of mountains stretching up into the star-strewn sky with a majesty that draws the eye like a magnet across the tall peaks and stunning expanses. From all of the land, the towers and spires of the capital city atop those peaks seem untouched by time or disaster, but that appearance is a lie only able to be disguised by the snow that covers the city and distance. No lights shine in the mighty buildings now as they did before, only the endless reflection of moonlight off ice and broken roof tiles, making the whole of the broken city lie peaceful and still. Even the slight tilt of the buildings can be excused as a trick of the light, or at least until the shattered stubs of towers can be seen where the shifting of the foundations of the city toppled them into the streets in shattered pieces of granite and limestone, now being covered by the drifting snow.
Amidst the fallen buildings and frozen gardens of a school, one tower still stands above all others, but a closer look shows that it has not escaped the destruction unscathed. What remains is a fraction of its original magnificent height, now buttressed by the molten granite that flowed down its sides in frozen rivulets and clotted streams of dull brown. Despite the destruction, the top of the tower still contains the shattered remains of a room, burned by incredible power until the walls were left as reflective as glass by the crucible of power that swept it clean of life. Nothing remains of its original contents save four thin films of gold on the floor in front of a frozen lump of darkness the size of a young pony, now just as covered in snow and ice as the rest of the dead city.
The melted windows and sagging doors in the castle behind the tower are signs of the power that was unleashed just a few blocks away, but there is a difference here that exists in no other part of Equestria. Tracks in the endless snow and the shifting of doors show the touch of some creature who has passed this way since. Here, a painting on the wall has been burnt to ashes and there the charred remnants of armor have been moved, as if some wandering being wished to discover the fate of its wearer before moving onward on its journey.
The hoofprints in the snow grow closer together as they approach the center of the castle, winding through the wide snow-strewn corridors and icy stairs until they pass through the open doors of a huge room in which sits the Golden Throne of the Sun. From here, all of Equestria was once ruled by Princess Celestia, the Alicorn of the Sun and Moon, but in the cold moonlight that shines through the broken throne room windows, there is no sign of the beloved monarch. Instead, a second alicorn sits upon the throne with the same noble bearing and grace as her sister, only bearing a mane of flowing stars and a coat of the darkest black.
She does not move her armor-clad body in the snow that swirls around her hooves, nor does she speak a single word while sitting upon the throne and staring endlessly forward at the doors as if she were waiting for somepony to step through. Time has ceased to hold meaning in her eternal rest. The sister whom she waits for will never arrive, but that does not matter. All that matters is that the moon shines down upon her lands, and for that, the Nightmare is content.
"You’re sick," said Snips while staring at his friend. "What got into you? Did you eat anything weird over the last couple of days?"
"I can’t eat," moaned Snails. "She’s all I can think about." The lovesick unicorn colt prodded at his lunch spread out across the picnic table and shoved his sandwich over to Snails’ side of the table. "Here, take my peanut butter and lilac sandwich. I don’t want it. I’m going to walk over there and tell her how I feel. Any minute now."
"Well, hurry up," said Snails. "Lunch is going to be over soon, and Miss Cheerilee has us doing fractions this afternoon." He glanced at the object of Snails’ desire, a radiant pink earth pony filly chattering away with several other small fillies as they proceeded to devour their own lunches while gossiping.
"Back me up here." Snails took a deep breath and held it. "I’m going to do it. I’ve got to tell her or I’m going to explode."
"Can I have your butterfly collection?" asked Snips.
"I don’t care. Anything I have is yours, buddy. You’re my best friend in the world. All I ask is one thing."
"What?" asked Snips through the peanut butter of his newly-acquired sandwich.
"Give me a push."
"Why?" Snips swallowed the enormous mouthful of sandwich he was chewing and washed it down with a sip out of Snails’ juice box. "You’re not paying any attention to my suggestions. I mean, you got her multiflower roses instead of putting a frog in her saddlebag like any normal colt. You even wrote her a poem!"
"Roses are red, so are these too, I got you some roses for you," said Snails with a distant look. "I thought it up by myself. And I picked the best roses I could find out of her dad’s garden."
"They are pretty good," said Snips, "but you nibbled almost all of them off while waiting. About all you have left is stems, and they’re not very tasty."
"That doesn’t matter! She’s going to see how much work I put into picking them and be so impressed that I’ll be her special somepony. I even remembered to make sure to keep the aphids and the ladybug where she can admire them. Right there. Or maybe there?" Snails rotated the ragged bouquet in his magic and examined it. "I thought I had a slug in here too."
"I’m tellin’ you buddy, frogs are the way to attract the mares," said Snips. "Remember the way Dinky squealed when she found that frog in her desk last week?"
"Oh, yeah." Snails got a faraway look on his face and grinned. "I’ve never seen such a high jump before. Cleared three desks."
"The frog jumped pretty high too," added Snips. "She told me later that she knew it was me and that if I ever did that again, she’d beat my face in." He sighed. "That was so much fun. I can hardly wait to see what she’s going to try in return."
"Diamond’s not really a frog pony like Dinky," said Snails. "She’s into fancy stuff like tea and tiny little cakes."
Snips gasped. "But what about frogs? You love hunting frogs with me. If she doesn’t like frogs, she won’t go frog hunting with us. It’s just not the same without you, buddy."
"It has to be now, Snips. I’m going to go do it! Wish me luck!"
Snips watched his friend march over towards the small knot of giggling fillies while he finished the last of Snails’ sandwich. He winced at the appropriate points in the resulting conversation, nodded sadly at the foreordained result, and trudged over to Snails once the bell rang to announce the end of the lunch hour.
"Not good, eh?"
Rising out of the mud puddle, Snails struggled to his hooves and spit out a pebble. "No."
"I’m telling you, Snails. Frogs." Snips helped his friend out of the puddle and brushed a little of the mud off his coat even though it only redistributed the mud over twice as many little colts.
"Frogs?" asked Snails.
"Frogs," said Snips. "The more, the better. If we get started right after school is over, I figure we can slip about a hundred of them through her window tonight. Trust me. She’ll love it."
Snails considered the concept while Cheerilee waved encouragement to them from the schoolhouse door. "You’re right, Snips. That would make me feel better."
The Best Medicine - Laughter Is The Second Best Medicine
"We’re closed," said Spike as he opened the door to the library and then paused as Pinkie Pie came bounding inside. "Twilight has a cold and I don’t think she wants visitors," added Spike while trying to block Pinkie’s inevitable path upstairs.
"Nonsense!" said Pinkie Pie, "Since laughter is the best medicine and I’m the bearer of the Element of Laughter, who better to cheer her up while she’s sick?"
"You don’t understand," said Spike, clinging valiantly to Pinkie’s tail as the pony in question bounced upstairs. "Whenever Twilight’s sick, she has a very specific treatment. Decongestant every three point four hours, one liter of orange juice every three hours, etc… It’s all on her checklist and it doesn’t include vis—"
"Hi, Twilight!" shouted Pinkie Pie as she bounded into Twilight Sparkle’s bedroom. "I heard you’re feeling under the weather, and since Rainbow Dash is sleeping, I thought I’d come here and help clear away your gloomy clouds."
The lump under the covers of Twilight Sparkle’s bed shifted, as if a terrible monster was arising from the abysmal depths of Tartarus.
"Jokes always help me feel better whenever I’m sick, so what kind of jokes would you like to hear? Oh, I know. Knock knock!"
One violet wing extended out from under the covers and groped for the tissue box. A voice nearly blocked by phlegm gargled, "Pinkie? Is that you?"
"No, silly!" Pinkie Pie giggled. "You’re supposed to say ‘Who’s there!’"
"Need tissue," gurgled the Voice. "Need tissue now!"
"Right after the joke, so you can laugh and laughter loosens up that nasty snot in the back of your throat so you can blow your nosies so much easier instead of—"
A stunning sneeze of magic and mucus blasted Pinkie Pie out the door, which an experienced Spike was holding open while taking cover. He walked across the library to where the pink party pony was suspended against the wall upside-down by a thick layer of alicorn phlegm and snot.
"So, Pinkie. Would you like to come back in a couple of days when Twilight is feeling better?"
"Yes," responded a muffled and somewhat disappointed voice. "I suppose everypony has their own way to treat a cold."
+ - + - + - + - +
Several Days Later…
Sugarcube Corner seemed nearly silent without Pinkie Pie’s cheerful antics, and the creak of her bedroom door being opened echoed around the pink bedroom.
"Who’sat?" muttered a congested voice from under her covers.
"That’s not the way it goes," said Twilight Sparkle, slipping the rest of the way into the room with a stack of books floating by her side. "I say ‘Knock, Knock’ and you say?"
"Who’s there?" whispered Pinkie Pie, her bright red nose poking out from under the covers, followed by a tired smile and two sparkling blue eyes.
"A friend," said Twilight, settling down beside Pinkie’s bed and opening her first joke book.
(First draft of my incomplete Cadence of Cloudsdale story)
It has been several busy days since I arrived in the castle in Canterlot, and I still have not seen everything inside the walls, although every moment I continue to believe I will awaken from my dreaming to the sounds of the Dawn Chorus and the gentle touch of Sister Aeon upon one shoulder. If this is a dream, it is far grander and more detailed than any I have experienced in my centuries of life in the Abbey of Song, and it continues every time the sun rises over the impossibly high crags of the Canterhorn to the east. The reason for the sunrise is the simplest thing that I had taken for granted when surrounded by the Sisters, one of many such foolish questions with no good answer such as ‘Why is the sky above us and the ground below?’ or ‘If there were no air, how would we breathe?’ but seeing the Sun-Nag use her enormously long horn to cast magic which I could never control and seeing the sun lift effortlessly over the horizon at her command makes me feel so small and insignificant.
Without the Sisters to awaken me and bathe me and take care of all of the rituals of life which filled my existence without interruption for so many centuries, I am cast adrift, like one of the pieces of dandelion fluff floating in the air during summers in the Grand Gardens of Knowledge. Tiny little bronze signs signified the contents of each small patch of flower or plant there, and the Sisters would permit me only one day a week among the neat and tidy rows. They would watch from a distance as I nibbled small bits from whatever plants struck my fancy at the moment, be it the common gardenia jasminoides or my sacred verticordia, and from this, the Guild of Flosimancers would determine the planting and harvesting for the town and the surrounding fields. It always had made me nervous, for I could still remember the one beautiful spring day I had fallen asleep in a bed of violets and the resulting harvest which had overwhelmed the Sisters’ desire for anything purple for several decades. Among the vast number of corridors and stairs in this new place, I have found a similarity, although somewhat different.
There are ponies here who have much the same purpose as the Guild of Flosimancers or their rival Guild of Paigniomancers, but instead of examining my taste in flowers or toys, they seek to find out everything they can about me. They lurk in bushes and behind stairwells, disguise themselves as servants, or use clever mechanisms of glass and metal to watch me from afar. There is a pattern to their appearance I find fascinating in the way they interact with the fiercely serious stallions with brilliant lights in their hearts who seem to be everywhere in this strange and terrifying place. Much like the Sisters, the guards are here to protect me from all harm, but they are not soft and loving, but instead hard and shining on the outside, much like my beloved pearls from Reduit. When one of the Royal Guard and one of the ‘reporters’ meet in my presence, there is a flare of conflict which I fear will turn to violence and makes me yearn for my peaceful bedroom so far away, where my slightest worry can be soothed by the gentle Reassurance Choir and a few nibbles of Sister Cream’s fudge.
My best friend is a cameleopard, A cameleopard, a cameleopard. He doesn't talk much but he makes me laugh. Makes me laugh all day.
“Do you think both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna will come to the funeral?” asked Sweetie Belle, keeping her voice down as she fidgeted. There was a large collection of chairs and cushions being set up out on the grass in the town square, including two large cushions, both dark and light. The three little ponies peering out of the attic window of the Carousel Boutique contemplated for a while before Apple Bloom spoke up.
“Ah think so.” She pointed at the distant thread of smoke still floating up in the distance. “I reckon the explosion was visible from Canterlot.”
“I bet it was awesome!” declared Scootaloo. “I wish we had gotten a camera to take a picture.”
“We were a little busy being upside-down in the gully,” said Sweetie Belle. “I told you we should have put seat belts on our rocket-sled.”
“Ah’m kinda glad we didn’t,” declared Apple Bloom. “If’n we had, we woulda still been strapped in that contraption when it went into Ghastly Gorge.”
There was a very long silence between the three friends, broken only by the distant rumble of thunder.
“At least Rainbow Dash quit kicking that cloud,” said Scootaloo, taking a cautious peek out of the window. “It’s still echoing a little.”
“Rarity’s downstairs in her room,” said Sweetie Belle. “I can still hear her crying.”
“Ah don’t see Applejack nor none of my family anywhere,” said Apple Bloom, taking another peek out of the window. “Do you think they’re still at the crash site?”
“Probably.” Scootaloo began to fidget as much as Sweetie Belle. “We are in so much trouble.”
“It’s only going to get worse the longer we take to tell them,” said Apple Bloom. “Ah don’t think they’ll keep us from seeing each other. Right?”
“I don’t want to take the chance,” said Scootaloo, slumping down on the floor of the attic and holding her hooves over her ears. “I mean all of us came up with the idea of building a rocket sled, but Applejack can get so protective. Remember when she wanted to keep you in your room and we provided cover so you could deliver those pies?”
“And my big sister freaks out so much when I even get a little dirty or burnt just a little bit,” said Sweetie Belle. “She’ll lock me up and I’ll never see you two again.”
“We still gotta tell ‘em sometime,” said Apple Bloom. “It’s not like we can run away to Manehattan and stay with Babs for the rest of our lives, change our names, and never see our families again.”
“That seems oddly specific,” said Sweetie Belle.
“Ah had some time to think when we were digging ourselves out of that gully,” said Apple Bloom.
The three close friends slumped together into a semblance of a hug, most likely the last physical contact they would get with each other for the rest of their lives. Finally, after a bit of sniffing, Scootaloo said, “It’s too bad we can’t watch the funeral from up here. I’ll bet it would be awesome.”
Apple Bloom sniffed back a few tears and added, “Big Mac might even say more than two words.”
“Rarity says black makes her look fat,” said Sweetie Belle. “But I’ll bet she wears a ton of it.”
They remained quiet and thoughtful for a while, listening to the occasional rumble of thunder as dark overcast clouds were brought in to deepen the mood in town. After taking a deep breath, Apple Bloom said, “I think Sweetie should tell Rarity first. She’s just downstairs.”
“No way,” said Sweetie Belle. “She’ll freak out. She needs somepony brave to support her during her time of stress, like Rainbow Dash. Scootaloo should tell her first.”
“Totally un-cool,” said Scootaloo. “Rainbow would probably cry, and that would totally ruin her reputation around town. I think Apple Bloom should tell her sister first.”
“She’s gonna tan my hide!” said Apple Bloom. “That is unless some kind and gentle pony like Rarity can talk her out of it first.”
The three of them took a mutual deep breath and a deep sigh before Sweetie Belle asked, “Just how much trouble do you think we’re in, anyway?”
“Lots,” said Applejack.
Three little fillies slowly turned their heads and looked over at the narrow staircase that extended up into the Carousel Boutique attic. Three much older and significantly more upset adult sisters looked back.
“So, does this mean we can’t watch our own funerals?” asked Scootaloo.
I Regret Nothing - Friends Forever, Insides and Outsides
"Scootaloo, are you sure I need my appendix removed?"
Apple Bloom squirmed around on the table beneath the loose straps that were supposed to restrain her while Sweetie Belle flipped through the book they had borrowed from the library. Scootaloo pressed her back down on the table with one hoof and picked up the saw in her teeth.
"Relax, Apple Bloom. The book says an appendix doesn’t have any real use, so we can’t go wrong by taking it out. Besides, you said you’ve got a tummy ache, and the book said that’s one of the symptoms."
Sweetie Belle continued to flip through the back of Neigh’s Anatomy. "I still think we need an annystesia spell before you start operating. You know how much it hurts when you crash your scooter, and this is a lot more cutting. Maybe we should ask Twilight first."
"How are we supposed to get our cutie marks if we can’t try new things?" said said Scootaloo, waving the saw. "Besides, we got a bottle of annystesia from your sister’s dressing cabinet. We just need to apply it."
"I don’t think—" Whatever Sweetie Belle was trying to say was cut off as Scootaloo unscrewed the top from Rarity’s bottle of Anastasia perfume and poured it over Apple Bloom’s bare tummy.
"That sure is strong," said Sweetie Belle through a fit of coughing as she opened a window in the clubhouse. "My sister only puts a drop behind each ear when she goes out on dates."
"That should do it," said Scootaloo, prodding her patient with the saw, or at least attempting to prod Apple Bloom. Her eyes were so filled with tears that it was difficult to make out the table, let alone her friend. "We’ll get our cutie marks in surgery for sure this time."
"Wait a minute," protested Apple Bloom though a coughing fit of her own. "What would a cutie mark for cutting out an appendix look like anyway?"
"An appendix, probably," said Scootaloo. "Did you find a picture of one in the book, Sweetie Belle? I’d kinda hate to cut the wrong thing out of Apple Bloom and have to sew it back in."
"Found it!" declared Sweetie Belle, plunking the book down on the table.
All three friends looked at the picture while waving their hooves in an attempt to get some fresh air.
After an exceedingly long time, Scootaloo said, "Ewww. It’s a worm."
"Ah’m not sure I want that on my flank," said Apple Bloom. "‘Sides, my tummy don’t hurt too much any more. It was probably them green apples we had for lunch."
"Maybe if we tried something a little prettier, like heart surgery," suggested Sweetie Belle. "I’m sure Twilight would be willing to help us out, and we wouldn’t have to get blood all over our clubhouse table."
"Fine, I suppose," groused Scootaloo, putting the saw back into the clubhouse toolbox. "I guess this was just another dead end on our search for cutie marks. Let’s go over to the library and talk to Twilight."
"Doctor Scootaloo? Are you having second thoughts about the operation?" The gown-clad nurse who touched Scootaloo on the shoulder smiled hesitantly as the famous cardiac surgeon shook herself out of her thoughts and looked at the thick folder of papers spread out across the table.
"No, Nurse Widget. Just remembering what it was like during my first surgery. Are you nervous?"
"N-no." The young nurse brushed a strand of mane back under her paper cap and swallowed.
"Well, I certainly was back then," said Scootaloo with a reassuring smile. "You’ll do just fine. How is the patient?"
"Anesthesiologist Belle says he’s fully sedated and his vitals are strong. Doctor Bloom has the rest of the transplant team assembled and ready to go just as soon as the donor heart gets here, which should be any minute now. We just need to scrub up and get into the operating theatre."
"Very good, Nurse Widget." Scootaloo took a moment to look back at the bright red heart on her flank before shrugging into her own operating gown and stepping up to the scrubbing station.
It began, as many odd discoveries did, in a small midwestern college.
The observatory was in the loving hands of graduate students during summer vacation, with all of the professors and PhD students having gone to their family get-togethers and only a few lowly Masters students still remaining. Between pizza and beer runs, there were games of Dungeons and Dragons, a few SETI experiments, and the eternal quest for an astronomical oddity which could be made to look obscene with the right shading. Before retiring for the night, the last student in the facility loaded up his laptop with a software package some CalTech student named Evarts Friedman had designed to assist with Near Earth Object detection and attached it to the CCD array on the telescope.
So in a way, a combination of insomnia, Red Bull overdose, and pure curiosity led to what might have been the most important discovery of humankind.
The documentation for the statistical software package was erratic, as it had been developed by a fellow Masters degree student and of course abandoned the moment the degree had been mailed, but Ravi Ravidesh persisted while the laptop thunked and chirped. It was supposed to allow a single pass of the heavens to be captured, isolated, reduced, compressed, and extrapolated out into a short character string instead of multi-gigabyte image files, therefore allowing multiple images of the sky to be compared in much briefer periods of time. That is, if you discounted the immense multi-gigabyte size of the software package to start with, and the long period of time it took to process an image from the telescope. A rational human being would have compared the time it took to examine ordinary photography with the time it took to run GigaSkyScan8K, carried the two, and decided to spend the extra time in their life doing something productive, like watching late-night infomercials.
Students are not rational creatures, no matter how much they protest in the inverse.
After failing to make heads or tails out of the documentation until the dawning sun caused the end of observatory time, Ravi packed his stuff back up, unplugged the microwave, swept most of the litter into a lawn and leaf trash bag, and drove back to his dorm room for a nap. Somewhere around noon, he rose again, opened his laptop, and in a fit of confusion caused by lack of sleep, double-clicked on the data file instead of the obese statistics package.
If that was as far as he had gone, the world may never have known what followed.
Written across his screen in a Notepad window, was a fairly short series of ASCII characters, which was supposed to be about ten gigabytes of sky pictures which the software had compressed and analyzed into a checksum of the sky, in a manner of speaking. Instead, he read it out loud in order to see if it made more sense.
Ravi hesitated with his finger over the ‘close’ button. It seemed rather odd, even if his Bangladeshi roommate had been playing a practical joke on him. Instead, he opened a different data file and read.
A few minutes with the student’s best friend, Google, and a test of each of the other data files revealed phrases from Proust, the King James version of the Bible, and two different phrases from Voltaire in the original French. A full virus scan of the computer revealed no lurking monsters, and only a few pieces of spyware which were probably making a few Chinese hackers scratch their heads as much as Ravi was scratching his. Checking the executable of GigaSkyScan8k showed no text files lurking inside, and a quick email to the author revealed that he had taken his statistics degree from the California university and fled for more profitable fields, along with a note from his student loan company asking for repayment information on several missed payments.
So Ravi did whatever any other curious student would do with an anomaly such as this. He put it on his Facebook page and headed out to his summer job.
Two days later, ripples from the original posting had drifted to Shrinivas Kulkarni, the director of Palomar Observatory at California Institute of Technology. Having tenure at a university meant he had seen far odder things travel by his desk, normally with rejected funding requests attached to them, but he told his computer to download the software over the course of a few hours while he was away from his desk anyway. After all, he had once suffered through Milton to get his own degree, and the idea of finding the text of Paradise Lost inscribed in the stellar firmament struck him as funny.
Twelve hours later, he did not think it was quite so humorous.
Fifteen hours later when the Director of Computer and Information Systems had been dragged into the growing discussion, she did not find it humorous either.
Seventeen hours later when the Director of CIS had quietly bribed a few graduate students who could still program into attempting to disassemble the gargantuan software package, she began to get nervous. Although her most recent coding experience involved paper tape and punch cards, she did manage to feed a few online sky photographs into the software package and observe the results.
Hemingway. Blake. Woolf. And worst of all, James Joyce.
The graduate students reported back that the entire software package had either been put together by a mental patient or a genius, and that no text was buried inside or was being brought into the program by way of the internet. Also, that they were out of pizza and needed another research grant.
The university attempted to put a lid on all of it while sending out a quiet note to the missing programmer in hopes of resolving the mystery without any undue chaos. This, of course, caused the news of the program and its results to explode into social media.
The download server for GigaSkyScan8K, hosted at CalTech of course, promptly died.
The few copies which had made it out into the wild were copied to various download sites.
They promptly died too.
For about ten minutes, Google attempted to host the software package.
After the internet came back up and some serious throttling was put in place, they tried again. This time, they were much more successful, mostly because anybody who wanted a copy was downloading it from a torrent.
The Iranians declared the entire event to be a trick of the Great Satan and the Lesser Satan in order to prevent work on their peaceful nuclear program.
The Israelis didn’t say anything, because they had slipped a copy of GigaSkyScan8K infected with a new version of Stuxnet into the Iranian nuclear program computers and were busy turning entire racks of plutonium separation centrifuges into confetti.
MSNBC ran a story on the software package in which they managed to misspell the name of the California Institute of Technology, claimed that the failure to locate the programmer was due to insufficient school funding, and blamed George W. Bush.
The president went golfing.
The City of Seattle sent out a press release denying these ‘stars’ actually existed, and that all the rest of the country was just making it up because stars would just fall out of the sky without anything to hold them up. Later it was claimed that the mayor’s daughter had discovered an unlocked computer and typed the whole thing up as a joke, which would have made more sense if the mayor had a daughter younger than twenty-seven.
The National Science Foundation filed requests for 14.7 billion dollars worth of grants to research the possibility that the cure for cancer, global warming, erectile disfunction, and budget shortfalls was perhaps inscribed on the Andromeda galaxy, and that only an immediate gathering of all specialists and political consultants in this field would shed light on the subject. The meeting was proposed for Las Vegas.
The Scientologists declared the works of L. Ron Hubbard were immortalized above the plane of the eclipse forever and into eternity, which is where the supreme Thelemite Goddess was to reveal herself.
The Mormons refused to admit to the possibility of what was being called ‘stellar handwriting’ until sections of the Book of Mormon were discovered in the constellation of Draco, after which they convened a conclave.
Oral Roberts University announced a fundraiser which brought in several times the annual budget in just one hour.
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association declared that the discovery of several paragraphs out of their founder’s Christmas sermon was ‘interesting’ and that they were checking to see if any other sermons had been deemed worthy enough to be inscribed in stellar material.
The Holy See declared that the Pope was looking into the situation and would release a statement shortly. Until then, the faithful were encouraged not to despair or panic, because if the End of All Times were upon the world, certainly His Holiness would have been informed.
Bill Gates announced that Windows 11 would have GigaSkyScan8K built into the operating system much the same as Windows Explorer, and would autoupdate by using the system camera to download updates from the sky.
Evarts Friedman came back from walking the Appalachian Trail, replaced his iPhone which he had managed to dump in a creek the first week out, and opened his mailbox.
After seventeen phone calls to various people who refused to believe it was really him, he managed to contact his faculty advisor for his Masters degree and find out just what had happened over the last few months. It was a long and drawn-out circuitous conversation, mostly in order for the FBI to track the phone call and get a team into position, and actually left Mister Friedman still completely clueless as to the events of the last two months.
Several hours later, Mister Friedman found himself in Camp David with mixed emotions. For starters, he had gotten to ride in Marine One, the helicopter that transported the President of the United States, which probably would have been a lot more pleasant if they had left the handcuffs and the hood off. Secondly, the interrogation would have been somewhat more effective if the interrogate-ee had even the slightest hint of what he was being charged with. And third, the FBI had confiscated his cell phone before turning him over to the Secret Service, who did not realize what the FBI had done, and attempted to confiscate his phone again, which of course would have worked better if the dead phone they were trying to analyze had not been submerged and left to corrode for two months.
Eventually, the confrontation wound up with the unwilling defendant doing nothing but shouting for a lawyer, any lawyer, every time he was asked a question.
Strangely enough, even as close to Washington D.C. as Camp David was, it still took several hours to find a lawyer willing to work pro bono for a recent student who had a grand total of twelve dollars in his pocket and somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter-million dollars in student loan debt.
Hector Does, who had graduated from law school and passed the bar a few weeks ago, sat very quietly with his client and brought him up to date on events. After Evarts Friedman finished laughing, he motioned the lawyer very close and whispered a few sentences in his ear.
The investigators from the FBI and Secret Service who were watching and very carefully not-listening to the ‘accidentally’ not-switched off microphone in the room were frustrated, but did not interfere until Hector left the room and asked to speak to the agent in charge.
This of course led to yet another meeting where a rather nervous Mister Does gave the Attorney General of the United States three options: charge Mister Friedman, release him, or be sued. If charged, Mister Friedman would stand quite firmly on his Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to say anything, which of course would be exactly what Hector Does would report in his press conference tomorrow. If not charged and still detained, the press conference would of course be to announce the upcoming lawsuit, during which Mister Friedman would still remain silent.
Both options, Hector pointed out, would leave world opinion and any social unrest pointing firmly at the United States Department of Justice.
The next day, Hector and Evarts held a press conference. It could have easily been a circus, but with draconian restrictions on the press permitted to attend, mostly restricted to those who did not have a major news anchor throw a nervous breakdown on the air in the last two months, they kept it down to a pool camera and a dozen members of the press.
The first announcement was that Evarts Friedman’s story was going to be made into a book. It had been already signed for and he had received an undisclosed advance, which was cashed, divided, and mostly in the hands of a good tax attorney.
Second was an upcoming lawsuit against CalTech, for releasing proprietary software developed by Mister Freeman without his permission, which had not been given due to a minor bug and documentation updates still pending.
The software package in question recursively sorted stars according to a pseudo-random encryption and compression generator. For keys, Mister Friedman had used a polymorphic-encrypted multi-gigabyte collection of public domain texts, which he had stripped of punctuation and reduced to seven-bit characters. The contents of the output file were not important to the program, but their placement within the database indicated just what the contents of the subject photograph was. If a mobile Near Earth Object such as an incoming meteor caused a point of light to move in the photograph, the pointer into the database changed.
The problem was the code output the decrypted contents of the database, not a pointer.
The second problem was trying to explain the first problem to a group of reporters.
The third problem was trying to get the reporters to be able to repeat the explanation without mangling it beyond recognition.
The fourth problem was convincing the Justice Department not to haul Mister Friedman back into jail and have him arrested for allowing his buggy program to be stolen and then deciding to take a two-month hiking trip without a working phone (which was not a crime, despite several stridently-expressed opinions from younger agents.)
Nearly a year later as Evarts Friedman settled down in his Colorado mountain cabin and adjusted the CCD receiver on his telescope, his phone had settled down enough to be actually turned on once in awhile during the day. He kept it for sentimental reasons, and as a reminder of the difference that several million dollars worth of book advance could make in a person’s bottom line. He took a sip of his wine and checked his laptop, which was happily burping along from the digital input of the skies. After setting the star tracker on the telescope, he replied to a few emails from Hector, who was taking his new yacht out for a spin. From student to unemployed to retired was a lot shorter trip than both of them had expected, which gave them time to doodle around on various hobbies.
The laptop chirped once, spitting up a message that showed no Near Earth Objects found, which was good. It would really suck to make all this money just to be blown away by some comet. He was moving the telescope to a new position when just out of whimsy, he opened up the data file full of pointers, just to be certain. After all, he had made a few changes to the software before it was ‘accidentally’ leaked again, and it would not do to have errors in the code.
He looked at the result.
Then he closed the window and checked the data file again.
It had not changed.
Leaving the laptop, he strolled through the house over to the writing table and got out his checkbook, mentally calculated fifteen percent, and began writing a check. It wouldn’t hurt. He had the money. And sometimes you just had to take the hint.
Over on the laptop, the open window still remained, showing the last lines of the computer data file.
Trouble had always made Gerald itch, be it the subtle itch between the shoulderblades when traveling down a dark alley, or the crawling sensation around his belt pouch when nimble fingers were in play. This itch was worse than anything so far, even greater than the fire that seemed to consume him nearly two years ago. That had been a sudden pain which had driven him to frantic action, while this was an enduring torture as lines of burning fire seemed to crawl across his toes and down the arch of his foot. It could only mean serious trouble.
Gerald leaned back in the saddle and regarded the rocky valley in which he had spent most of the last several days and tried not to scratch. It would not have done any good anyway, so he settled for shifting positions and trying to open his mind to whatever had sent Companion Evalien into such a frenzy during her fruitless Search. It also would probably not do any good, but at least it was more productive than scratching a phantom itch.
“Anything?” he murmured to his Companion, who likewise was looking out across the rocky valley and feeling just as itchy, if the way she had been stamping her hooves was any indication.
:Still nothing. If it were not for Evalien’s instinct, I would chalk this one up to a very weak mage or a flighty Companion, along with a bad case of hoof fungus.:
“All three, perhaps.” He returned to his long inspection of the valley below, with the long lines of thorny hedges that wrapped around green fields of beans and whatever other growing thing able to sprout in the surprisingly rich soil. The ground here was much like the people, complex and mixed in all directions, but bent to the will of those with more power. Karse had some influence over the area, but never had totally twisted it to their control, most likely because any of the Sunpriests with a shred of common sense looked away from the dense patchwork of rocky hills and valleys, instead focusing their attention on larger sections of open ground that did not seem to grow more rocks than beans, and contained worshipers who were not nearly as hard-headed.
In theory, there was a dividing line in the valley somewhere between Karse and the small mountainous country of Menmellith, but the farmers Gerald had been staying with for the last few days laughingly referred to it as ‘written on the wind’ with the number of times it had been reinterpreted. Both countries sent their military on occasion to collect ‘taxes’ from the village, the Karsite version of which was treated by the valley inhabitants as more of a military raid. The incoming soldiers would be spotted several miles away, but by the time they arrived at the village, only a few elderly inhabitants and the mayor would remain. That and a ‘village granary’ which contained enough dry beans to make the soldiers decide between just taking what was easy to load into the wagons or try their luck picking through the narrow hedge-lined cart paths which wound their way up and down the sides of the river valley. Far too narrow for military wagons and filled with hundreds of places to set ambushes, as well as loose rocks underhoof and the occasional branch just at head-height for a mounted rider, the appeals of exploring the countryside of Beansworth seemed to evade any of the unwelcome visitors, and mostly they departed within a day or two.
Over the past few days, Gerald had come to the conclusion that any of the three other powers in the area, Karse, Valdemar, or Rethwellan, could probably send a sufficient armed force into the valley to take it over, but the casualties would be numerous, and the payoff, slim. Despite the negative effect they would have on the defenses of the area, even an old ocean rat like himself could see improvements that cried out to be made in the area, from widening the roads to bridging some of the rocky crevices which were impassable during even minor rains, but…
:I despise these paths.:
Trenia had a snide bite to her mind-speech that was trivially easy to pick up. The rocks of the valley seemed to have a particular vendetta against her ankles, and had been giving her stiff hind leg a real workout every time they went out to support Evalien on her search. What was worse, the Herald-less Companion Evalien they had accompanied had been galloping pell-mell through the narrow paths and trails of the valley since the first time they had arrived without a single trip or fall. He sighed and patted her on the shoulder while pitching his voice to as close to the Valdemarin noble tones as he could make it.
“Don’t despair, Your Royal Highness. I shall send the finest grooms in all of the kingdom to bathe and brush you this evening. Perhaps they can even braid your mane.”
That elicited a brief snort, and Trenia gave him a level look over her shoulder.
:They had better. You owe me so much for this wild goose chase. :
“Yes, I do. But that will wait. I think I hear our wild goose now.”
The clatter of shod hooves on stones traveled a long distance, echoing from the surrounding hills as Evalien made her sure-footed way along the trail to where Herald and Companion were waiting. Gerald remained quiet while the two Companions ‘talked’ among themselves, wishing that his erratic gift of Foresight had extended farther. He had barely enough Mind-Speech to just understand Trenia, but apparently enough to pass along his own mental uncertainty as the Companion seemed to be unconsciously scratching the bottom of her forehoof against a convenient rock.
:Nothing. She says she caught a flicker of something around noon, but when she tried to get closer, it just vanished, like smoke.:
Step to the next plant Straight strokes with the hoe, one, two, three, four Watch the weeds turn over and come to pieces just like all the rest of the bean plants— Stop
He bent down to pick up the lizard, which was easier since one of its leg had been crippled by the hoe and it could not crawl very fast. It looked up at him with unexpressive eyes while wriggling in his hands. The scratches of tiny talons on his palms were easy to bear. Even injured, it just wanted to be free. It must be nice to be a lizard, laying around in the sun while waiting for the next insect to crawl past. Far easier than to be a person, having to drink and sweat in the sun. It had been long enough since his last drink to unsling the damp water bottle and take a long swig, with a little spilled on the damp burlap to keep it cool and a little for the injured lizard, who licked his nose and just stared instead of drinking. He took the lizard with him as he sat in the shadow of a tree and quietly ate his lunch. It was the time of no-shadows, where the sun was the hottest even through his wide straw hat. He could remember the sun, protector of all and domain of Vkandis. It was important to be protected against his powerful gaze, which is why he wore the hat and the long-sleeved shirt to prevent being burned. Burning was bad, and only bad people burned. Good people were careful and did not burn. He was careful, so he was a good person. Good people worked for their food, which was why he worked hard.
He took another drink of water and stood up to return to the fields, but the frantic scratching of the lizard in his hand brought him out of his thoughts briefly. Bending down to put the lizard in the shade of the scrubby tree, he closed his eyes and thought good thoughts. There was a warmth sweeping across his body, a sharpness that was both good and bad before he released the lizard and saw it scuttle away into the shadows of the weeds, hiding from the sun and from bad people. Something else was out there, two somethings, one of which was very dark and bad.
He picked up his hoe and returned to his work under the hot sun as a good person should.
Step to the next plant. Straight strokes with the hoe, one, two, three, four. Watch the weeds turn over and come to pieces just like all the rest of the bean plants. Step to the next plant as the sound of frantic galloping faded away into the distance. Straight strokes with the hoe…
The white shapes of stones protruded like the bones of giants across the whole valley, bleached by the sun and scoured by weather until they shone brightly as the coats of the two Companions who had come with him. The farmer’s house was in the middle of a jumble of the same stones on a hillside, and at first glance appeared to be just that, but a closer examination revealed much more. Goats grazed in the shadows of the setting sun, keeping a wary eye on the three newcomers to the area and bleating their displeasure, while children of all ages filled the farmyard. Many children, nearly universally dirty with dirty faces under wide straw hats and carrying dirty farming tools as they trudged back to the house, but Gerald did not get the sensation of dreary malaise that fell across far too many of the places he had visited as a Herald. They seemed happy with their chores, and from the sound of splashing water and the occasional delighted shriek coming from behind one of the lumpy stone and wood structures, the dirt was only a temporary thing.
As they emerged from behind the wooden privacy fence all clean and damp, the children scurried over to investigate the strangers entering the farmyard. Most of them crowded at a still respectful distance around the two Companions, but some held back or hid, peering out from behind buildings as if they were afraid of being murdered. He could see at least two adults also lurking around the outskirts of the farmyard with a spear or sword close at hand, but they did not seem hostile, just wary.
:Three. There’s one in an upper window with a crossbow just watching right now.:
The children who remained close lit up with obvious glee as the two Companions blessed them with the occasional horsey sniff or damp nose-rub, using their own wiles to entice the young ones into getting close enough to rub their hands along their snow-white sides and gasp at how soft the strange ‘horses’ were. One of the little girls even had the courage to trace the thin line of knotted coat that stretched across Trenia’s side, over Gerald’s right leg, and across her flank towards her somewhat shortened tail.
“Children!” commanded a gruff voice belonging to an old man, working his way over to Gerald by way of a crutch and considerable wincing. “Back away and give the man some room.” The old codger had to have been well over the half-century mark, even with as many years that were added to his frame by the farming life, with one twisted leg being supported by his crutch and what little hair he had left being white as the sun-bleached rocks of his house. Still, there had been an impressive man under that skin in his youth, and echoes of the heavy muscles and military discipline that he had grown up with still remained. He gave a series of one-word commands to the children who had gathered around the odd rider and his two odd horses, only turning his dark and suspiciously sparkling eyes towards Gerald once all of the unoccupied children in the vicinity had been assigned tasks.
“My name is Barnes, and the mayor says we need to put you up for the night,” said the old man rather bluntly. “I never woulda’ agreed to letting you stay here with the children if’n I hadn’t owed him a favor.” He looked Gerald over, from his dusty Herald whites to his dusty boots while a frown grew on his face.
“So,” started the old man. “You’re a Herald.”
“Herald Gerald, at your service, Farmer Barnes,” said Gerald, sweeping his hat off with one hand and bending into as much of a bow as you could do on Companionback. “And yes, I am a Herald of Valdemar, although in my impressionable youth I’ve been a sailor and a soldier, and for just a few terrible moments last year—” Gerald lowered his voice, glancing from side to side “—a politician.”
The practiced bit of humor struck home with a brief laugh from the farmer, much as Gerald suspected it would. “Well, if your Witch-Queen has many more of you silver-tongued devils in her service, she’s going to be in control of the whole country before long. What?” Barnes cocked a snow-white eyebrow at both of the Companions, who had snorted at the derogatory reference to Queen Selenay. “Aye, I’ve heard her called that and far worse. There’s a reason most of us are up in these hills, an’ she’s just as much a part of it as Karse and Rethwellan. You may be able to come prancin’ into most places a jingling bells and whipping your tail, but these children come out on the backside of all the fightin’ and dyin’ that wars bring. There’s only one reason your and your ghost herald are here, and that’s to drag one of our valley’s own off to your high and mighty city and turn ‘em into one of you white-clad spies for Valdemar.”
For one moment, Gerald was tempted to pretend affront at being called what he was, but a second look at the relaxed casualness that the old man held his thick crutch gave him second thoughts about the prudence of such a false front. Instead, he decided on approaching the topic from a different direction.
“Ghost Herald?”
The old man pointed at the empty saddle on Evalien. “For the last four days, that thing has been galloping up and down every path in our valley. Some have taken to calling her Effigiem, which means some sort of spirit-sucking monster.” Barnes spat to one side. “Me, I’ve been around enough to know better. She’s missing something or someone, an’ from that look, she’s worried half to death about it.” The old man stopped to chase several of the nearby children away with distasteful chores, turning back to Gerald once they had a little privacy again. “Care to enlighten me, ‘cause she can’t talk an’ I don’t got none of your fancy Gifts to weasel it out of ya.”
:Can’t talk?: Trenia sounded somewhere between insulted and sullen. :Just because I can’t talk to him.:
Gerald shrugged with false modesty. “I don’t have much of a Gift myself, just enough to talk with Trenia and see things about to happen that I can’t stop. Evalien is searching for a talented young person who really needs to become a Herald and that’s all I can tell you.”
The old man nodded and dug into the pockets on his weathered coat, fumbling for a moment until bringing out a dark lump of something, which he held out in one gnarled hand towards Evalien. The Companion looked up at Gerald, then over at the old man, before leaning forward and sniffing the offered substance.
“Go on, girl,” Barnes grumbled. “It’s beet sugar. With all the runnin’ around you’ve done over the last few days, you need a little somethin’ warm in your belly. I’ll have the children make you some space over in the bigger goat pen so you’re not tempted to sneak into the house like I hear your kind does sometimes. You like oats, don’t ya? Maybe a little warm mash with some beet sugar for the both of you, if’n the children can spare you some?”
Trenia nodded enthusiastically, as did Evalien, while Gerald could not resist rolling his eyes.
:Hush, you. I’m accepting his apology.:
The old man barked out a series of orders and children seemed to pop up from behind every rock, helping lift his saddlebags off Trenia and one of them sneaking what looked like an apple to Evalien. A stocky lad with sparkling brown eyes reached up and offered a hand to Gerald, asking, “Do you need any help getting down from there?”
“No, I’m not that old yet. Careful with the saddlebags there, miss.” He waved at a comely young lady who had just hefted the saddlebags over her shoulder and nearly collapsed with a huff of air. The motion distracted him during his dismount, and nearly dropped him onto his face on the dusty ground if not for the young lad whose help he had rejected in the first place.
All of the busy activity in the area halted by stages, with what seemed like dozens of children of all ages staring at the Herald on the ground with one boot still stuck in the stirrup of his Companion. Finally, one of the smaller children pointed and said with perfect clarity, “His leg is still on the horse.”
“Just part of it,” said Gerald, struggling to a seated position on the ground. “Can somebody please— Thank you,” he added as the detached wooden leg made its way over to him by several helpful young children, all of whom seemed unable to avoid peeking inside. “Straps came loose,” he explained as he took the detached boot and began the difficult process of sticking his stump back into the cloth-lined socket.
“There has to be a story behind this,” prompted the boy, seemingly caught between offering his help and determining if he would be going too far by doing so.
“An’ it’ll wait until after dinner, Sanalson,” snapped the old man, who had stopped his hobbling path back to the front door of the house. “You be gettin’ those pretty white ‘horses’ of his over into the barn and gettin’ them rubbed down, with a good scoop of hot mash each, you hear? Move it, move it!”
The word of the old man around the farm seemed to be taken as inviolate law. Despite being surrounded by what he could not help but think of as children, the evening meal was relatively untroubled by curious questions. Farmer Barnes limited his conversation to introducing the children of all ages in the house, from several little ones who could barely walk up to a number of married couples possibly being as old as Gerald who still deferred to the old man.
“Picked ‘em up during the little wars and battles that your kind always seem to start around here,” Farmer Barnes grumbled. “Some stay, some get adopted by other family ‘round these parts, some drift back to their former homes after a few years. The wife an’ me never had no kids of our own, ‘cept one, and he went off to play soldier when she died.”
At some unseen signal, all of the children at the table and scattered through the house chorused, “We love you, Papa.”
“See what I have to put up with,” grumbled the old farmer, although with the hint of a smile around the corners of his lips. “By the stars above, I feed ‘em, I house ‘em, and they won’t leave. It’s like having a house full of cats. You,” he stated, pointing with a thick, callused finger. “Dishes, dishes, sweeping, pick up, pick up, and…” The old man hesitated as he looked around the room. “Where’s Tel?”
“He finished dinner and went out to pump water into the tank, Papa,” said one of the younger children who was helping clean the table. The wooden plates and tankards on the table had begun to vanish almost the instant Farmer Barnes had pointed his finger, which made Gerald make a quick grab for the last of his bread and his tankard, still half-filled with the weak tea served ‘for digestion’ at the meal.
“Ah, yes,” rumbled the old farmer. “One of my children brought me the blessed thing. Modern miracle of technology indeed, ha! Still, it lets the little ones get cleaned up and not track as much mud into the house. Can’t argue with that.”
“No indeed,” agreed Gerald and somewhat appreciative of getting a word in edgewise. “If I may borrow your baths this evening, sir, I would be deeply appreciative.”
“Baths?” Farmer Barnes seemed offended. “It’s just a clay pipe sticking out of the hill from the cistern, not some fancy city tub like you’re used to.”
Gerald smiled now that the conversation had moved more to his advantage. “For the first few years onboard the ship I had foolishly hired onto as a cabin boy, the only bath I got was when it rained, or on special occasions I would pull a soapy bucket full of seawater and the most corrosive soap known to mankind up on deck and try to scrub away most of the dirt without taking my skin off.”
“You were a sailor?” asked an astonished little girl with her arms full of dishes.
:Oh, no. Not this again.:
“Not just a sailor, lassie,” he added with a wink. “The ship I signed up on turned out to be a corsair’s ship, which sailed the ocean like a storm. Five years we crossed the sea, traveling from port to port with whatever cargo we could run.”
:Tell them what happened to the last ship you were on right after you left.:
He ignored Trenia’s mind-speech and continued, aware of the growing circle of fascinated children crowding into the outskirts of the kitchen. “Our captain, he was a fearsome man, and crafty as a clam trying to keep its pearls. Why, one day while out at sea, we…
The stars were out in full force by the time Gerald limped out to the baths, or as Farmer Barnes had accurately put it, a clay pipe sticking out of the hillside with a long cord that could be pulled to allow water to pour out from the uphill cistern and into a trough or along a set of wet boards depending on where the spout was directed.
“Beats the devils out of trying to find a stream,” he muttered while dumping his shoulderbag onto a nearby rock and began to peel out of his dirty Herald whites. Most of the children who had been working out in the fields had washed their work clothes much the same with their drying clothes leaving the area a hazardous obstacle course in the moonlight. The solid thump, thump, thump of the pump in the background made a nice counterpoint to the evening breeze as he pulled the cord to put some water in the wooden washing trough. After a little of his carefully hoarded soap was rubbed into the shirt so it could soak, he sat down on a nearby rock bench to add his trousers to the wash.
“How are things going for you girls?” he murmured under his breath as he wrestled with the straps around his stump.
:Evalien is charming the little ones even now and there’s a line outside of our room with each one of them carrying a piece of dried apple. I swear, she could get Alberich to give up his last piece of fruit by just fluttering her eyelashes and sticking her bottom lip out.:
He had to chuckle at the mental image, but there were more important things at hand. “I meant, does she recognize any of her admirers as the touch she felt at noon? Well, I suppose not, or you would have told me already.” He flexed his knee and rubbed the bottom of his stump against the stone bench, trying not to wince at the shooting pain.
:Stop that. You’re just making it worse.:
“I can’t help it. I know Evalien’s Herald is somewhere around here. We’ve got to find him before whatever else is out there does. I hope it’s not a blood-mage.” He scratched a little more on his stump, but as gently as possible. “I feel like I’m being watched.”
“I’m sorry.”
The voice was a near-whisper, and came from an older boy nearly Gerald’s own height, although much broader across the shoulders and with a frizzy mop of unruly reddish hair cut close to his scalp. The thumping of the pump was absent, leading the Herald to take a leap of faith and ask, “You would be Tel, I presume?”
“Yes.” The young man did not look up, but kept his eyes fixed on the damp boards of the washing area and offered no further words.
“Thank you for pumping the water, by the way.” Gerald struggled to one foot, using the scabbarded sword as a crutch. “Most of the time I’m toe-deep in creek mud trying to wash up before sleeping, or I have to try bathing in a bucket.”
Because children were naturally curious, there normally would be some sort of response, but as Gerald got his body situated under the wooden spout, all he could hear was quiet footsteps leading away and the resumption of the night noises. There were few things more awkward than a naked, one-legged man trying to stand under a stream of water, but by lowering himself to his knees and bending back the little stub of leg he still had left, he managed to get everything properly soaped and rinsed while he thought.
Perhaps the Herald who Evalien was Searching for was older, an experienced mage who was hiding in the valley from some sort of trouble. If they already knew how to Shield, they would be a valuable addition to the Mages Collegium. There were several older people living with Farmer Barnes, but none of them had the haunted look of someone being pursued. This farm was about as far up into the valley as he had ever expected to go, with the higher grounds leveling out into sheep and goat pastures which had nothing but scrubby grass and wandering herders tending to their flocks.
:No, there are no goat Companions.: stated Trenia in the back of his mind. :If there were, they would have come along on this trip, and saved my ankles.:
“The answer’s obvious,” he murmured in return, feeling very damp and chilled as he attempted to dry off. “We’re just not seeing it. Have you two been able to pick up any hint of a Gift from anybody at this farm?”
:A few very minor ones. Two of the girls have a touch of Healing, and one of the men in the farmhouse has just enough Mind-Speech that he might be Chosen, but that’s it.:
“What about the boy who was just here?” he asked, almost out of reflex.
:What boy? There are a pair of young girls hiding in a bush a short ways away, trying to get a peek at you before they get chased off to bed, but there are no boys around you at all.:
One of the benefits and downsides of being out in the country instead of the Collegium was the night sky. When candles or lanterns were precious and mage-lights a complete impossibility, people tended to go to bed very shortly after sunset, leaving Gerald free to wander around in the moonlit night by himself. Trenia had verified that all of the farm’s inhabitants had gone to sleep, even the two older boys who had taken it upon themselves to sleep out in the small barn with the Companions and discourage any of their younger peers from bothering the four-legged guests from their own rest.
However, said Companions were not resting. Instead, they were holding their position just inside the open doorway of their fairly small for two Companions but awfully large for the goats it was meant to hold barn. According to the both of them, everybody in the entire farm was sleeping, down to the geese in their pens by the only small and twisted road headed into the farmstead and the chickens dozing in their coops. Gerald suspected differently. He had decided against his white riding leathers during the evening prowl for fear of looking like some sort of ghost to his easily-frightened subject. A dark blue open shirt with his regular pants had to suffice, although out of caution, he still wore his sword and rubbed his boot-clad wooden leg against a few rocks along his path. It was a wandering procession through the dark farmstead, with the occasional stumble or stubbed toe against unseen rocks, but he left his Gift guide his steps as he walked.
Eventually he wound up slightly uphill from the farmhouse, along a narrow path he suspected was about one goat wide. It twisted and curved around brush and rocks until with one last turn, opened up onto a rock ledge looking out across the entire valley below. The view was beautiful in the most breathtaking way imaginable, with the stars above shining down and the rocky reflections of the valley stones looking almost like stars themselves in the weak moonlight. He stood there and watched for a time, almost forgetting his original reason for climbing the steep slope, until he could hear the faintest whisper of a voice, counting.
“One hundred and seventy thousand, six hundred and twelve. One hundred and seventy thousand, six hundred and thirteen…”
“Hello.” It was as far ahead as Gerald had planned, and so far his plan was working perfectly. The voice cut off abruptly, as did the somewhat abstract floating sensation he had not really noticed until now, revealing the young man from before. He was sitting on the bare rock which was still warm from the evening sun, but he slowly turned around and looked up at Gerald without saying a word.
“Nice view.” He bent down to look a little less intimidating, which worked far too well. The wooden leg was less stable than expected, and he wound up pitching forward and would have taken a nosedive off the ledge, if not for the boy’s rapid reactions. Tel was strong, grabbing onto his shirt with one hand and hauling Gerald back as if he were throwing a bag of beans.
He sat there for a moment on the ledge, panting for breath and trying not to think about how far down it was. The boy simply looked back up into the sky and resumed counting, rocking back and forth slightly as his lips moved. Gerald seated himself too, taking a few deep breaths to regain his composure as he looked up at the sparkling stars with Tel. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” The response was almost automatic, but it indicated Tel was not quite as simple on the surface as he appeared. Even up here, the boy had kept his hoe right by his side, a thick rod of hickory with a well-worn blade. There was a hint of Karsite in his accent, somewhat of an upper-class lilt which he had never learned at the farm, but the heavy musculature he had felt when the boy hauled him back from the edge of the drop was not the result of such a privileged upbringing.
“So what do you see up there?” Gerald stole a sideways glance at the boy, whose lips still moved with his unstopping count. “Constellations? Ancestors? The future?”
“Stars don’t tell the future. They just are.” The boy hesitated, casting a glance back at Gerald and his wooden leg, which was sticking out at an odd angle due to a slipped strap. Gerald let the silence build until the inevitable question leaked out. “What happened to your leg?”
“I saw the future. Not in the stars,” added Gerald. “Up here. In my head.” He tapped his forehead with one finger and grimaced. “War is a nasty business, but you already knew that. I’ve got a touch of Foresight, just enough to be useful sometimes and too much to be safe. We were in this hideous mess in the middle of some town, me and a few dozen others. Wear the white outfit, get considered to be some sort of military genius, and all the blood that goes with it.”
He took a deep breath and shifted positions. “I saw this Sunpriest trying to save a group of children from this changed abomination under the control of a mage. Well, I saw it, all the way across town. Trenia ran as fast as she could, but it was almost too slow. The thing’s sword caught me right there—” he pointed to a line right above his boot and drew his finger back “—down Trenia’s side and across her rump. Chopped the end of her tail right off. I think she misses that the most.”
The boy gave little sign of hearing Gerald’s explanation, as if he had heard it the hundreds of times it had already been given, but he did run one hand down to rub at his own shin. Finally he asked, “Did it hurt?”
“Not at first.” Gerald brought the sword over in his lap and unsheathed the blade, turning it to show the dark stain covering the top third. “I was concentrating so hard on getting there before the monster could harm the children that I blocked out everything else. Just like training, I put the point right into his neck as we galloped by. Of course, everything went to mud afterwards. She fell, I fell, blood all over the place. The Sunpriest turned out to be a healer, thankfully. Saved my life, and saved ‘the spirit-horse’ too.”
:His stitching left something to be desired.:
The boy twitched, looking down into the moonlit farmstead as he grabbed his hoe. Long moments passed before he switched his gaze back over to Gerald, giving him a wary look.
“It’s a Gift called Mind-Speech,” explained Gerald. “Without it, our Companions would be unable to communicate. You have a different gift, what we call a mage.”
The tension across Tel’s shoulders grew into a near-tremble. “Mages are bad,” he whispered.
“Some are,” he admitted. “The ones in Valdemar are not. They protect others, like the Heralds. Some of them are even Heralds.”
They sat there for a time, looking up at the stars until the boy spoke again.
“I’m afraid.”
Gerald nodded. “You’d be a fool not to be. Every time I’ve had to face danger as a Herald, I’ve been afraid right down to my socks. Well, sock. Sometimes, you can pick your battles. Most of the times, the battle picks you, and all you have to depend on is your training and your companions.”
:Ahem.:
“Beg pardon,” said Gerald. “Companions, both those with four and two legs.”
He sat with the boy for a long time, looking out at the stars and talking. Gerald was going hoarse by the time he convinced the boy to walk down the steep slope and over to the two Companions waiting patiently in the moonlight. After a while, he determined the only thing more awkward than a one-legged man trying to wash under a waterspout was watching two Companions and a reluctant Herald-Trainee argue inside their heads.
“So.” The old man glared at Gerald in the harsh light of the sunrise. The entire farm had come to life with the first pinking of the sun on the horizon, and the children had already taken off to all points of the compass with their tasks, except one. “You’re takin’ Tel, no matter what I say about it, I presume?”
Gerald paused in his adjustment of Trenia’s saddle straps and shrugged. “It really isn’t my decision. It’s his.”
“I’m sorry, Papa. I have to go,” said Tel. Apparently it was a rarity for the older boy to talk more than one or two words to the old man too, based on the way he started. Gerald stepped in before Tel had to exert himself any more and added his own apologies.
“I’m sorry too, sir. He seemed to have a nice life here, but it’s just not safe for him. There are blood-path mages out there who would like nothing more than to rip his Gift away for their own purposes.”
“An’ they don’ care if they kill all my little ones to do it,” grumbled Barnes. “I know. I’ve seen it. Why’d you think I’m here? You can’t run far enough, I guess.” The old man looked up at Tel, who was sitting on his Companion as if he were standing precariously on the top of a mountain in a stiff breeze. “Put yer feet in the stirrups, boy, an’ keep ahold of that hoe. It’s a good, stout hickory stick, an’ you never know when you need somethin’ just like it.”
“You’ve seen a blood-path mage before?” asked Gerald.
“Once,” grunted the old man while intentionally looking away from Tal. “Went through our regiment, looking for somebody. Took him, too. Never saw him again.” The farmer took a deep breath. “Don’t let it happen, none of you.”
Gerald nodded. “Don’t worry, Mister Barnes. We won’t.”
“Weren’t talking to you, boy.” Farmer Barnes turned around and patted Evalien on the shoulder. “Keep ‘em all safe, girls.”
Picking their way down the valley in the hot sun was a long and arduous journey, filled with shifting rocks and spots where the thin trail switched back over itself and seemed to loop. Tel and Evalien trailed behind, despite the itching which had spread to both of Gerald’s feet, real and imaginary. Even the air seemed cloying and still, with the muted buzzing of insects and the subdued clatter of hooves on stones as both Companions struck a compromise between speed and quiet. Despite his earlier unsteadiness in the saddle, Tel remained nearly unmoving, with one hand clutching the saddle and one on the hoe, which was socketed against the bottom of Evalien’s military saddle like a flag.
:Something is up ahead. Something bad.:
Even Trenia’s mind-speech seemed quiet and hushed, so Gerald leaned down and whispered in return, “Is there anyway to get around whatever it is?”
:Can’t tell. I get the feeling we’re being herded. Evalien wants us to stop here.:
One of the things a Herald learns is how to trust their Companion, but Gerald considered that trust to be somewhat shaky as both Companions slowed to a stop in a particularly wide section of the cart path winding through the thorny hedges. It was a defensible location for anyone on foot as they could have probably picked their way into the hedges and shot any attackers one at a time from concealment, but for a Herald on Companionback, it was laughable. In a pinch, Gerald could have unlimbered his bow and gotten one or two shots off as whoever was coming up the path rounded the corner up ahead, but there was no guarantee of getting any kind of incapacitating hit, particularly with his accuracy and double if the mage was halfway competent. Instead, he grasped the hilt of his sword and slid it out of the scabbard a fraction of an inch to make sure it would not bind, before bracing himself for the breathtaking speed a Companion could make when lunging forward. If he could kill the mage or even delay him, Evalien would be able to sweep past with Tel, and not even the finest horse could catch a Companion in full gallop.
When the first leather-clad rider rounded the curve in the path ahead, Gerald shifted his priorities. The grim soldier was carrying a crossbow with an unbarbed bolt, much as someone who did not want to kill their quarry with a broadhead. Most likely the bolt was poisoned with something to slow reactions or paralyze. It would be slow to reload, which meant Gerald would have to somehow provoke the soldier into shooting him while somehow also incapacitating the mage he could still feel out there somewhere.
The second rider was obviously the mage, with a bald head bared to the morning sun and traceries of blue lines across every inch of his skin visible under a thick cloak and trim black outfit. Tightening his grip on the sword, Gerald laid himself across Trenia’s neck and dug in his heel slightly to trigger the Companion’s lunge.
Nothing happened.
“Go,” he whispered, still holding himself flat against her neck.
:Wait.:
Trenia’s urgent reply was nearly silent, but the mage jerked as if he had been bitten by a fly. He scowled and looked around, motioning for the following riders to halt, but even though he looked down the path where the two Companions and riders could have been seen by a blind man, he appeared not to notice anything. Neither did the lead rider, who also looked around but did not even raise his crossbow to take the obvious shot.
It seemed to take forever for the mage to motion the group of riders onward, and they proceeded at a slow walk along the path towards Gerald. Thankfully, only two more riders followed the mage, and even more thankfully, none of the four seemed to even have a clue about the two Companions and their riders ahead of them in plain sight on the path. Still, they were not totally unaware, as they all four seemed to unconsciously move a little sideways as they approached the wide section in the path where the two Companions were holding very still.
The blanket of cloying air laying over their trip so far clung to Gerald’s face as the first crossbow-carrying rider passed, and crushed closer as the mage’s horse followed. The mage slowed, eventually stopping his horse and looking forward with a troubled frown while directly across from Evalien and Tel. The boy was holding perfectly still with only his lips moving in small twitches, although his dark eyes were open and both hands were firmly wrapped around the handle of the hoe.
For the longest time, nothing moved.
Then everything moved at once.
The mage pivoted to his right, his mouth opening to give commands.
The leather-clad soldier behind him jerked away, swinging his crossbow around as Gerald’s sword cut across his throat in a ragged upward slice. The second soldier survived a few moments longer by dropping his crossbow and reaching for his sword, only to meet Gerald’s stop-thrust through his chest as Trenia lunged forward. The sword effortlessly punched through hardened leather and bone with the force of both Herald and Companion behind it, and Gerald was barely able to hold onto the hilt as Trenia wheeled in place.
For some reason, the mage was not on his horse any more, but the lead rider was fighting to control his horse and turn around, which gave Gerald a higher-priority target. Trenia shot forward as Gerald slashed downwards, allowing the blade to lay a narrow cut across the soldier’s face and smash down into the crossbow before they were past and turning for another run.
A brief glance at Evalien and Tel as they were wheeling around showed the two of them remaining almost stock-still with the boy standing up in the stirrups, but then it was time to pay attention to his own bloodied opponent, and Gerald flung himself into a quick cut-and-thrust attack. It was almost unsporting to cut the soldier down with the bloody gash across his face making him nearly blind and his sword only partially out of his scabbard, but Gerald had never been in a fight for sport. A thrust to the chest and a slash across the neck left his opponent sliding to the ground, and Gerald looked frantically for the missing mage.
:Look down.:
The mage did not look nearly so imposing lying on his back on the dusty path with a hoofprint on his face. Trenia must have stepped on him while they were on their way to kill the lead rider, but that was not his primary cause of death. His forehead had been bashed in first with enough force to leave a dent from his nose up to the sputtering blue lines of tattooing across the top of his head. The hoe which had caused the damage was held firmly in Tel’s grip, who was looking down at the dead mage with an almost emotionless face, except for a faint twitch around the corner of his lips.
Ever so slowly, Tel looked up from the corpse and fixed his dark eyes on Gerald. There was very little of the frightened child in his firm gaze now. Instead, he seemed to have aged several years in the matter of moments.
“Weed,” he declared in a low voice, following his declaration up by putting the bloody hoe back into the lance socket in the saddle and turning to face their original destination while Evalien started walking.
That was as many words as Gerald could get out of the young man throughout the rest of the trip to Valdemar and the Mage’s Collegium. He would nod or shake his head in response to questions, and Trenia was particularly quiet in regards to what he was discussing with Evalien, if anything. It was not until they had nearly reached the gates and the familiar chaos of the grounds was beginning to surround them before Tel stopped and looked directly at Gerald.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” said Gerald, feeling somewhat relieved that the young man had not gone mute over killing the blood-mage.
“Do you think I’m… bad?” Tel’s mouth moved as if more words wanted to escape, but Gerald gave him time to breathe and waited until he haltingly continued. “When I was very young, the Sunpriest told us the stars were where Sun Lord Vkandis had written of the good people’s lives, from birth to death. I’ve looked and I’ve looked, but I’ve never seen myself in the stars anywhere. I don’t want to hurt anybody,” he added, looking at the people inside the Collegium.
“Good or evil is not written in the night sky,” said Gerald, although with a little hesitation he added, “but the Hawkbrothers may argue the point. Your decisions determine what kind of person you are. The stars are just stars. People are themselves. When you look at yourself, what do you see?”
“A killer,” he responded almost immediately.
“And?” prompted Gerald.
“And a farmer.” Tel hesitated while chewing on his bottom lip. “I killed weeds that threatened the plants.”
Gerald nodded encouragement and pointed to the young men and women running between the buildings of the Collegium. “What would the blood-mage have done with them?”
“Killed them. Stole their power.” Tel continued to look at the young people for a time, taking his time and seeming to examine every inch of the Mage’s Collegium he could see. “I understand. Sometimes it hurts, or can get us killed, but they need protected so they can grow.”
“You’re not alone.” Gerald patted his back. “You’re joining with every Herald and Companion in Queen Seleny’s service, a whole batch of two and four legged farmers.”
:Ahem.:
Gerald knocked his knuckles against his wooden leg. “Technically, I’m two legged. Now, are you ready, Tel?”
“Do you think they will let me work in their garden?” asked the young man rather stiffly, as if he were afraid of being locked in a room and surrounded by dry books.
“They’ll be delighted.” Both Companions broke into a trot as they headed for the administration buildings. “Let’s get you started.”
Look, I Can Explain - Fighting Fractions of Friendship
“Twice!” exclaimed Rarity as she stalked back and forth in her kitchen with Sweetie Belle and Cheerilee at the table, both of whom seemed more than eager to be anywhere else in Equestria. “We talked when you were sent home for fighting the first time, Sweetie! I thought you understood! Fighting is not ladylike behavior, particularly at school! Mother is going to be so disappointed with you.”
“I’m sorry, Rarity.” Sweetie Belle did not take her eyes off the spotless tablecloth, but she did squirm uncomfortably in her chair. “Maybe we… I mean I could make it up with some extra credit homework or something.”
“Brawling like some common street hoodlum,” continued Rarity as if she had not even noticed Sweetie Belle’s words. “What if you got your cutie mark in violence? You could wind up making your way in the world as some roller-derby skater or boxer. You could even become a—” Rarity shuddered “—professional wrestler.”
Cheerilee looked up with a momentary wince before putting on her best Teacher’s Serious Expression, which had gotten a lot of use over the last few weeks. “I really should be taking this up with Sweetie’s parents, but since they’re still on their vacation…” She trailed off in deep consideration of the stacks of unfinished dresses in the room Cheerilee had just walked through with dejected young filly in tow.
Rarity seemed to pick up on Cheerilee’s reluctance and promptly waved a hoof in dismissal. “I am more than willing to oversee my sister’s punishment for her second infraction of the school rules, Miss Cheerilee. She is my sister, and I love her very much despite her brutal actions at school.”
“I said I was sorry.” Sweetie Belle put her head down on the table and sighed. “It wasn’t even my turn.”
There was an exceedingly long silence that stretched across the kitchen as Rarity and Cheerilee looked first at each other, and then at the young unicorn who seemed one small step away from breaking into tears.
“Sweetie.” Rarity carefully ran her tongue across dry lips and chose her words with great care. “Perhaps it would help if you told us, in your own words, just exactly what happened out on the playground between you and Diamond Tiara. Again.”
“It won’t help.” An enormous sigh escaped the tiny filly and she lit her horn up with a flickering green glow to extract one of the sugar cubes out of Rarity’s tea set. It was a snacking habit which Rarity had been trying to suppress in herself as well, but she held her composure and waited until the quiet crunching had died down and Sweetie Belle began to speak again in a low voice.
“Scoots, Apple Bloom and myself were over by the swings, just like last time, talking about what we were going to do to get our cutie marks, when Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon came over. We were thinking they had changed their behavior, because Diamond hadn’t bugged Scootaloo about not being able to fly in almost a week, which is a record for her, but she started right in on her. So I popped her one.”
“Sweetie.” Rarity cleared her throat. “A lady does not ‘pop’ another pony in the face.”
“She called Scoots a dodo and an archaeopt… archaeopte…”
“Archaeopteryx,” said Cheerilee almost apologetically. “We’re studying dinosaurs this week. I didn’t think Diamond Tiara was going to use them to pick on Scootaloo again, though.”
“Diamond Tiara uses everything to pick on Scootaloo.” Sweetie Belle floated another sugar cube out of the bowl, but dropped it on the table while floating it back to herself.
“Sweetie, when other ponies in school pick on you, they need to be reported to the proper authorities.” Rarity snuck a look at Cheerilee, who was looking rather guilty. “She has been reporting Diamond Tiara to you, right?”
“Every time.” Cheerilee gave out a sigh. “There’s really not much I can do for discipline other than to separate her from the other students for a while, or keep her out of recess, in which case she complains to her father, and her father complains to the school board, and you know who is on the school board.” Cheerilee looked up with a sudden guilty twitch and added, “Please don’t repeat that, Sweetie.”
“I know, I know.” Sweetie Belle gave off another sigh of such immense magnitude and intensity that it would have been considered impressive even if she had been a fully-grown mare. “Diamond Tiara’s mother is on the school board and can get you fired. We know. That’s why we…” She trailed off to a halt and glanced furtively around the room.
“That’s why you did what?” Cheerilee tapped one hoof on the ground while waiting for an answer, which appeared not to be forthcoming anytime soon.
“Just one moment.” Rarity paused with a thoughtful expression. “Didn’t Scootaloo and Apple Bloom get sent home from school this semester for fighting in the playground?”
“They’re not the only ones.” Cheerilee rolled her eyes. “After the school board passed that zero tolerance rule at the beginning of school to cut down on violence, the fighting started. It’s trailed off recently, but I’m afraid the fights out in the playground may be picking back up again. I hope it doesn’t, because for a while there it seemed as if I was sending one of the children home every day.”
“Two,” said Sweetie Belle in a very quiet voice.
“Yes, two,” corrected Cheerilee. “Policy says that any fight, no matter who starts it, winds up with both of the involved students withheld from class for a day at the minimum.”
“And how many of these fights has Diamond Tiara been involved in?” asked Rarity while keeping an eye on the guilty twitch that traveled down Sweetie Belle’s back.
“Most of them.” Cheerilee paused. “Actually, all of them. In fact, she missed almost every day at the beginning of the semester.”
Rarity nodded and turned to her sister. “So all of your friends are taking turns beating up your class bully?”
“NO!” Sweetie Belle looked up at the two similarly disapproving glares that the adult ponies were bestowing upon her and wilted under the pressure. “Maybe?” She squirmed under their combined glares until a confession began to slowly emerge, one word at a time.
“We didn’t mean for it to happen this way. That first time, I just couldn’t stand seeing her bully Scootaloo around and I was just trying to push her away. Silver Spoon went running off to you, Miss Cheerilee, and when you came back, Diamond Tiara was all ‘She punched me!’ and ‘She knocked me down!’ with that smug expression she always has. It was the greatest moment of my life when you told her we both had to serve a day of suspension. She just had this look as if somepony had sucked all the air out of her lungs.”
“Filthy Rich was not happy,” said Cheerilee. “He was even less happy when Apple Bloom hit his daughter the very next day she returned to class.”
“Not everybody got to see the way Diamond Tiara looked that first day,” explained Sweetie Belle.
“Or when Scootaloo hit her on the next day she returned to school,” added Cheerilee.
“Featherweight wanted to get a picture,” said Sweetie Belle. “It kinda grew after that.”
Rarity shook her head. “How in the world did you get the whole class involved? Why did you get your whole class involved?”
“Fractions,” said Sweetie Belle, perking up slightly. “You see, if just one of us popped— I mean hit Diamond Tiara whenever she mouthed off, she would have to spend just as many days out of school as Diamond, and that would really suck. I mean it would be bad,” corrected Sweetie Belle quickly. “With two of us, we each would have to spend half as much time out of school. Three of us would be a third, and with twenty or so, it worked out to five percent.”
“Twenty?” Rarity stole a glance at Cheerilee, who could only shrug.
“Last year, teaching my class had some real low spots,” admitted Cheerilee. “I didn’t realize it was quite this bad, though. I thought things were finally getting better this year, but I didn’t know why.”
“How did you determine who was going to strike her next, Sweetie?” asked Rarity. “Did you sell tickets, or start a raffle?”
“That’s a great idea!” Sweetie Belle looked up from the table, paused, and tried to put on her best apologetic expression, complete with wide eyes and a trembling lower lip. “I mean that’s a terrible idea. Just awful.”
“Sweetie.” Rarity sat down next to her little sister and put a foreleg around her neck in order to give her a gentle squeeze. “Your class can’t keep doing this. Somepony is going to get hurt.”
“But it was working,” whined Sweetie Belle. “Diamond Tiara used to bug us every day about getting our cutie marks, or Twist about the way she does her esses, or other ponies about their teeth or their tails. Miss Cheerilee told us all about positive and negative conditioning with rewards and punishments, so we just applied it. We tried rewarding her when she was good, but she never was, and we tried ignoring her when she was being a pain, but that turned out to be just about all the time.”
“So you hit her.” Rarity focused her most serious expression and tried her best not to smile.
“It was hours after she came back that first day before she started being all snippy again.” Sweetie Belle pushed the loose sugar cube around on the kitchen table for a moment and sighed again. “We really thought she was cured this week. We were even going to write a paper for Twilight Time.”
“No,” said Rarity with as much firmness as she could muster. “Absolutely not. You have no idea how Princess Twilight Sparkle would react to this kind of information.”
Cheerilee cleared her throat and added, “Besides, you weren’t just modifying Diamond Tiara’s behavior. You managed to modify the whole class into using violence to solve their issues. This has to stop. Somepony will get hurt if it continues.”
“I suppose.” Sweetie Belle leaned forward to nibble the loose sugar cube off the kitchen table and crunched it slowly while thinking. “Am I still getting punished?”
“Most certainly.” Rarity reached out with her magic and put the lid on the bowl of sugar cubes. “First, you are to go to your room and clean it. I’m quite certain that Scootaloo and Apple Bloom will be over shortly to help you with all of the homework you’re going to have to do at home, and before that happens, I want your room spotless.”
Sweetie Belle looked pensive. “Mom clean or Grandma clean?”
Rarity leaned over to put her nose in direct contact with her little sister. “Sister clean. Now go. I’ll be up with a white sock shortly, and I will look inside your closet. And when your little friends have a sleepover tonight, please restrict your midnight snack on the gallon of chocolate chip ice cream that I’ve got in the icebox down to one bowl each. One small bowl,” she clarified.
The two adults remained silent as Sweetie Belle galloped away and vanished into her bedroom with the distant sound of a slammed door. The silence only lasted a few more moments until Cheerilee snorted in laughter.
“I can’t help it,” she managed to say through the snickers and chuckles. “All I could think about was being a little filly back in school when my sister beat up on Plum Pudding for calling you a blank-flank.”
“She deserved it,” said Rarity, although fighting back a smile of her own. “After all, she was being a very rude little filly, and your sister got her cutie mark out of it after she performed that spectacular flying mare that dropped Plum into the sandbox.”
Cheerilee giggled along with Rarity at the memory of younger and more carefree days. “Whatever happened to Plum, anyway? I lost track of her when I went to Canterlot for my teaching degree.”
“Door to door salesmare,” said Rarity. “Quite successful, too. Somehow I doubt that Diamond Tiara will pick the same career path, despite their similarities.” After a deep breath, Rarity continued, “So do you think the little ruffians will be able to keep from being dragged into a life of professional wrestling like your sister? Perhaps we should get Cherry Blossom to visit Ponyville sometime and give them all lessons.”
“Actually…” Cheerilee considered the situation while nodding. “That may be a good idea. Wrestlers have to use a lot of skill to keep from injuring themselves or others. She could teach a week-long seminar to our more rambunctious students.”
“And I could make them darling little outfits to practice in,” said Rarity with growing enthusiasm. “You know, maybe that is a good idea.”
“Wonderful,” said Cheerilee with a beaming smile. “I’ll sign you up as a volunteer. ‘Diamante Elegante’ would make an excellent assistant to the Mystery Mare, don’t you think?”
“Well…” Rarity glanced out the door for eavesdroppers and lowered her voice. “As long as you can keep it quiet, ‘Mystery Mare.’”
Cheerilee giggled and shook her head with a smile. “Helping teach little ponies in this town is more like tag-team wrestling with my sister than I would like to admit. I’m just glad you’re in my corner.”
The driving rain is cold and washes through my thin coat in the darkness of the highway shoulder. The trucks passing by are the worst, throwing out a blast of water that can knock you off your feet and into the ditch if you do not keep your eyes open. I trudge onwards, trying to keep my leaden feet far enough from the highway to be safe, as if safety is something I can ever desire. There is a ritual to putting your thumb out when you hear the hiss of the oncoming car, but staying back far enough that the occasional asshole does not try to come as close to you as possible without denting their expensive vehicle. So far in the last few years, I’ve never been hit, but in the darkness and the heavy rain, there is always the chance. All it would take is somebody who had been drinking a little too much, a moment of inattention, the screech of tires on wet pavement, and—
The bright red lights of brakes glitter through the darkness as a van splashes past me, slowing to a halt with its emergency lights flashing. Despite the weight of cold water soaked into my clothes, I pick up my speed to a lumbering run and slide into the offered passenger seat with my backpack between my legs.
There is a ritual to this too, where I express my gratitude to the driver in a quiet fashion while he or she attempts to merge back into traffic without killing us all. Then of course comes the question I dread:
“So, where’ya headed?”
There is no simple way to admit that your destination is unknown even to yourself, so I lie, but even then, the lie is so practiced that it flows out the same as a truth would. How do you tell someone you are not going to anywhere, but away from everything? I have been going to a relative’s funeral, or out on a job search, or visiting an old college friend so many times, always far away from where I am now and always carefully in the direction I was headed at the time. The weather is an easy topic to cover now, as the time spent under the freezing rain has given me so many creative words for ‘wet’ that I actually relax for a change, looking into the headlight-lit night through the kaleidoscopic distortion of the rain with only a few unwelcome ghosts troubling my thoughts. Still, I shiver, and the driver helpfully turns up the heat and directs it in my direction, regardless of the vaguely dog-like scent I emit while drying.
We travel in relative silence for a while with some late-night talk show host on the radio telling about the proper way to manage money while the commercials push the value of buying gold. Neither of us seem to be the target of their sales, but we listen anyway with the occasional comment at the complete idiots who call in and have no problems dumping their troubles on some stranger.
Then comes the second inevitable question for which I should have been prepared:
“So, where are you from?”
I paint the picture of my past with a faint brush, faded with intentional effort. I leave out the children, the wife, the house and dog, all things I have left behind to another person who stepped into my shoes without even waiting for them to cool. Sometimes on rare occasions the driver will offer a job, or perhaps a place to stay for a few days, but mostly they will use my words to talk about their own life, as this driver does. His turnoff is coming up, and his words blur together. Proud words about his own family and their recent brush with a drunken driver who ran a stop sign and totalled their car. By a stroke of good fortune, they were uninjured, and as he praises a cold and distant God about his luck, I remain silent to him, keeping my face stoic and my breathing regular. He offers to drive me to the next highway turnoff, but I decline in as few words as I can, stumbling out of his van and mindlessly taking the money he presses into my hand as the rain once again begins to soak my coat. It is as much as I am able to thank him despite the bitter taste of ashes in my mouth, and to put on at least an attempt at a smile as we exchange waves.
Then he is gone, and I am once again alone on the side of the highway with my backpack. The rain pours down just as hard as before, forming little rivers under my bag as I rest my weary body by the side of the road and let the tears flow, just this once. I can still see the mangled car, taste the dust of the airbag on my lips, feel the rain from that horrid night soaking into my suit, hear the anguished cries of the child in the back seat of the twisted wreckage as I threw up into the ditch.
No matter how far I travel, the memories follow. Twelve men and women denied my fault and set me free, but I carry the prison I have constructed with me, like some tortoise by the road who can never set himself free of his own shell.
Then another vehicle brakes in the rain, a truck this time, and I hustle to it. Maybe this time I can be carried away from my past.
Maybe I can live again.
Maybe…
Below is the story as it was entered into the Writeoff.me site, edited down to 747 words
The driving rain is cold and washes through my thin coat in the darkness of the highway shoulder. I trudge onwards, trying to keep my leaden feet far enough from the highway to be safe, as if safety is something I can ever desire. There is a ritual to putting your thumb out when you hear the hiss of the oncoming car, but staying back far enough to be safe. In the last few years, I’ve never been hit, but in this darkness and rain, there is always the chance. All it would take is somebody who had been drinking, a moment of inattention, the screech of tires on pavement, and—
The bright red lights of brakes glitter through the darkness as a van splashes past me, slowing to a halt. Despite the weight of water soaked into my clothes, I pick up my speed to a lumbering run and slide into the offered passenger seat with my backpack between my legs.
There is a ritual to this too, where I express my gratitude to the driver in a quiet fashion while he or she attempts to merge back into traffic without killing us all. Then of course comes the question:
So, where’ya headed?
There is no simple way to admit it, so I lie like always. How do you tell someone you are not going to anywhere, but away from everything? I have been going to so many places so many times, always far away from where I am now. As the conversation moves on, the weather is an easy topic, as the time spent under the freezing rain has given me so many creative words for ‘wet’ that I actually relax, looking into the headlight-lit night through the kaleidoscopic distortion of the rain with only a few unwelcome ghosts troubling my thoughts. Still, I shiver, and the driver helpfully turns up the heat in my direction, regardless of the vaguely dog-like scent I emit while drying.
Then comes the second inevitable question:
So, where are you from?
I paint the picture of my past with a faint brush, faded with intentional effort. I leave out the children, the wife, the house and dog, all things I have left behind to another person who stepped into my shoes without even waiting for them to cool. Sometimes on rare occasions the driver will offer a job, or perhaps a place to stay for a few days, but mostly they will use my words to talk about their own life, as this driver does. His turnoff is coming up, and his words blur together. Proud words about his own family and their recent brush with a drunken driver who ran a stop sign and totalled their car. By a stroke of good fortune, they were uninjured, and as he praises a cold and unfeeling God about his luck, I remain silent to him, keeping my face stoic and my breathing regular. He offers to drive me to the next highway turnoff, but I decline in as few words as I can, stumbling out of his van and mindlessly taking the money he presses into my hand as the rain once again begins to soak my coat. It is as much as I am able to thank him despite the bitter taste of ashes in my mouth, and to put on at least an attempt at a smile as we exchange waves.
Then he is gone, and I am once again alone on the side of the highway. The rain pours down just as hard as before, forming little rivers under my bag as I rest my weary body by the side of the road and let the tears flow. I can still see the mangled car, taste the dust of the airbag on my lips, feel the rain from that horrid night soaking into my suit, hear the anguished wail of the child in the back seat of the twisted wreckage as I threw up into the ditch.
No matter how far I travel, the memories follow. Twelve men and women denied my fault and set me free, but I carry the prison I have constructed with me, like some tortoise by the road who can never set himself free of his own shell.
Then another vehicle brakes in the rain, a truck this time, and I hustle to it. Maybe this time I can be carried away from my past.
Maybe I can live again.
Maybe…
In Over Your Head - Rainbow Dash And Her Secret Place
It was, in a word, cool. Anything Rainbow Dash was involved with was cool by default, but this was exceptionally cool in several ways, including how shady it was. The summer sun could not fully penetrate the thick layer of apple leaves overhead from where three or four large trees had grown together at some time in Sweet Apple Acres’ history, leaving a little bark-lined pocket just the right size for a pair of pegasi to enjoy the afternoon.
“What do you think, Scoots? Is this cool, or what?” After chasing away a nearby fruit bat, Rainbow Dash pulled a ripe apple off a nearby branch and tossed it to Scootaloo. “I’ve never told anypony about this place, not even Applejack.”
“It’s awesome!” declared Scootaloo before biting into the apple. It was sweet as sugar, still warm from the sun and just barely over the perfect ripeness for harvest. Juice ran down her chin as she finished it off in several quick bites and accepted another one with a grin.
“Yes it is. I found this place back when I first came to Ponyville. It’s always been the place I go when I want to get away from it all. I never thought I would ever share it with anypony, not even Gilda.” Rainbow Dash rummaged underneath a branch and pulled out a large cushion, which she settled down on with her guest. The light breeze through the canopy of thin branches evaporated the thin film of sweat both pegasi had accumulated through flying practice, although Rainbow had been only an inconsistent presence while Scootaloo was practicing. It had been a wonderful experience for the little pegasus, made only more wonderful by being able to spend time together with her adoptive big sister now, even if the older pegasus was acting a little strange.
“Is anything wrong?” asked Scootaloo. “Did you get a seed stuck in your teeth?”
“No, nothing like that,” said Rainbow Dash with a dismissive wave. “I was just thinking. I never had a little sister until now. Being a role model is a lot of responsibility, even more than joining the Wonderbolts. I mean there’s all these cool sistery things we can do and all the stuff I need to teach you, but the one thing I think I like the best is just hanging out with you.”
“Really?” Scootaloo fairly tingled with joy and her grin reflected her happy mood. “You like hanging out with me more than even going pranking with Pinkie Pie like you did this morning?”
“Absolutely,” stated Rainbow Dash with one hoof held up in front of her. “Pranking has its place, but after adding a little pink dye to some bubble bath, there’s nothing better than spending some time with you.”
The wind gently blowing through the tree could not disguise the distant sound of Applejack shouting at the top of her lungs, as she had been doing for most of the last hour.
“Rainbow Dash you consarned pest! If’n I find you, I’m gonna skin you alive and use your worthless hide as a throw rug! Come out and get the whuppin’ you deserve.”
Scootaloo leaned back into the cushion and giggled. “That’s so awesome. I don’t have anything else planned for today,” she said, snuggling into Rainbow Dash’s side. “We could just chill here if you want, big sister.”
“Get your rump out here, Rainbow,” shouted Applejack in the distance. “Ah’m gonna pound you like a… somethin’ that gets pounded into pulp!”
“Sisters do sleepovers, right?” asked Rainbow Dash. “What would you say to spending the night out here, Scoots?”
Dry Roast had a good reason for opening Java Le Choza every morning far before the sun rose, despite the rest of Ponyville still being sound asleep. It was not a particularly large reason, or a profitable reason, but he had stumbled into it by accident one morning when he was suffering a bout of insomnia, and had made up his mind at that point to never miss the five AM opening ever again.
On normal nights, he would get the machinery in the coffee shop fired up just a few minutes after he walked through the door. It made the little shop a tiny island of light in the pitch black night filling the town and helped chase away some of the imaginary creatures which he could far too easily imagine lurking in the shadows. Not that he was actually afraid of the night, of course. It was just that with the Everfree Forest a mere stone’s throw outside of the town, some of the less fearful denizens of the dark woods would share his nightly commute, with the occasional bat or curious opossum passing within touching distance before continuing on their indifferent way.
Tonight, he had barely gotten the equipment warmed up and the apron on when the bell at the front door jingled. It was a little early for her, but there were many nights when she did not show at all, so he took Twilight Sparkle’s bedraggled appearance in stride and smiled at the young alicorn princess where she stood spraddle-legged in the middle of the coffee shop doorway. This was actually the most alert he had seen the Princess of Friendship since the first time he had arrived early at the store only to find Twilight sleeping face-first against the door. Her mane was tangled and frayed with the stress of late-night studying while her eyes remained firmly closed against the lights of the shop, but she still radiated an adorable rumpled presence which made Dry Roast give a little sigh of adoration back in return.
“Mid grabble fattamatud filbudget macatonit. Mit fulbadagin.” Twilight’s voice was garbled and spoken nearly into the floor, but Dry had a little bit of critical experience with Her Highness’ Ritual of Far Too Early In The Morning, and repeated her order, or at least what he could interpet.
“Double-double espresso latte with seven pumps of chocolate syrup, sprinkles, and low foam, right?”
“Merglimp.”
“Eight pumps it is. Coming up.” Dry Roast got out the requested foam coffee container from behind the counter and proceeded to violate all the known dietary restrictions for caffeine density and chocolate. He foamed and poured, measuring only vaguely and proceeding mostly by instinct as the massive insulated container of not-quite-coffee filled up to the top and he clipped the lid on it. Behind him, he could hear the distinctive jingle of bits on the counter which always worked out to exact change plus a twenty percent tip.
“Here you go, Your Highness,” said Dry Roast as he moved back over to the counter, the massive container of coffee wobbling in his magic field until he put it down next to the pile of bits. “Will there be anything el—”
“lovya,” muttered Twilight Sparkle, taking a deep breath out of the steam rising from the top of her coffee, then moving in an almost unstoppable motion upwards until her hot lips pressed against his. She kissed him just as hard as any stallion had ever been kissed before in the history of kissing, leaving a blaze of fire which turned Dry Roast’s face a crimson red and left his tail sticking straight out behind him. “Wanahaveyourfoals,” she murmured when coming up for air before resuming the passionate kiss, then, “righthererightnow,” before a third kiss of Royal intensity.
Just as Dry Roast’s knees were about to give out, Twilight Sparkle abruptly stopped her kiss and took a step back. The massive container of coffee levitated up in front of her lips, she took a deep, deep drink with just as much passion as she had put into the kiss moments before, then turned and stumbled toward the door.
“Merglipmuph,” murmured Dry Roast, still trying to get control over his scrambled brains.
“Neglimpth,” muttered Twilight between gulps of coffee. Then she was gone, and the coffee shop was again empty except for the bubbling of the coffee machine and the hammering of Dry Roast’s heart.
My quarry is on the run, blooded and ready for the tracking, while my first Prey lies at my feet. This world is ripe for the Hunt, filled with challenging Prey to prove the Hunter worthy.
Not more than an hour after emerging from my portal and setting up my base camp, I happened upon a mated pair of winged creatures sitting in plain sight upon a small grassy rise near the forest. My first shot caught the older male right in the chest, but the smaller female was far faster than I expected, and streaked away in a trail of rainbow colors before I could get off more than a few reaction shots. From the small specks of blood around their feeding spot, I managed to nick its pale blue pelt with a few of the paralysis darts, and my proximity sensor will allow me to track the wounded creature to its lair.
While I wait for the darts to leech into the fleeing creature and render it immobile, I load the first creature onto the carrier and drag it back to my camp. It is a magnificent dark-blue winged quadruped, fairly small and apparently herbivorous, with a colorful mane arranged in parallel stripes and an attractive face. I am thankful for the foresight that caused me to use paralysis darts when I started on the Hunt, for although the creature would look impressive on my trophy wall, it shall be even more impressive when caged for the admiration of my fellow Hunters. That is, once I have collected his colorful mate still out in the forest somewhere, unconscious now that the darts have completed their work.
I arrange the paralyzed creature at my base camp and bind its limbs in case I am gone for an extended period and it awakens. As a precaution, I add a loop of the unbreakable plastic around a nearby tree so that my trophy cannot be carried away by any larger predator. The defensive turret I leave deactivated, for I do not trust its programming in this new hunting ground, and I have no desire to be shot by my own base camp defenses. My automatic recall would still return me home, but the indignity of the experience would shadow my discovery of new Prey.
Before heading out to collect the large creature’s mate, I examine the primitive devices I have found with them. Obviously these creatures are intelligent, with some sort of manufacturing base to produce the rude cloth and woven basket, as well as the bottles of an unknown fluid that my protein analyzer determines to be some sort of fruit juice, and safe for me to drink.
It is delicious, an obvious secondary resource to extract from this new world once the Hunt is over and all of the Prey has been collected. Far too many worlds have been stripped of their Prey and left the Hunters without a proper challenge. Perhaps this one will last longer than most.
For a moment, I stand in the forest clearing in which I have made my camp and breathe in the dank musk of the decaying leaves, the scent floating through the trees, and the gentle breeze that cools the sweat that trickles down from my helmet. It would be tempting to keep the knowledge of this world a secret, my own private hunting lodge to which I could retreat whenever in need of the touch of the outdoors and the thrill of the Hunt. It could never last, as my fellow Hunters would eventually trace the dimensional signature through the trophies and captives that I would accumulate. Far better to register the coordinates of this rich world upon my return and harvest the fees as Hunters flock to the new Hunting grounds.
Dreams of my upcoming wealth fill my mind as I follow the second quadruped by way of the tracking devices embedded in the paralysis darts. The classification of ‘Pegasus’ seems to fit these colorful new winged Prey, creatures much as the ancient legends from the distant past say once roamed my home world. Perhaps an race of Hunters was the cause of their extinction, and properly restrained samples of these ‘Pegasi’ could be reintroduced into the few wildlife refuges that still remain, once properly processed to remove any traces of sentience, of course. So lost am I in my thoughts that I am shocked into nearly dropping my rifle when the tracers that signify the position of the second pegasus suddenly dart into motion, curving around my position and streaking back towards my base camp.
The creature must have a metabolism like a blast furnace in order to burn through the toxin that coats the darts and still be able to move. Unconsciously, I toggle the fire selector on the rifle to automatic as I run, although I do not switch the ammunition type to flechettes just yet. There is still the possibility of capturing the magnificent specimen, if I can get enough darts into its body as I did the other. I burst into the clearing where I have set up my base camp and swing the rifle to cover the second pegasus, who is attempting to free its mate from the bindings. The bound pegasus shouts a warning, and my Prey streaks away before I can aim, reducing my precise shot worthy of a Hunter into a stream of darts that still manages to miss.
This Prey is far more worthy of the Hunt than I had thought. I put an additional paralysis dart into the first pegasus as it struggles against the unbreakable bindings and snaps in my direction. It would not do for the creature to injure itself before I return to my home and place it in a viewing cell. For herbivores, the pegasi seem to be violent beyond expectations. Some selective neural surgery may even be required for the captives, in order for them to accept their proper status.
For now, I concentrate on the remaining Prey. Keeping the proximity alarm turned to its highest setting, I rummage through my supplies. As fast as the creature is, a net trap should still ensnare it into immobility, and I have the perfect bait for the trap in its mate. The faint bleeping of the alarm indicates the Prey is distant, circling my camp in search of an opportunity to reach its mate again. I pretend to ignore its observation and continue working, laying out the traplines and arranging the compressed nets under the glaring eyes of the paralyzed pegasus. As much as it pretends to violence, those soft golden eyes are not the eyes of a killer. There can only be the Prey and the Hunters, and there is no doubt to which category it belongs.
After I finish with the traps, I turn my attention to the portal elements which are to be my way home. It took an immense amount of power to open a hole through space-time to this location without a return beacon. Now that I have set up the components, the relatively puny power cells I was able to transport will be able to generate a return portal for several cycles until I can bring a more permanent installation. It would be a waste of power to use the portal for the return of a single Prey. After the second is captured and restrained, it would be a good idea to collect several more, perhaps a full family group which could be arranged in a diorama once properly processed by the taxidermist. The protein analyzer indicates the flesh of these creatures is consumable, but a few steaks will be a more accurate determination of their worthiness as Prey.
My concentration is broken by the scream of the proximity alarm. The second creature darts across the forest clearing in a pale blue streak trailing rainbows despite the load of paralysis venom in its blood. It is fast, so rapid that I nearly cannot get my rifle up before it is upon me, but its target is not a Hunter. It fairly blazes across the trapped ground where I have restrained its mate, leaving behind my entire collection of nets all tangled into a whirling ball in its slipstream. It is an arrogant maneuver for Prey, showing its contempt for my actions even as I pump a few more darts in the direction it flees.
The trapped Prey chuckles, giving a brief sneeze as it blinks away the dust that covers my camp. Apparently my humiliation is pleasurable to it, and I barely restrain myself from shooting another paralysis dart into it in return. The thrill of the Hunt is upon me, and I scan the treeline into which the Prey has vanished in the hopes of it returning.
Time passes as my blood cools. This is always the part of the Hunt that frustrates me most. The proximity sensor can direct me towards the distant Prey and the tiny machines in its bloodstream that broadcast its location, but it still is much faster than any Hunter. I must wait its return while shorn of another tool of the Hunters. The ball of adhesive nets is tangled beyond any ability to salvage, and I begin to regret not bringing more of my equipment through the portal. The pegasus may be able to dodge slow projectiles, but a beam weapon would pluck it out of the sky. Some Hunters are overly cautious, with powered body armor and multiphasic weaponry for even the simplest Prey, while others prefer to match their physical prowess against Prey with nothing more than a scrap of cloth and a spear. I have sought a proper challenge across dozens of worlds, risking death or dismemberment in my quest to be a Hunter, and this is the closest I have been to parity.
Hours pass while I wait. The Prey remains within range of my sensor, flitting about the forest as if it were searching for something, but with short trips back to the clearing to check on its mate and my position. Every time it returns, I lay in wait. If it strays into my vision for even a fraction of a second, I will drop it without hesitation, but it remains remarkably concealed for a creature with so many colors.
After each failed capture attempt, I return to the base camp and check my gear. The first Prey begins to attempt communication with a series of whinnies and snorts while drawing lines and geometric figures in the grass with one hoof, much like other Prey on other worlds I have visited. I ignore it, except to pour some water into a bowl and place it within reach of the creature. It could be several hours before I capture its mate, and days before we return home where it can be properly caged. It would be foolish to allow it to expire.
The day draws near to an end as I set up the camp for the night. It takes just a few minutes to unpack the automatic defenses that I was so reluctant to deploy before. Four sensor paddles driven into the moist earth will ensure even the fastest predator will be detected before it reaches my camp, and a full case of paralysis darts loaded into the automatic needler will take care of the rest. I am very careful to map out an exclusion zone within the camp, because these darts are much heavier than the ones in my rifle, and would render me helpless in seconds.
With the upcoming sunset comes a strange noise out in the forest, a howling of sorts mixed in with the jubilant sounds of the missing Prey. My first Prey seems upset at the noise, straining at its bonds and muttering something in its strange language that sounds vaguely profane. The proximity sensor shows the Prey heading straight for my camp, in short bursts of speed that correspond with the distant angry howls growing much closer. Even as prepared as I am, I an caught unaware when the pale blue Prey bursts out of the treeline and heads in my direction at such a rapid rate that it is past me and gone before I can even pull the trigger.
However, there still is Prey.
Streaking out of the forest edge is a huge beast that appears to be made out of trees. Green fire burns from its eyes and mouth as it flings itself forward with a scream of rage, and I am barely able to depress the activation switch on the sentry cannon before it is halfway across the forest clearing. A stream of heavy paralysis darts vanish into its woody body, spraying small flecks of wood from the impact points, but not slowing its rapid charge in the least. The automatic needler fires a second burst, then a third, before switching to a continuous stream of fire that vanishes into the wooden monstrosity with no more effect than to change the target of the beast’s ire. I add my own ineffective fire to the automatic defenses, running completely through a clip of paralysis darts before the Prey smashes into the camp, one wooden paw descending onto the sentry cannon in a burst of sparks and metal parts.
I switch my rifle to flechettes and saw a long burst through the Prey’s torso. Branches and twigs fly, and the beast staggers, falling to the ground as I direct the spray of sharpened steel to truncate wooden limbs from its body. The rifle clicks empty at the same instant the creature collapses into a heap of mismatched branches, and I attempt to calm my heart while reloading.
A small noise draws my attention back to where I have restrained my first Prey. The colorful pegasus has one of the previously-fired flechettes in its teeth, attempting to saw through the bonds of its mate. With my heart still pounding to the excitement of the Hunt, I raise my rifle even as the larger Prey shoves his mate behind him. It ruins my shot, giving the smaller Prey time to streak away into the distance with no more wounds than a few colorful hairs floating to the ground behind it.
I am still quaking with rage when I see the expression on the restrained Prey. It should have been jubilant over the escape of its mate, or at least smirking at my defeat, but instead it was looking with growing horror at where I had felled the large wooden Prey beast. Splintered wooden limbs were lifting into the air in a glowing green force field of some sort, reassembling the creature at a rate far faster than I imagine possible. I empty a second magazine of flechettes into the creature, then a third, finally throwing a bundle of signal flares into the quivering pile of wood and watching suspiciously as it burns. This is one Prey that will not be found on any Hunter’s wall or in their menagerie without serious equipment and powered armor.
Still, it burns well, and adds a comfortable heat to the campsite as the night falls.
The alien stars above stare down on me as the night passes on, a thousand silver eyes in the sky watching as I remain by the the dying fire and wait. The restrained Prey had attempted to hide the sliver of steel left by its mate, as expected, and I decide on an enforced nap for the creature instead of allowing it to plan mischief through the night.
The second Prey has considerable potential, once fitted with proper restraints and a punishment device for training. The way it herded the wooden Prey back to my camp was ingenious for an untrained creature. Once trained, it would make a useful assistant in the Hunt, drawing Prey to the Hunter until its inevitable loss at the claws or fangs of another Prey.
The creature has settled down for the evening, as the proximity sensors determine it has nested a few hundred lengths above the ground, in a distant bank of clouds. An odd place to rest, but it is beyond the range of my weaponry from here, and possibly yet another scheme to lure me away from its mate.
I rest, awaiting the dawn and the resumption of the Hunt.
Before the sun rises, I arrange the first Prey on the carrier and drag it behind me as I slip through the darkness in the direction of the second Prey’s tracker. It may think itself safe, concealed in the clouds above the Hunter, but it is only Prey.
Once I reach my destination, I prepare the flyer and load its projector with paralyzing darts. It is nearly silent, rising into the darkness on ducted fans and guided to its destination by the beacon of the darts still embedded in the Prey’s skin. I watch carefully on the display as the flier breaks through the clouds and focuses on the target, illuminated in starlight and the soft warmth of the upcoming sunrise.
It is a piece of bark, with several bloodstained paralytic darts stuck in the center.
The sun rises above the horizon in one rapid motion, coating the ground with golden sunshine and causing the flyer to burst into a cloud of molten metal and burning plastics. Highlighted in the glare of the rising sun are a large number of Prey, led by two horned pegasi much larger than the Prey lying bound in the carrier at my feet. They are descending upon my position with slow, deliberate wing strokes, exposed to my fire as I raise my rifle and flip the selector to paralytic darts. The electronic sights line up perfectly on the chest of the largest Prey, a brilliant white pegasus wearing some sort of golden apparatus on its head, and I stroke the trigger almost lovingly before sliding the sights over to the second largest Prey. The dark pegasus seems almost contemptuous of my aim, pausing in mid-air with wings spread wide as if to ensure the most precise shot placement as I stroke the trigger the second time. And then a third. And a fourth.
The silvery paralytic darts have stopped directly in front of my targets, held immobile as if they had struck a transparent partition. I flip the selector lever on my rifle to flechettes and hold the trigger all the way back until the magazine is empty with little more effect than to irritate the larger of the two Prey. The barrel of my rifle glows red, then white, before bursting in a spray of molten metal that makes me flinch away and reach for the emergency recall on my belt.
I fail to reach it.
The same golden energy that stopped my shots so effortlessly holds me in a crushing grip as the second horned Prey sweeps down from the sky and lands directly in front of me. A blade made out of darkness appears in front of her, and with a dispassionate expression more suited for stepping on a bug, she swings it down.
The pain is incredible, but limited to a single line of fire that cuts me from head to the waist. Again and again, that impossibly sharp blade descends to cut away equipment and clothing, leaving behind a thin line of blood seeping up through my skin wherever it touches. It is a display of control that even the most skilled Hunter would be hard put to match, and I see the hardness in her eyes that the other Prey lacked. This one is a killer, a Prey who had slain before and would be perfectly willing to slay again. The blade continues to slice and dart around my naked body until the larger pale Prey lands to her side and speaks a single word.
Where the dark horned pegasus was a lethal Prey worthy of a Hunter and willing to kill, the white horned pegasus possesses a sense of enormous power held back by great restraint. A Hunter seeking this Prey’s hide on his trophy wall would be well advised to bring as much armor and weaponry as they could carry, and Hunt in a pack. Those dark eyes speak of the willingness to burn an entire world into a cinder in protection of its kind, and I shudder at the thought of the death that awaits me.
Still held immobile in the golden energy field, I am dragged back to my base camp with the first and second Prey walking by my side, conversing with the two horned pegasi. It is an enthusiastic conversation, with much pointing and bared teeth on behalf of the pegasi, and much nodding by both of the large horned pegasi. Any hope of triggering my failsafe and being dragged back through my portal is dashed in two ways.
First is the way the dark horned pegasus treated the blood-soaked pile of my possessions that were left after she had cut them off my body. As she concentrated, a dark energy had surrounded them, compressing them into a small ball of materials that shrank while glowing red with the heat of compression until nothing was left but a blackened ball the size of a fist.
The second is the sight of a third horned pegasus of a soft violet hue gleefully disassembling my portal generator while scratching away on notes. As she disposes of each piece, it too glows with the light of the dark Prey’s energy and turns into a small smoldering ball of scrap, until the last piece is gone and a surge of her power somehow manages to pull the pieces of the portal generator from my world to this one. She giggles in amusement as she begins to disassemble this technological puzzle too, and my last hope of returning home alive dies with it.
Her actions will not help save this world. When I die, the small ball of metal in my skull will return to my world, where other Hunters will be able to calculate the coordinates of my final demise. Prey that can kill a Hunter is rare, and my kind will flock to this world in search of the Hunt. The more challenging the Prey, the more fierce the Hunters who will respond. The sky will fill with Hunters in armored suits and vehicles, in whatever numbers needed to bring down the Prey.
I am lost in my imaging of my fate while three of the horned pegasi converse among each other, and frozen in shock as they create a free-standing portal between them without any mechanisms or power sources. I am lifted with little effort and held in front of the glowing ripple in space, then the white horned pegasus tosses me through almost negligently much as if she were disposing of a piece of trash.
I am alive.
Although I am both naked and covered in bleeding scratches in the middle of a forest somewhere, I am still alive. The Prey may possess incredible power, but they are fools to have released me in this fashion. Once I gain the attention of another Hunter, I will bargain with the coordinates to their world in return for transportation home. The Prey will make me rich beyond my imagination as scores of Hunters pay any price to travel to their world and Hunt.
First, priorities.
Damp earth feels almost pleasurable under my bare feet as I stagger forward through the thick brush in search of food and water, wincing as the branches brush against my bloody skin. The scent of water is close, and where there is water, a Hunter can always find Prey to eat and weapons to create.
Out of some sense of familiar caution, I look back before reaching the water and freeze at what I see. There is a bipedal alien, dressed in rugged clothes and carrying a well-worn rifle emerging from the forest scrub. It holds a broken leaf with a smear of red upon it, one of the same branches that I carelessly brushed against on my rush to the watering hole. It looks up and catches my eye at the same time I notice the bare skulls attached to its belt. Whatever the species of the creature, it is a Hunter, and from the looks of its Prey, it does not care to capture.
A surge of adrenaline drives me through the rough brush as I hear the crack of the alien’s rifle and feel the splinters of wood spray from the trees I am dashing through. His quarry is blooded and fleeing, ready for the tracking as I plunge naked into the forest.
All she wanted to do this afternoon was settle down in a window seat at the sandwich shop and read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s latest book. She needed a break from Wollstonecraft, because if she were to read another FemLit book this week, she would have to write a newspaper editorial just to get it all out of her system.
The noise of the store door slamming open stunned her in the middle of deciding between olives or green peppers for her sub sandwich, and for a moment, her mind could not make sense of the shouted words.
“Nobody move!”
Moving was impossible anyway. Her muscles had frozen in place when she caught sight of the gun, a huge lump of black metal much like the massive pistol her father had showed her at the gun shop.
As the young man continued to shout and wave his gun around, some small portion of her frightened mind could not help but draw a contrast between the oppressed minority children who had always been portrayed in her college classes against the muscular young man with the shiny gold chain and wide, dark eyes. Her paralyzed terror broke as he grabbed her purse and backhanded her when she did not give it up fast enough.
“Down, bitch! Everybody, put your wallets in here! Now! Move it!”
He jabbed the open purse at the other customers waiting in line, but swung his gun to point at the terrified cashier. She was the daughter of the owner, and always had a pleasant smile when tipped, but she was completely immobile now, frozen while staring at the gun and the man holding it.
“Gimmie the fucking cash in the register or I’ll blow your brains out!”
The sharp tang of metal and blood filled her mouth. This was not the way it was supposed to go. She had given up her purse. He was supposed to go away now, not kill the poor cashier for not moving fast enough.
Her right hand fumbled down to her beltline as she hooked her fingernails under the flap of what looked like a fat cell phone holder or music player attached to her belt. With a snap, the Sneaky Pete holster flap gave way and practiced muscles in her hand dipped inside. It was warm from her body heat and seemed so small compared to the huge pistol in his hand, but days worth of practice and boxes of ammunition had given her the muscle memory which still remained even though her mind was unable to form a coherent thought.
She brought it up and clenched it in a two-handed grip the way her father had trained her.
The first shot was a surprise to the both of them. He did not seem to be hit as he turned ever so slowly, gun in hand. Her eyes were still locked on his huge pistol as the finger of her right hand moved again, first forward, then back. All she could think of was the people at the firing range calling her little revolver tiny and weak, with the scattered holes across the target almost never inside the rings.
But he was much closer.
A red splotch blossomed on his chest with the next shot, even though it did not seem to slow him down. It had only taken one bullet to kill any number of people on television or movies, and she could remember the protests of her teachers about trigger-happy cops or vigilantes filling the corpses of their victims full of bullet holes.
The next two shots blurred together as he finished his turn, stumbling and starting to fall with the deadly black pistol falling out of his hand. She lowered her aim as he dropped and fired again, the last shot passing through his side and blowing a hole in the floor as he landed in a welter of blood.
In the resulting silence, mixed with the screams of the other customers, she could hear a clicking noise which only stopped when she finally quit pulling the trigger. The stunning explosions of gunfire still rang in her ears and the stench of burnt gunpowder made her cough, but she watched as the body of the man she had just killed stopped moving.
He breathed out his last breath in a bubbling froth and just lay there as she sucked in her first breath in what seemed like forever.
A sharp gust of wind swirled dust around his feet as he paused for a moment mid-stride to look around. There was little to see other than a blacktop road stretching into the distance with little flecks of green cacti clutching to the landscape like tacks, holding down the reddish-brown of dry dirt. He continued his interrupted stride, as there was nothing to gain by bemoaning his fate or studying his desolate surroundings any more.
Roads, both real and metaphorical, had two ends. There was a starting place where you did not want to be, and an ending place where you did, as well as the middle part, which he knew all too well. The dry crunch of dust and sand beneath his booted feet formed a familiar pattern, an interface with which to preserve his sanity. There was no reason to turn around and go back, or the original inhabitant of this body would have been going that way in the first place. Quite obviously, the young man had a destination, and unless he wanted to mess with causality, he should continue on as if nothing had changed.
Even the smallest insignificant thing could knock him out of the timestream and into another time and place, as he had already done a thousand times before and would likely do a thousand times more, or until he could finally find the end of his road. At least this time he was a human, and a man somewhat into his maturity if the itchy bristles on his chin were any indication. It was a slim comfort, because wildly alien forms did not cause as much mental stress as being in a body nearly identical to his original one, only with different plumbing.
There was even an additional bonus to this form, as he could weakly feel the ebb and flow of magic all around. It was magic which had placed him on the road, both that and his own stupidity. The wisest of the wise had told him not to tinker with the most elemental building block of reality, but he had wired it up and proceeded to tweak the heck out of it just to prove them wrong.
Some proof.
The universe hated paradox with a burning passion. Time was supposed to only go one direction. Turning it back on itself caused loops and tangles in the seven-dimensional thread. A wise wizard would simply have listened to the voices of experience, admitted the equations did not balance in that direction, or at least paid attention to the fact that every time a previous wizard attempted to travel back in time, they vanished and never appeared again.
The foolish always think themselves wiser than those who came before, even as they make the exact same mistakes which only prove them to be bigger fools.
They were thoughts which he had thought countless times, fading into a fog in which his entire being threatened to dissolve. There was a beginning to this road, and so, so much middle, but the end blurred into nothingness. Time had ceased to have meaning after… after something. It was important, but the thoughts slipped through his mind. Skills remained, much like riding a bicycle, but the impetus behind those skills had faded until he no longer knew his own name, or just when he had made his fated decision to break the laws of time. If he did not find his way off the road soon…
A building stood before him, chunky and mostly concrete with a colorful green plastic dinosaur advertising its products. Time was losing meaning to him, as it only counted the amount of stuff between things, and if the stuff was all the same, like steps, it was only one thing.
The sun seemed to be lower as it burned on the back of his neck, but he stopped at the familiar blue and red machine outside the filling station instead of going inside where he could hear the purr of an ancient air conditioner. While fumbling his wallet out for a bill, he spotted a driver’s license and a name. Toby. That was good. Toby. He held onto the name as his hands went through the ritual of inserting the bill, and then sticking it back in again when the machine spit it out…
“Hey, Mister.” A lean kid came strolling out of the air conditioning, wiping his hands on a red rag. “The bill widget on that thing is busted. Here.” He did a motion and Toby felt the familiar surge of magic as the side of the machine opened up. A few quick motions inside the machine and it was closed back up, with a cold soda in his hand as well as his change.
“Nice touch,” said Toby, letting the magic of his body flow for a moment until the kid gave him a sly nod. “But you knew already, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” The kid took a drink out of his own soda and nodded at the metal gas can Toby was carrying, which he had not noticed until now. “Felt you coming up the road. I’m stronger than I look.”
“More humble too,” said Toby almost instantly. “Are we done measuring each other, or do I need to unzip my pants.”
The kid goggled at him before breaking out in a genuine laugh, one that Toby recognized from somewhere long ago, but that remained stubbornly out of grasp as just the wisp of a memory.
“I’m Floyd,” said the kid. “Take it you need some gas.”
“I’m Toby,” said Toby. “Yes to the gas, and how do you expect to be a wizard with a name like Floyd?”
“Same way you expect to be a wizard by running your car outta gas on the road,” said the kid.
The old and dusty gas station had an old rusty tow truck that matched perfectly with the decor, except for the way it fairly hummed down the road back in the direction he had been walking. Toby kept a thoughtful frown as he watched the kid drive, trying to bring out the flickering of memory swimming in the fog of his mind. He wanted to ask, but even the slightest deviation from causality and he would be gone again, drifting, until he touched another life, became another An’thock, or Haerod, or Chen Wi in a foreign land. Still, there was something familiar here that itched at his mind, and another piece of the incomplete puzzle fell into place as he looked out of the front windshield and pointed.
“There’s Lola.”
Red paint and chrome hid a 289 V8 with twin pipes and a custom carburetor, all memories of this body that flooded into his head and most probably pushed some unseen memory of his own away forever. The trip had been conducted in relative silence up to this point, but the kid shook his head as he pulled the old tow truck in next to the shiny Mustang.
“Not a touch of magic on that old heap,” he groused. “How can you throw that thing down the highway without a few enchants, some protective runes. Not even an airbag.”
The prospect for paradox tettered on the edge. Causality was an unforgiving rule, one of the few that he could still remember. A single word, a glance at his watch, or even a step in the wrong direction and he would be gone, and Toby would continue on with his life just as if a time-lost wizard had not borrowed his life and material body.
“Life’s too short to wrap it up in protective runes,” said Toby out of some strange instinct. “You just gotta point your nose down the road and follow where it leads.”
“So, where are you going?” asked the kid as they got out and walked over to the stranded car.
“Don’t know for sure,” said Toby in a sudden burst of honesty. “I know where I started and where I am, but I suppose I’ll know where I’m going when I get there.”
“Seems a waste of time,” said the kid. He popped the hood on the Mustang and Toby could feel the surge of magic sweeping over the cold iron and aluminum of the engine. “That can of gas won’t get you anywhere. Fuel pump is cracked. Feels like… the lever, I think.”
“What kind of fun is that?” Toby chased the kid back and closed the hood. “Hook ‘er up and let’s work on it back in the garage. I’ve got most of a trunk full of spares, ‘bout have to with this antique, an’ I think there’s a fuel pump in there somewhere. Besides, that way we can work in the shade.” He looked up in the sky at the relentless sun, seeming frozen at an awkward angle and just as hot as if it were a few feet away.
“What good is having magic if you don’t use it?” The kid backed up the tow truck to the Mustang with practiced ease and attached the tow straps, about half by hand and the other half by not. He climbed back into the driver’s seat with Toby beside him and began to drive back to the service station, only slightly slower than before.
It could have been a few seconds or a few hours later when Floyd spoke up again. The time-skip was a bad indication of how Toby was slipping back into the chronal fog and showed a high probability of… something.
“How can anybody not know where they’re going on a road?” Floyd pointed ahead of him at the shimmering glimmer of green on the horizon where the empty service station waited on them. As far as Toby could tell, the two of them were the only human beings within a hundred miles, or possibly in the entire world.
“You know where you are,” said Toby. “You know where you started, but can you ever really know where you’re going or when you’ll get there?” The faint waver of reality gave notice that he had brushed up against paradox again, but he pushed ahead. “The only way you can tell all that is if you’re at the end of your journey.”
“Well, I ain’t at the end of my road, Mister Toby.” The kid shifted down gears and carefully backed the antique convertible into the mechanic’s bay of the service station. He kept quiet until the tow truck was parked and the both of them could pop the Mustang’s hood and look down into the mechanical maze it was hiding. Floyd gave off a low whistle as a toolbox obediently rolled across the concrete floor and nestled up next to him. “You weren’t kidding. No magic at all, not so much as a drabble. You sure you just want to plug in a mundane spare? Wouldn’t do you no harm to put a little hoo-doo under your hood.”
The attitude of the kid reminded Toby far too much of himself at that age, all cheeky and ready to use magic to solve any problem. He had gotten started on cars… or was it trucks? See a problem, find a spell to fix it, even if that spell made a bigger problem.
When he had first been swept away in the backwash from the time-traveling spell, he had grabbed frantically onto every single thread or string of magic he could find and pulled, or at least tried to pull before paradox swept him out into the time-stream again. It was an old habit, but had been washed away with most of his memories much as a cloth in bleach.
“Truth is, I like a challenge,” said Toby. “Shortcuts make the victory hollow. I know people who have kayaked down a roaring rapids, dove naked into arctic water, and gone up the side of a mountain with nothing more than a length of clothesline and a few little sticks. No risk, no reward.”
“Huh.” The kid made little or no response other than to make a pass over the engine and light up the working area. “You want to break your nut over something easy, go ahead. I’ll get the old fuel pump out if you go find that spare you were talking about, and no magic. I promise.”
The trunk was a wealth of parts in boxes and bags, which Toby searched through with only the vaguest idea of what a fuel pump looked like. It had been… time since he had last changed a fuel pump by hand. He grabbed a part by instinct and gave it a quick once-over, wriggling the little lever that stuck out and assessing its fuel-pumpieness. The lever was a solid piece of metal jiggled by a cam which caused a membrane to force gas along the fuel line, and seemed unlikely to break, even though he could remember vaguely the sound the end made when it bounced down inside of an engine like—
“Shit!” There was a faint musical sound of metal falling, bouncing twice, and ending with a little click as the broken fragment of fuel pump lever landed somewhere deep and inaccessible in the engine. A similar sound seemed to echo around in his own head, and Toby looked up abruptly at the young man peering into the hole where the broken fuel pump had just been removed.
Well, most of the pump.
He paced up to the front of the car where Floyd was peering into the engine and placed the replacement fuel pump on the parts tray, then wordlessly went over to the tool bench. There was a bent-up clothes hanger among the bits and pieces of junk, which he unwound and began to bend in various twists and turns.
“What are you going to use that for?” asked Floyd. “If you’re just going to use magic to fish it out, you can just—”
It was difficult to think of the blotchy-faced young kid as himself, only younger, but Toby smiled a knowing grin back and waved the bent coathanger as if it were a wand. “You’re likely to crack the pan or bend something if you just use magic without your brain, kid. You want the missing part to come back out the same way it went in, because that’s the way it works. See?”
He pushed the coat hanger into the dark hole in the engine, twisting and bending as he could feel the blunt end descend, then touched the back end of the wire with a shop magnet. It took a gentle touch of magic, just barely a feather, but when he fished the wire back up out of the hole, the broken end of the lever was clinging there securely, and even matched when placed up against the original broken part, indicating that no more little fragments were lurking around in the engine gears.
“Huh,” said his younger self, picking up the new fuel pump and fitting it into the hole. “That’s the hard way, all right. And you still used magic, even if it was just a little bit.”
As he watched his younger self bolt the new fuel pump in, Toby considered his own words. It was obvious he remembered them from his youth or he never would have been able to repeat them to himself, and therefore dodge paradox for the moment. Still, they were good words, and they made the whole world seem to rotate slightly around him. If only his younger self would have paid more attention to Toby and not tried to muscle through everything with magic, he never would have been in this situation, but then again, paradox brushed close with even the thought.
It was odd that he would gain new inspiration into the direction of his travels at a gas station, but also somehow normal, as it was where you asked directions when you were lost. The only thing was you did not normally get those directions from your younger self. When he had first used the spell, he had made a mistake by viewing time travel as the Gordian Knot and thinking he had the sword to solve it. Instead, it was a road, and sometimes you had to go back to where you started in order to finish a journey.
The Mustang started with a throaty roar, making that ‘glub, glub’ noise that he could still hear somewhere deep in his chest even with the engine off and the gas pump pouring dead dinosaur remains into the cavernous tank. A few more bills got transferred in exchange, which gave him a brief glance at the rest of his driver’s license and a little insight into the twisted humor of his unwitting host body, Mister Knottube, but before he pulled the car back out onto the highway to resume his interrupted journey, he gave a little wave to his previous self.
“Hey, kid.” Toby gave the young boy a thumbs up, which triggered the boy’s warm smile. “Be—”
And he was gone, whisked back into the time-stream in the flicker of a moment. What he had wanted to say was for his younger self to be careful, but that had been just far enough away from the real Toby Knottube’s historical words that his unwitting passenger had been plucked away from his host before he could say it.
Still, he had a goal. He was broken, but if he could trace his path back along the trail of breakage while keeping his mind, he might just be able to get out of this intact. The familiar tug of the time-stream tossed him to and fro, rising to a shrill roar and—
Today he was old.
Everything in his body ached in one way or another, from his… no, her female parts down to her feet. Thin shriveled hands holding onto a walker matched the rest of her aged body, with a little bit of blue-white hair peeking down from her forehead, or as much as she could see through blurred vision. The distant sound of cars made her aware of the crosswalk she was standing in front of, which looked to be nearly the same age as her body, as it had faded and peeled until it was only a suggestion, and the button on the post which would stop traffic had long since been pegged by some youthful degenerate with a hammer.
Still, she recognized where she was with a tiny inside smile. Why does the little old lady cross the road? Why, to get to the other side, of course.
“Missus Snodwick?” The voice was strong and deepening, as was the young man wearing just the hint of what would someday be a magnificent mustache. He had a pleasant smile as he touched her on the arm, and although this body had no magic, she knew what was going to come next. “Would you allow me to help you across the street?”
“Thank you, young man.” She watched out of the corner of blurry eyes as the crosswalk signal changed and traffic stopped. “I can cross myself.” She wobbled out into the traffic lane as the young man paced along beside her with one warm hand on her elbow. Her or his younger self looked a few years older than before, with a deep tan from his desert job.
“It’s no problem,” he said, sticking with her until they reached the other side and helping her over the curb. “Glad to help.”
She patted him on the wrist and nodded. “You’re a good boy. It’s so nice in this day and age to see somebody willing to help others.”
Even through her blurred vision, she could see the smile spread over her younger self’s face like a beacon. It was a thread to follow as the world once again dissolved into temporal fuzz and she was swept out into the time-stream, one step closer on her journey down the road.
And home.
- - - - * * - - - -
The flashing sorcerous lights and burning incense faded, revealing the wizard still seated in the middle of his circle of runes and magical wards, now all charred and burnt beyond repair. The apprentice peeked from around the wall where he had taken refuge when the spell had begun and considered the molten stone now cooling on the walls and the subject of the spell, seemingly unaffected.
“Master?” he ventured, hoping there was no demonic infestation involved. Those were always a pain to clean up. “Master?” he repeated, in the hopes of getting an answer this time.
“Yes,” said the wizard, although he took a deep breath afterward and squinched his eyes together. “Yes,” he repeated before opening one eye and regarding his apprentice with a wry quirk in the corner of his lips.
“Did the spell fail?” asked the apprentice. “You’re still here.” He winced after making the statement, as if he had just declared the sky to be blue or the thaumetric field to be slippery.
“Everybody’s gotta be somewhere,” said the wizard. He got up and picked his way out of the charred circle and over to the apprentice, who was still running through a few rudimentary cantrips for the detection of demonic possession or loose spirits, just in case.
“Oh. So it did fail.” The apprentice heaved a sigh. “I suppose I should get to work cleaning up so you can try again.”
“Not a chance.” The wizard clapped a hand on the apprentice’s shoulder and turned him toward the door. “We’re going to go down to the auto dealer, pick out a red convertible, and do some driving. Life’s too short to repeat. You need to grab all of it you can the first time around.”
“Can I—” started the apprentice.
“Yes,” said the master with a sigh and a grin. “I’ll let you drive it too.”
A Word of Warning - Murder She Collaborated (original short fic)
The old house was bitterly cold, because Fall had arrived with a vengeance while he had been gone, with colorful leaves blowing outside and sharp gusts of cold air coming through the multitude of cracks in the windows and siding. The front door fought against being closed while his hands were full of his luggage, but he leaned up against the dark varnished wood and jiggled the latch until it finally caught, leaving him alone in the wooden panelled living room. Ignoring the backlog of mail for the moment, he bumped up the thermostat, dragged his suitcase into the bedroom, and walked into the den.
It was almost just as he left it, with a light powdering of dust on the ancient manual typewriter and his creaky antique wooden chair. He dropped his tired rear end down on the lumpy cushion, picked up the partially-completed manuscript from the table, and leaned back to flip through it.
“You should have seen the convention,” he said between page flips. “Hundreds… Well, dozens of people lined up to get autographed copies of Andrea Martin’s latest murder mystery. Twenty-five book store signings, three different flights in coach, and enough Red Bull to float a boat. It’s good to be home.”
A faint breeze stirred the curtains on the nearby window, fogging the surface while the gas furnace in the basement chugged away in a futile attempt to heat the drafty old house. The thin ends of dry branches scraped across the glass with the outside breeze, fluttering the papers with the inevitable draft and blowing one blank sheet across the table.
He caught the paper and rolled it down into the old manual typewriter before going back to musing over the manuscript. “Three chapters in and the body count is higher than anything Andrea has published so far. The readers seem to like it when the bodies start piling up, but maybe we should wing a few instead of finishing them off. Change the pace up a little.”
He read in silence for a while, skipping forward at times, backing up when something interesting caught his eye, and ending with a grunt when he ran out of pages.
“It needs a lot of work, like the unfinished first novel you wrote, but—”
The author cut off abruptly as the back of his neck was touched by strong, cold fingers. They ever so slowly traced the paths of knotted muscles, then tightened up as he gave a strangled yelp. It took only a few minutes for the cold fingers to complete their task, and in the end, the author lay motionless, draped across the wooden chair in the drafty den. Then the manual typewriter began to peck out a message, one letter at a time.
you like it/
“Thanks, I needed that. Coach seating sucks.” Taking a deep breath, the author sat up in his chair and glanced at the message before giving a brief chuckle. “Yes, and yes. Every book has been getting closer to the New York Times Bestseller list, but this is better than all of them so far.”
really/
“Yes, really. Just like you said you wanted before you pass on.”
The wind outside the old house died down until the silence became almost oppressive. Then again, one letter at a time, the antique typewriter pecked out another sentence.
what will you do then/
He shrugged. “I may branch out into a different genre. Ghost stories, maybe. After all, I have a similar unfinished goal I’d like to accomplish before I pass away.”
The typewriter was silent.
“Yes, really.” He paused to take down the empty frame on the wall and brush the dust off it. “That notification is going right here, just as you wanted, with your name on it. Any residuals will go into the Andrea Martin scholarship fund, and I’ll have to make my own way in the world.”
The typewriter remained silent.
“First things first,” he said, placing the unfinished manuscript to one side and turning on his computer. “Let me get this into the computer so I can start editing, and you can type out some notes on the second half of the story.” He paused, glancing over at the silent typewriter while the computer finished booting. “So have you been thinking up lots of new and interesting ways to kill people while I’ve been gone?”
The typewriter immediately started tapping away.
lots
“That’s my girl.” He lined up the first draft and began typing on his computer, only to stop and chuckle to himself. “I’m going to miss being a ghost writer.”
Winter was worst time of year, and Christin considered Christmas the worstest. It was supposed to be a time of happiness when everybody got together and celebrated what made his family special, but over the last few years, it had turned into more of a time for funerals and mourning. This morning’s trip was not helping.
There was only so long that Christin could sulk in the passenger seat of the car while his mother drove, even with sunglasses to deal with the low angle of the sun in the early morning. The last thing he was going to do was bug her with a long series of ‘Are we there yet’ or ‘Can we stop for a break’ like he did when he was younger. Fourteen years old this morning, and instead of spending his birthday at home, trying to bring some sense of normality back to their smaller family, they had to drive halfway across the country. He wanted to be petulant and crabby about the trip, but his mother had been planning this for some time, even before his father passed away. It was just the two of them in the house now, widowed mother and ‘Whoops’ baby while the rest of his brothers and his sister had passed to college and onto families of their own.
Stand up. Be a man. Be strong. You’re the man of the house now. Dad would have wanted you to take care of your mother.
He ran a hand across his beardless chin and scowled, settling instead for staring listlessly out of the car window through dark sunglasses. Brightly-lit houses and business streamed by, all waiting for this evening when an inflatable Santa Claus would visit or the little Jesus would be born into their plastic stables. The season used to be such fun until he realized how having his birthday so close to Christmas made the total number of presents received over the year fewer than any of his siblings. It only added to the depression of being the baby of the family, particularly when his sister was talking so happily about starting a family while all he had to look forward to was military school this next fall.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Christin’s mother was still was driving with all of her attention out the windshield at the thready traffic, but she never needed to look in his direction to know what he was up to. He reclined the seat further and grunted back, which was about as much as he felt like saying at the moment.
“Look.” His mother took a deep breath and tapped the cruise control, which indicated the seriousness of whatever lesson she was planning on attempting to teach. Missus Devonshire, the one hundred percent concentrating, no holds barred lawyer, Queen of the Casual Gesture took to child rearing much the same way as she handled her work, which made his upcoming stint in military school seem not quite so bad. Still, his mother had never hesitated after an introductory phrase like that, which was a little unnerving.
“What?” he managed to ask without sounding interested. “Did we forget something and have to go back home?”
“No, I’ve got everything we need in back. Polish, rags, even an extra winter coat, even if we’re not going to need it.”
Mom glanced out the driver’s side window away from Christin as if the dry Massachusetts landscape was somehow less preferable than looking at her own flesh and blood child. A good, thick blanket of dirty white snow would be more in tune with the season and his memories of birthdays past, but Christin was glad the weather was unseasonably warm for their upcoming task rather than slogging through a blizzard.
“I wish we didn’t have to go the cemetery,” he grumbled almost under his breath.
“It’s tradition,” she echoed almost automatically. “More than that, it’s required.”
“I know, I know,” he growled. “Every Devonshire at the age of fourteen goes to Great-Great-Grandfather Devonshire’s grave. And if we don’t, no access to the trust fund, no scholarships for college, and the family business won’t hire me even if I had a coating of peanut butter on my back and could dance Swan Lake.” He folded his arms and resumed looking out the side window. “That doesn't mean I have to like it.”
“I was with each of your brothers when they made the trip,” said his mother. “Don’t think this conversation hasn’t been had before. Your sister threatened to move out with Aunt Joyce if I didn’t stop the car, right now and go back to the party she had planned. She screamed and wailed like your father was pulling teeth. But she went.” Mom’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “I wish your father were here. I wish you didn’t have to dance to the tune of a bitter man dead over a century ago and still determined to pass his bile and spite on to his descendents. I fought with your father just as much as your sister did, but when we got to the gravesite, I realized just how important this is.”
“You make it sound like Grandpa Devonshire was some sort of vampire,” grumbled Christin before perking up. “He isn’t, is he?”
“No!” Mom returned to her single-minded concentration on the road, although after a few minutes, she relaxed slightly. “Vampire. If only. Then we could stake him and it would be all over. No, it’s worse. He was a lawyer.”
Christin regarded his lawyer mother rather skeptically. “I thought you said ninety-nine percent of lawyers gave the rest of them their bad reputation?”
“What do you call one dead lawyer in a grave?” asked his mother. “A good start. Yes, there’s some truth in that, and your great-great-grandfather seemed dead-set on proving it from the tomb.” She reached out toward the cigarette lighter, then put her hand back on the steering wheel with a grimace. Mom had quit smoking when Dad died, but the old habits were still there right under the skin.
“I know Grandfather wasn’t the nicest person,” said Christin, “but he started our family fortune and set up the foundation.”
“His sons set up the foundation,” corrected Mom. “How much do you know about the old reprobate?”
Christin shrugged. “A little. Dad never talked about him much.”
“For good reason.” Mom picked up her purse and placed it in the back seat, with the included pack of cigarettes that much further away from temptation. “I didn’t understand Ezekiel Devonshire much when I married your father, and I didn’t think much of dragging your sister Daisy up to Boston to look at a grave either. I learned more later, so I suppose it would make more sense to you if I explained a little bit about him.”
“Ya think?” Christin dropped his sunglasses back in front of his eyes and slumped back in the car seat. “All I know is he was some rich jerk back around the eighteen hundreds. Something about investment banking and running a law firm. He left a ton of cash behind and a couple of sons, who built and diversified across the whole country and overseas later.”
“Ezekiel was a little more than that.” His mother unwrapped a cough drop and popped it into her mouth in an obvious attempt to stop thinking about the cigarettes in the back seat. “He started his business back in an age where only the ruthless survived. The family tree ends with him. Nobody knows who his parents were, or any other relatives. Some rumors say he killed a man in Ireland and fled here to keep from being hanged. There were at least three people who died under… let’s just say less than fully understood circumstances around him.”
“Whoa.” Christin sat up and pushed his sunglasses up on his forehead. “I have a mobster in the family tree.”
“He wasn’t a criminal. For all intents and purposes, the family business started down that path, but not anymore. I understand we had a brush with prohibition back in the thirties, but the administrators kept their noses clean and out of trouble.” Mom was in full lecture mode now, much the same as when Christin would watch her practice a final summation for the jury. One hand stayed locked to the steering wheel, but the other would gesture and punctuate as she talked. “Railroads, industries, mechanization and the like, from the Civil War to the present. Our family helps the country grow and prosper. From barges bringing grain down the river to the machines that harvest it, electronics, hydraulics, petroleum.”
At this, she hesitated. It had only been two years since Christin’s father had died, and it still hit her hard at times.
“I know, Mom.” Christin hesitated himself, but reached out and took his mother’s hand, putting it back on the steering wheel after a brief squeeze. “I wish he had never gone to that godforsaken chunk of jungle.”
“He was doing what he wanted to do,” said his mother. “There were a lot of poor people in the area who would have been helped by the money an oil well would have brought in.”
Christin bit his bottom lip so hard he could taste blood, but he still could not help but say the words. “If they would have been helped so much, they wouldn't have blown him up.”
“Criminals set the bomb,” countered his mother. “They didn’t care who they hurt or what they damaged, as long as the people remained afraid of them, and they could move their filthy drugs. They wanted the people to be helpless and terrified so they would not stand up on their own.”
Mom fairly clenched the steering wheel for a time after that, with white knuckles and an intent focus on the road ahead. It took until they were approaching the Boston suburbs until she calmed down enough to talk again, and then only to say, “They were just like your grandfather.”
Christin was startled up from reading on his phone, and put it carefully back onto the charger. He waited for a while for his mother to continue before gently prompting her. “I thought you said my Grandfather Ezekiel wasn’t a criminal.”
“A criminal? No, not in that era.” Mom sucked in a deep breath through her teeth and blew it out again. “He didn’t have friends. He made enemies. Powerful enemies. The kind who hire other people to make ‘accidents’ happen. The kind of people you have to pay a special kind of attention, and never let them get behind you with a knife. He survived into a bitter, spiteful old man because of his precautions, and he wanted to make sure his family survived too, because they were all he had. He plotted and schemed to make certain his enemies would all fear him, and he boiled and condensed that evil, vile brew into a list. People never to trust. People who had attempted to hurt him. How to deal with them. Grudges he carried beyond the grave and impressed upon his children to carry when he was gone. You see, he had this idea that if he could pass this legacy of hatred and bile onto his descendents, they could be just as ruthlessly successful as he was. He made it a requirement in his will that any descendent who was to have any claim at all upon the family money had to read that vile list, every single word, and keep it in their heart afterwards.”
It was a weighty lump to swallow in one bite, but Christin thought about it while his mother changed lanes and left the turnpike, slowing as they drove alongside the river for a time. It was a familiar road, since it led past the Harvard campus where his brother had attended, but it really did not explain what they were doing there.
“If there’s just a list of stuff I have to memorize, why come here?” asked Christin. “You could have just printed it off and I could have memorized it at home.”
“Not quite. It will make more sense once we get there.” She gestured with several fingers at the buildings of Harvard while they drove. “Maybe you’ll even want to follow in your brother’s footsteps and get a business degree.”
“Is that why you enrolled me in military school?” he grumbled.
“Not quite.” His mother changed lanes and began signaling for a turn. “Your father and I discussed things several years ago. Ezekiel Devonshire set up the restrictions on his estate to include a period of military service, since each of his children and grandchildren served in the military, but the estate has moderated the conditions to include military school. Two years and you qualify. Your father was in the Army for ten because he was considering it as a career, as his father before him did. We thought this way you would be able to graduate from high school with all of your options open. It was supposed to be a gift to you.”
“Merry Christmas to me.” He stared out the window while the car traveled across the bridge. “So all I have to do here is memorize a list. Shouldn’t be that tough.”
His mother pretended she did not hear while she maneuvered the car through the skimpy Christmas Eve traffic and into the Mount Auburn cemetery. It seemed cold and empty, with no live flowers or trees, just rows of bare stones under the bare trees, without the cheery Christmas decorations scattered across the rest of town. Their absence was actually a little comforting, because Christin could think of few things more unnerving than a tomb decorated for the holidays. He was just starting to be comfortable with his surroundings, making it almost a shock when his mother pulled the car up in front of a stone structure just large enough to hold a few caskets.
“The Devonshire family mausoleum.” Christin’s mother got out of the car and walked up to the intimidating stone door in front of the structure. “The family mailed me the key a few weeks ago. Bring the box, please.”
The plain cardboard box in the back of the car inexplicably held several bottles of metal polish and a large number of rags, which Christin obediently brought over to his mother. She had finished unlocking the door to the mausoleum, but was still standing in front of it with an inscrutable expression.
“They say you can’t take it with you, but Ezekiel Devonshire tried his best to prove them wrong. He had the list I told you about before cast in bronze and fixed to the inside wall right by his casket, and every member of the family studied it and kept it polished, just as he ordered. His sons fought over the privilege, but they obeyed his wishes, and made certain their sons and daughters followed the same rules. And so it has been ever since, year after year. Now it’s your turn, Christin. Go on in.”
She swung the heavy door open, revealing a small, somewhat dusty room with light pouring in through the small stone windows to the side. There was no mistaking Ezekiel Devonshire’s final resting place in the mausoleum, due to the prominence of his sealed casket, but the thick bronze plate on the back wall was what drew Christin’s attention.
It was huge, extending up almost as far as a man could reach and edged with little scrollwork. As his mother had said, the buttery yellow of the bronze was well-polished with only a little hint of corrosion in places where generations of Devonshires had not applied quite enough pressure.
It was also blank except for his own wavering reflection.
Christin’s stunned observation was interrupted by the strong voice of his mother behind him, speaking slowly and deliberately, much as if she were putting the final statements into a criminal deposition. “His sons hated each other, and nearly killed themselves trying to compete with the old man, like there was some sort of contest into who could follow his rules the closest. It wasn’t until they were quite old and their own grandchildren started to work together, making friends with each other and helping one another out before the sons realized something was wrong. They traveled here together, because they did not trust each other individually, and saw what you see now.”
“Where are the words?” asked Christin before the answer became obvious. He glanced back at the box of metal polish and rags before looking at the smooth bronze slab again. “Oh. His children and grandchildren followed his directions. Every generation, until eventually the words were polished away.”
His mother nodded. “At first, the sons were going to have a new bronze slab cast, but after talking for a while, they realized just how much of their lives they had wasted hating each other the way their father hated everybody instead of working together, like their grandchildren.”
“So everybody in the family comes here and sees… this.” Christin walked up to the thick slab of bronze and laid a hand on it as his reflection did likewise. “We see ourselves, instead of the grudges Grandfather Ezekiel wanted to last beyond his death.”
“The old man wanted a legacy.” Christin’s mother put a hand on his shoulder. “He wanted vengeance, retaliation, and hatred.”
“And he got us.” Christin smiled and looked at their indistinct reflections. An hour or two with the metal polish and all of the tarnish would be gone, just the same way as his father had polished this slab of bronze, and his father before him. “I guess the old saying isn’t as false as they say.”
His mother frowned and cocked her head slightly to one side. “What’s that?”
“Great-great-grandfather Ezekiel worked all his life to create a legacy.” He reached out and patted the dusty casket. “And he took it with him.”
The garden was much as Herman expected it, except for the corpse in the middle of his bed of nasturtiums and the loose dirt thrown around which indicated it had not gone easily into its present state of death. Thankfully, the body was fresh instead of rotten with maggots and other such untidy creatures, but it still needed a proper disposal. For a moment, Herman considered just digging a hole right there to provide his flowers a little extra nutrients, but Beauregard would just use the smell of decay as an excuse to excavate, and then flowers would fly everywhere again.
“Howdy, neighbor!” The long and lanky form of Eugene draped over the dividing fence and looked down into the devastation with a disappointed click of his tongue. “Looks like Beauregard got out again, doesn’t it?”
Howard decided not to answer at once in order to give his temper a little time to cool off. Instead, he slipped the hoe under the body of the dead squirrel and held it up with a disapproving look of his own.
“Ewww, he got another one. I’ll get the trash can.” Eugene returned in a few minutes with what Howard recognized as one of his own trash cans which had gone ‘missing’ a few weeks ago. Once the body had been disposed of, the irritating neighbor returned, complete with false smile and a speech which Howard could have recited from memory.
“Don’t worry a thing, neighbor. I’ve got Ol’ Beauregard tied up real good this time and gonna fill up that hole under the fence with something more solid so he can’t dig out no more. Did you want me to help you clean up the mess made in your garden?”
Howard shook his head. His ‘assistance’ would have only killed more innocent flowers and raised Howard’s stress level into a second heart attack. Gardening was supposed to be relaxing. Calming. Peaceful. Not cleaning up after a hellhound disguised as a little terrier.
Several times over the last few months, Howard had been tempted to do something… rash. After all, a hoe was just a stick with a sharp blade on it, and Beauregard was an infernal menace from the deepest depths of Hell. Certainly, whatever few squirrels remained in the neighborhood would rejoice, and the mailman would quit walking his route while holding a can of pepper spray in one hand. His neighbor’s yard was about as useful in keeping Beau restrained as some prison in a superhero comic book, because at least once a week the little terrorizing terrier broke out to spread doggie vengeance upon the nighttime neighborhood.
What was worse, his furry little ears could detect the sound of the animal control van blocks away, which allowed him to be safe inside his yard, looking innocent when the dogcatcher showed up. It made it more difficult to hoe the dirt back where it belonged and put whatever flowers he could rescue back into their places, since in three nights, it would happen all over again. One night for the dog to spend on the leash in the yard while whining loud enough to keep all the neighbors up, one night to be released and run around the yard, yapping loud enough to wake the dead, and the next night…
Once the last wounded flower was put back and Howard got into the car to pick up replacements, he made a pledge. Next time it would be different, and the last time. All he needed was a few extra purchases.
“Howdy, neighbor.” The slender form of Eugene draped over the back fence again, but this time he had a nervous expression much like a rat who had found a large and complicated trap. “You know, I think Beauregard may have gotten out last night.”
Howard made as if he had not heard, but continued to move dirt around his flowerbed.
“You… ah… haven’t seen him around, have you?”
This time, Howard nodded, but kept moving dirt around the larger pile in his garden.
“What’s that?” asked Eugene with a sudden panicked look at the pile fresh earth, about the size of an annoying dog.
“The flowers were doing poorly,” said Howard. “So I got them some fertilizer.”
“You… How could you…” spluttered Eugene as he ran toward his house. “I’ll call the police!”
Howard waited until the slamming of the back door before he propped the hoe up against the fence. It only took a few steps to reach behind the rhododendron bush and lift the gate on the live trap so the terroristic terrier could waddle his way back through the garden and vanish through the hole he had dug last night. There was enough tuna in his oversized doggie gut to hold him for a while, so after pushing some dirt into the hole and shoving a rock over the escape tunnel, Howard returned to his gardening.
After all, the cow manure he had purchased for his flowers was not going to work its way into the flower bed all by itself. And maybe this time, they could grow.
Staring Into the Abyss - The Greatest Challenge of All
Rock Pitt stared down at the greatest challenge he had ever known. He reached one huge rough but gentle hand to his square chin and scratched along the short razor stubble even while his sparkling blue eyes scanned the incipient problem from one end to the other. His silence was not the quiet of confusion, but rather the calm contemplation that a mind of his caliber utilized when devoting every one of his numerous neurons to the task of analysis and critical path determination. Finally, after a long period of thoughtful rumination, he stated decisively in his quiet deep baritone voice…
“Fuck!” Benton Harbor yanked the keyboard out of his computer and began slamming it down on the table while repeating his curses. With each blow, keys began to fly around the room, several of them landing next to other casualties of the writing process. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuuuuck!” he screamed, flinging the keyboard against the wall and slumping down in his chair.
Then after a quick leap to his feet, he swept the sharp little pieces of plastic off the comfortable padded surface of the thousand dollar chair and flung himself down in it again. “Fuckit! It’s been almost three fucking months! They’re going to want to see something by the end of the week, Benton. Get a grip, Benton. Rock Pitt has seen worse problems. Fucking Rock Pit has fixed everything already! Why can’t fucking Rock Pitt just write the damned story, then?”
He yanked the nearby cell phone off the charger and snarled, “Siri, call Murray!”
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t understand that.”
Snarling curses to the unspeakable gods of writing, Benton jabbed out the key sequence on his phone and glowered at it while waiting for the ringing to stop.
“Murray! Get your ass— Oh! Hi, Mom.” Benton swallowed and put on a false grin, even though his mother could not see. “How are things in Florida? Yes, about the same here.” A dark cloud of emotions rolled over his face and he fought back a scowl. “Yes, Mom. The new book is coming along nicely. I was just calling my agent to talk about it. No, we better not keep the rest of your foursome waiting. I know how busy the golf course gets at this time of day. I’ll call you this evening. Bye.”
His expression returned to the same scowling frown once his mother hung up the phone, and Benton more carefully selected the buttons this time. “Murray? Yeah, get your ass over here. No, I don’t care if you were about to go out for a tennis game! This is important!” Benton’s lips curled back over carefully-whitened teeth. “I’m going to have to kill Rock Pitt.”
“You can’t be serious.” Murray Goldstein made himself at home behind the minibar with ice cubes and an expensive bottle of whiskey Benton had gotten from a fan, coming out only when he had carefully added a good shot of distilled water to each glass. “Here, drink this and try to make more sense.”
It would have made more sense if his agent had not been dressed in an expensive tennis outfit that showed off his skinny legs and knobby knees, but Benton took a sip of the watered-down whiskey and tried to remain calm.
It was rather difficult. There were a few million reasons to panic.
“I can’t think of anything new for Rock Pitt to do,” explained Benton. “Twelve books and he’s done everything, from that exploding volcano to defusing a nuclear bomb.”
“And slept with the volcano virgin and the female nuclear scientist who talked him through the defusing process,” said Murray. “He’s not only done everything, he’s done everybody in the process. You’ve been in creative holes before, but you pulled yourself out of them. Hey, remember that research trip we took to India for The Curse of the Thuggee Cults? You came up with lots of inspiration there.” Murray paused, setting the whiskey down on a cork pad. “Between the dysentery, the malaria, and the septic infection,” he admitted.
“The male nurse was a very good talker,” said Benton. “Everything I wrote came from stories he told me. Besides, Rock Pitt has already been to India, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, France, Germany… Everywhere!”
“Wait a minute.” His agent chugged the last of his whiskey. “You accepted an advance for your next book. I should know, because I cashed the check, paid off your ex-wives, and came over to your mortgage burning party for this monster mansion. If you can’t crank out a book…” His eyes grew wide. “Four point three million dollars. You’ve got a better chance of getting your pre-paid taxes back from the IRS than getting any of it back from those screaming harridans you married, and I’m sure as heck not giving back my ten percent. Can you cover it?”
“One million in the retirement fund, I might be able to get a mil out of the house since it’s so overpriced for the neighborhood, and forty K from the Jag, once it gets out of the shop. I ran the numbers already,” admitted Benton. “The remaining two million bucks is a lot of donating plasma.”
“Didn’t I tell you to get a pre-nup?” said Murray. “I vaguely remember… Oh, no. I vigorously remember it. I videoed it, just so I could play it back for you. 99% of your existing residuals go to feed those two harpies, and if I hadn’t gotten a DNA test run on the third one’s baby, you’d have to earn money digging ditches just to be broke.”
His agent moved back to the minibar and poured some more whiskey, this time leaving the water out, but did not say anything until he had returned and given the other glass back to his client. “So. Now what?”
“Bankruptcy?” Benton ran his fingers through his thinning hair while his agent shook his head.
“They’ll claw back the money you put into your mother’s trust and your sister’s education fund. Bankruptcy lawyers are nasty.” Murray shuddered. “Worse than divorce lawyers.”
“I’ll think of something.” Benton pushed the glass of whiskey over to his agent. “There’s got to be a way out of this jam. I just have to think.”
The insurance agent’s office was sterile enough to be an operating theatre with chrome and glass everywhere, leaving Benton Harbor to sit uncomfortably on the hard chair while Izzy flipped through his folder. “I have to say, Mister Harbor, that it’s good to have somebody conscientious enough to check their coverage. Most people would rather drop over dead than review their life insurance provisions, heh, heh.”
The joke, as it were, fell flat. And speaking of falling…
“Well, I was just headed out to the airport,” mentioned Benton in a casual fashion, “and since I was a little early and you were on the way, I thought it couldn’t hurt.”
“Heading out to do some jet-setting across the world like Rock Pitt, I suppose, Mister Harbor? I hear you’re putting out a new book in a few months. It’s a good thing to review your paperwork first.” Izzy pushed the folder over to him and smiled, which contrary to Benton’s expectations, did not reveal any sharp, pointed teeth. “You have a very complete policy. Full coverage for just about anything short of skydiving.”
“Skydiving?” echoed Benton.
“Yes, of course.” Izzy pointed to a clause.
No benefits will be paid for loss or expense caused by, contributed to, or resulting from: … 21. Skydiving, recreational parachuting, hang gliding, glider flying, parasailing, sail planing, bungee jumping, or flight in any kind of aircraft, except when riding as a passenger of a regularly scheduled flight of a commercial airline…
The doctor’s office was filled with warm colors, soft wall coverings, and bright crayoned pictures from young patients attesting to Doctor Proctor’s expertise in treating their various maladies. The doctor in question came bustling in through the door, carrying an expensive-looking electronic pad and wearing an expensive-looking smile while striding up to Benton and patting him on the shoulder.
“Good to see you again, Mister Harbor. I didn’t think you would be coming back after your flight physical for your skydiving lessons. How was your first jump?”
“I… chickened out,” admitted Benton.
“Can’t blame you,” said the doctor. “I’m always afraid I’ll forget to pull my chute or it will be packed wrong. Still, I’ll have my hundredth jump next month, even though I don’t jump out of exploding planes as much as Rock Pitt.” He chuckled, setting himself up for the question Benton knew was coming. “So, I hear you’re putting out a new book in a few months—”
“I need something first,” explained Benton in a rush.
Two days later, Benton found himself in the same examining room with the doctor, only with a large stack of paper in a folder and more than a few sharp pains across his recently punctuated skin. Doctor Proctor was still smiling, although Benton’s expression was more of resigned dread for what was going to come next from the physician.
“Other than your known medical issues, you’re in perfect health, Mister Harbor. Your asthma is under control, the colonoscopy didn’t find any polyps, the CAT scan doesn’t find any abnormalities, and your EKG shows a perfectly healthy heart. Since you’ve been bicycling to keep your blood sugar and triglycerides under control, you should live to be a hundred, if you don’t do anything dangerous like Rock Pitt.”
He felt a little naked to be bicycling along the street without a helmet, but Benton put his slight musculature to work, building up his speed as he approached the dangerous intersection. It should be painless, at least, judging the speed of the expensive luxury car to his left and the velocity which he was headed toward the light. Timing was going to be critical, and he slammed on his bicycle brakes with his eyes nearly closed…
There was a screeching of brakes…
And nothing.
Benton opened his eyes. He was in the center of the intersection as he had planned, but quite alive, unlike he had expected. Both a Lexus and a Mercedes Benz were within touching distance to either side, and to his shock, the mayor of the city and an over-dressed elderly lady were scurrying out of their stopped cars over to him.
“Mister Harbor!” gasped the mayor. He grabbed the shaking author by an elbow and helped him over to the side of the street. “I’m so sorry! If the automatic braking on the car hadn’t kicked in, I might have…”
“Quite the same here too, Dearie,” said the little old lady, patting him gently on the wrist. “I’ve always said this intersection needs a pedestrian and bicycle bridge.”
“Same here,” said the mayor, still sounding a little distracted at the near fatality. “It would run over a million dollars, though, and the council won’t appropriate the money.”
“Is that all?” The elderly lady dug out her purse and winked at Benton. “It’s the least I can do to protect the man who brought Rock Pitt to our community. Speaking of which, I hear you’ve got a new book coming out.”
“I brought you a couple of new keyboards.” Murray slipped in the front door and considered his client, who had not moved from where he was staring at the television. The program did not look that interesting, since it was only showing the evening newscaster discussing a new pedestrian bridge which was going to be built with donations from the community. “I know how you go through them while you’re being creative.”
Benton grunted.
His agent vanished into the den, only to emerge in a few minutes with a pensive expression. “Still no manuscript outline?”
Benton grunted again, only this time he got up and vanished into the kitchen. He returned with a knife.
Murray backed up with his hands above his head. “Look, I can get some of your ten percent back, but I’ve got expenses and—”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Benton. “Australia. I’ll have Rock Pitt dropped into the outback with nothing but a knife and a canteen. I don’t have enough time to research before the outline is due, but I can go out into one of the national forest preserves and live off the land, killing my own food and scavenging for food for a few days to get some ideas.”
“Live off the land?” Murray put his hands down. “You can’t be serious. I went quail hunting with you once, remember? I still have the lead pellets in my ass. Rock Pitt may be able to hunt down a deer and kill it with his own teeth, but you know who called me last year when a mouse got stuck in your trash can? You did. Remember who you called when a sparrow flew in through your door and you couldn't get it out of the house? Me. I’ll bet you can’t even last the night out in your own backyard.”
Benton did not respond, other than to frown and stride purposefully out the back door.
It was only for a minute, then he strode back inside, got a beer out of the refrigerator, and stalked back outside again.
Murray flopped down on the couch and picked up the remote control. “He won’t last an hour.”
A rattling and thumping noise roused Benton Harbor from sleep, making him stir in his huge waterbed and peek at the nearby alarm clock, which was displaying a time far too early in the morning for his taste. “Blasted racoons,” he muttered. “I would have won the stupid bet if you hadn’t come by.”
“Hey, Bennie!” The voice of his sister drifted upstairs, overlaid with some other noises indicating the rest of her family was inside the house too. “I couldn’t get you on the phone, so I dropped by. Reginald has an ear infection so we’re taking him to the pediatrician, but I didn’t want to expose Isabella to all the germs in his office. Could you watch her for a few hours?”
He did not want to obey his sister’s request, but in a few weeks, Benton would probably be looking for relatives to sponge from, so he roused himself out of bed. After dressing in a hurry and wandering downstairs, he found himself waving goodbye to his sister while holding his newborn niece’s baby carrier.
“Hellfire and damnation,” he muttered, although with a quick peek at the sleeping infant to make sure ‘Uncle Bennie’ had not taught the little tot a new word. “How am I supposed to work when somebody drops a baby on me. Rock Pitt would probably…”
Benton Harbor trailed to a halt with images of the hunky Rock Pitt cradling a newborn infant in one arm and a silenced submachine gun in the other, holding off a ferocious horde of evil villains while trying not to disturb his daughter’s nappie time.
“Rock Pitt has emerged victorious against the most terrifying forces brought against him,” he whispered. “Now, when faced with a new challenge, can our hero find the mysterious woman who left his newborn daughter on his doorstep and protect them both from the evil which seeks their lives? The ninja princess from the book before last. The mysterious cloaked stranger from the last book. The nanite plague from book five. Yes. Yes! YES!”
Benton bolted at full speed into his den, turned on the computer, arranged his pencils, and paused. Then he darted back out to the front door to pick up his niece's baby carrier and brought the sleeping infant back into where an infant book was about to be born.
… several months later
“Your brother is weird,” said Ethan, shifting the baby carrier to his other arm while they walked through the mall. “Nice-weird, though. He never wanted to babysit Reginald this much when he was born.”
“He was in India,” explained Cloe. “Then when he got back, he spent all that time writing on his Rock Pitt book to pay for his first divorce. Just be remember, your weird brother-in-law gave us over a hundred thousand dollars for Reginald and Isabella’s college fund.”
“I know, I know,” groused Ethan. “You would have thought he could spring for a copy of his new book for his sister, though.” He rolled his eyes while they walked through the front door of Barnes and Noble. “Retail. Our family will never outlive the shame.”
“At least it’s selling well.” Cloe picked up one of the last four copies from the depleted display rack and held the colorful front cover up to the baby carrier and its drowsing contents. The sleeping baby on the cover looked astonishingly like Isabella, which was no real surprise because the cover artist had worked from several photographs, but the muscular Rock Pitt on the cover with the silenced submachine gun spitting flames at several lurking ninjas looked almost totally the opposite of the geeky author. “Come on, Issy. Wakie, wakie. See the nice picture that’s going to put you through college.”
Her husband gave out a snort of amusement from where he had flipped one of the remaining copies to the back page. “How in the world does he get paid for writing this crap? Listen to this.”
The elegant oriental rock garden was nearly silent, with only the hissing spats of dying cyber-ninjas and the chirps of birds echoing through the bullet-scarred battleground. Rock Pitt could not care less about the wanton destruction surrounding him, or the billions of dollars worth of cyber-tech he had just destroyed with a few minutes of vigorous hacking on Digi-Deign’s corporate network. The only things he cared about were the small infant snuggled up to his chest in a bulletproof Babybjörn carrier and the exotic cyber-ninja woman cradled in his arms.
“Rock-san,” she whispered. Her hand clutched around his made little clicking noises as the failing cybernetic claws snicked in and out from under her nails. “My love. Is our daughter safe?”
“Yes,” he whispered back in a gravelly baritone voice. “Her nanobots are too new to be infected by the virus I pushed out through the network. I wish there had been another way.”
Small tears continued to run down the dying woman’s face, both real and droplets of sterile glycerine from her cybernetic eye. “It was too late for me. Father’s compulsions were written into my code. I could barely disobey him long enough to bring our daughter to you.” Her grip abruptly tightened when a sharp clicking sounded in her chest. “He activated my self-destruct. We only have a few minutes.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” said Rock. “It’s the only way.”
The young cyber-ninja shook her head, her natural hair shimmering in the dying light of the sunset. “No, you must protect our daughter. Between our genes and the experimental nanobots in her bloodstream, she represents the only hope the world has of defeating my father and his army of cybernetic soldiers. Now go.” She gave Rock a weak shove. “Hurry.”
“For you.” Rock Pitt bent down and gave a soft kiss to her lips, not even wincing at the feel of her canine venom injectors brushing against his lips in return. “We will never forget you, Katsumi.”
* * *
The glowing mushroom cloud drifted across the sunset while Rock Pitt drove away from the cyber-ninja base in a stolen Mitsubishi, unable to keep from looking at the spreading cloud in his rear view mirror. All of his contacts, his world-wide industrial locations, even his bank accounts would be worthless when pitted against the cybernetically-augmented forces of Digi-Deign and the mad genius who sought to rule the world and would destroy any who got in his way. Rock’s daughter was too young for her nanotech to do anything but sit inert in her body, but it would learn from the examples he would teach in the years to come. They would have to grow up in the shadows, unseen by the deadly forces arrayed against them, until it was time to strike.
“You will be avenged, Katsumi,” whispered Rock. “I swear.”
“Huh.” Cloe gave a short, introspective nod from where she was reading over her husband’s shoulder. “My brother always was the dramatic type. I wonder when the sequel will be out?”
A wave of cheering swept around the Ponyville soundstage, and the inhabitants promptly surged forward to clap the director of Friendship is Magic on the back. Once the traditional congratulations had been spread around and most of the actors had headed over to the wrap party, Twilight Sparkle landed in front of the Town Hall set and took a moment to appreciate the relative quiet.
“Hey, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash, detecting said moment of silence and filling it in the way she was accustomed to, dove down out of the rafters of the soundstage and landed solidly to her friend’s side. “Best season ending so far, right?”
“You bet.” Twilight grinned and elbowed Rainbow Dash in the ribs. “And no fair asking me who Scootaloo’s parents are in the season opener next year. I’m not telling.”
“Oh, come on. Just a hint? A tiny little one?” Rainbow huffed and crossed her forelegs while hovering. “I swear you have an in with the writers.”
“You’ll just have to wait until we start shooting again. So…” Twilight looked around, but there was no sign of pink anywhere.
“Pinkie Pie is packing for our trip to Vegas,” said Rainbow Dash. “This year, we’ve got a sure-fire system.”
“I swear the studio just needs to make out your check to the casinos.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “I can’t complain about you getting a jump on things because Spike is off to the lava diving championships in Hawaii with Ember in about an hour. Applejack is taking the family up to Montana, while Rarity and Fluttershy will be in Paris by the weekend. Every year once shooting is over, it seems like we all head to the far corners of the world to get as far away from each other as possible.”
“But we always come back.” Rainbow Dash punched Twilight in the shoulder gently. “Even someday once the show is over, we’ll see each other at the cons. Friends forever, and all that. Speaking of which.”
With a flick of the hoof, Rainbow Dash produced three airline tickets. “Ta-da! Trixie taught me that one.”
“Are you taking her to Las Vegas too? Oh. I see.” Twilight pushed away Rainbow Dash’s hoof as she tried to push the ticket into her saddlebag. “No, I can’t. I’ve got a full schedule planned this break, Rainbow. I’m booked for every minute.”
“Oh, come on! That’s all egghead stuff. Come with us to the Dark Side of the Strip and discover your density!” Rainbow added in a low, rasping voice.
“I can’t.” Twilight heaved a breath and got out her cell phone, poking in a quick unlock code. “Look, why don’t you take Trixie? She puts on a good face, but I don’t think she’s got anything scheduled. If you hurry, you can catch her before she makes it to the parking lot. Take her gambling and pranking, and I guarantee you’ll have a blast. I’ll even put up bail if you need it again this year.”
“Really?” Rainbow Dash perked up. “Well… Only if you’re sure you—”
Twilight looked down and checked her phone. “You better hurry if you’re going to catch her. The app says she just left the building.”
“OkbyecatchyoulaterTwi—” By the time Twilight blinked away the dust from Rainbow’s rapid departure, she was long gone.
“And just in time.” A familiar face under a shock of unruly brown mane poked around a nearby collection of props on the soundstage and gave Twilight Sparkle a wink. “All clear for our departure, Miss Sparkle?”
“Yes, Doctor.” Twilight scurried over to the nondescript blue box at the back of the sound stage. and floated several sheets of paper to the stallion standing there. “I made a list of where I’d like to stop off this year again, only this time, I think I’d like to spend a full week at the Library of Alexandria also.”
“No arguments here. Wonderful place, with the right company.” Doctor Whooves gave Twilight a quick peck on the cheek and a mischievous grin. “In return, I think I’d like to show you the Fire Fountains of Reculius Seven. It’s quite a sight. Provided the old girl can still find her way there and get back on time.” He patted the blue box on the side and opened the door for Twilight.
“Thank you, Doctor.” She giggled. “Olly-onze?”
“Allons-y!” he corrected. “Onward, to vacation!”
Just Like Old Times - The Sun and Moon of the Future
It was a beautiful machine, all crystal and spun bronze, with whirling widgets and spinning spheres, pointing golden arrows indicating the location of all the celestial bodies and toothed cogs marked in careful graduations. It ticked and tocked, sparkled and glowed, and hummed like a happy hummingbird in a field of flowers. One entire room of the castle was taken up by its impressive presence, with a maintenance crew of a dozen ponies who kept it polished, oiled, tuned, and coddled to the point where Celestia swore they read it stories at bedtime.
She hated it. No, Celestia loved her alicorn student who had created it, and admired just how beautifully the machine had turned out. The world appreciated the exactness of the motion of the sun and moon, and it certainly took a great load off the Royal Sisters’ shoulders. She just despised what the machine stood for. Often, she took a few hours out of her day just to stand in its presence and listen to the whir and tick and hum of the world progressing along to the dictates of steel and glass.
“Good eve, dear sister.” Princess Luna glided up to Celestia’s side and joined her in regarding the machine. “Still no name for our eternal nemesis, I presume?”
“No.” Celestia regarded the machine for a few more silent minutes before correcting herself. “Nothing printable, at least.”
“It hath only been a full decade.” Luna’s words held a light hint of chastisement, but much welcome humor. “There is no rush.”
“True.” The sisters remained watching while the golden needle of the machine dropped closer to ‘Sunset’ by small clicks.
“Do you miss it?” asked Luna abruptly. “The touch of our stellar burdens, that is.”
“No, of course not,” said Celestia. “There were days when I struggled until sunset, blessing the time when I could finally collapse into bed and surrender my task to you, dearest sister.”
“My banishment must have taxed your stamina greatly,” mused Luna nearly under her breath.
“And my will, and all my soul,” added Celestia. “Even then, I would not have surrendered my duty to a machine. It reminded me of you, every day and night, and promised your eventual return.”
“Masochist,” chided Luna.
“Also,” countered Celestia before both sisters fell prey to a fit of unstoppable giggles.
“We find ourselves briefly without a task this eve,” said Luna once she had regained her composure. “Would you care to join me on the solarium balcony to watch Twilight’s machine perform?”
“Gladly.” Celestia fell into step beside her sister, tracing their familiar paths through the busy castle until they came to the room where they had raised the sun and moon for many years. They took their places on the balcony, side by side, and watched the sun slowly descend until it reached the horizon…
...and stopped.
“Strange,” mused Celestia. “There must be something wrong with the machine.”
Luna shrugged. “Perhaps a chunk of rock found its way into the gearbox. A tragedy.”
Casting a skeptical look the innocent expression on her sister, Celestia raised one eyebrow and lit her horn. “Shall we?”
The sun set.
The moon rose.
And two sisters stood together, joined again in their duties.
My mother is ninety-five years old. The thought will not leave my head, from the time when the Lifeline lady called my cell phone a few minutes ago until now, and it shows no sign of going away.
My mother has fallen, and she can not get up. My infinitely strong mother, who survived the Depression, four children, a heart attack, the loss of my father twenty years ago, and so much more. She has rented ‘the button’ for quite a few years, but has never pressed it until now. She did not push it when she fell down the stairs the first time, and I found her in the kitchen, mopping blood off the back of her head. She did not push it when she fell down the stairs the second time because of that damned cat, and my daughter found her in the basement bathroom with a similar cut on the back of her head. I’ve always thought of her as immortal, even though I know better.
She is lying on the floor in the kitchen, wanting nothing more than to get back on her feet and continue with her morning chores, but she cannot get her feet under her. If only she could have me pull that chair over so she can brace herself against it, because it’s only a bruise, after all. She has work to do, a quilt to sew, Christmas cards to read under her magnifying glass. This is not a good time for her to be on the floor, and she tells me so. Repeatedly.
My mother is ninety-five years old. We moved across the street from her when the last of our children were born. They are now out of the house. One of them has a baby of her own. Over twenty years, and we’ve known this could happen at any time. We’ve been afraid this would happen. We’ve been denying that it could happen.
She does not want me to call the ambulance. There is no pain, except when she moves in the wrong direction. A few cushions, a little time to recover, and she’ll be back up and working. The snow has been swept off the back deck and the front driveway, showing how much she has already done this early in the morning. Then she fell down on the kitchen linoleum, without even tripping over something. It annoys her. Still, she does not protest when I call the ambulance. Even if it is just a bruise, she still needs to get an X-ray, or so I explain while getting her some cushions to prop her frail, thin limbs into a more comfortable position.
There are still muscles beneath that parchment skin, pulling tendons into sharp relief while she moves, although her pajamas cover most of her body. Farm life has treated her unfairly, with wrinkled skin from the sun and twinges of arthritis from the chill, but when spring comes again and she recovers from this, she will be right out there in the garden again, hoeing weeds and harvesting okra. Or so I tell myself.
The doorbell rings moments after the ambulance dispatcher hangs up, announcing the arrival of a young police officer dusted with snow and red-cheeked in the cold. He is ever so polite, introducing himself to my mother and checking to make sure everything is under control. He is followed almost immediately by the ambulance and three young people, far too young to be entrusted with the care of the most precious element of my life, but I stand back and let them work, taking her blood pressure and chatting. There is no pain, or at least that is what my mother says repeatedly, although with the caveat of just how her leg is positioned.
I am numb with emotions watching the scene, unlike the professionals at the scene. Undoubtedly each of them has seen this repeated countless times before. But this is special. This is my mother. She is ninety-five years old. Our family is related to nearly everyone in the county. My mother knows them all. She asks the ambulance people about their names, curious queries to find out if perhaps they are related to us too, but they are not.
I cannot watch, because I am consumed with the urge to do something, anything other than watch. Anything at all, even a futile gesture. Since the snow has dusted the ground, I take my mother’s broom and sweep clean paths for the ambulance people. She is ninety-five. She has already swept most of the driveway, but I sweep the rest so the ambulance people will not track snow into the house or their vehicle. I cannot watch them load her into the back, but bend over my sweeping with renewed vigor, only looking up when the driver tells me that they will be taking her to the big hospital a half-hour away instead of our local hospital, because they think she has broken her hip, and the local hospital does not have the resources to deal with that kind of surgery.
I know she has broken her hip. I knew it from the first moment I saw her on the kitchen floor. Denial has been my shield against the fear. I cling to that forlorn hope as the ambulance leaves and I close up her house for her return. It will only be a bruise. She may stay a day or two in the hospital, but she will be back into this house with so many stairs going up and down to all levels. As a distraction for my distraught mind, I make sure all of my siblings are notified, bending over my phone keyboard with careful pokes. My mother will be fine. It will only be a bruise. But I do not say that. I stick to the bare facts. The simple, cold facts as I stand in the snow and look at the window of her house where the Christmas tree still shines.
I go back inside and turn the tree off before I travel to the hospital.
Hospitals are terrible places. They are places of life, where our children were born, and death. The first does not make up for the second, no matter how clean and sterile they are. The corridors of the emergency ward are familiar from my other visits. A friend’s motorcycle accident. My oldest child’s nervous breakdown when his marriage came apart. Now, my mother is lying in one of the rooms, getting the best of care. I know it far more than words. My niece works at the hospital in intensive care. My sister-in-law manages a nursing home. My daughter works with Alzheimer's patients in Kansas City. I still do not wish to be here. My heart writhes with bile, but my mother is treating this as just another visit, cheerful as always despite my hidden anxiety.
For an emergency room ward, there does not seem to be any sense of urgency or panic. We wait. My niece drops by briefly with encouraging words from her fellow nurses before returning to her work on the other side of the hospital. My sister-in-law comes by with three of her grandchildren in tow. Squirming little creatures who cannot sit still or be quiet, they grate on my nerves like acid. My mother is quiet, because she has been here before. For her heart attack over twenty years ago. When she fell down the stairs. Twice. She has the patience that I do not.
When the technicians arrive with the X-ray machine, I take the opportunity to flee. There is an empty waiting room for family with a loud television set and ancient magazines, but no place to plug in my tired phone. I do not know what is worse, to be with my mother at this time or here. Still, they are taking an X-ray of her hip, so she deserves her privacy.
I walk, get a soda, visit the bathroom, check my phone again and pass on the news, but the lump of lead in my belly remains. When the machine leaves her room, I even get a look at the results, but they mean nothing to me. Give me a flowchart, a chunk of Windows scripting, a pop-up error. Bones are not my specialty. I can not abide blood, or talking to people. The image is meaningless, or I simply refuse to see the break. It could be either.
Another bathroom visit to empty my cramped gut and when I return, she is gone. For a moment, my heart stops. The emergency room is a good place for that, but my mind overrules my instincts. She has simply been moved, and after collecting my coat and soda, I make the trek to her room, and the others filling it. My brother, my sister-in-law, various nephews and nieces. It is inevitable. There is a swarming multitude who can claim one bit of blood or another to her. Grandma was one of seven siblings, and her mother one of eight. Even though I only have three siblings of my own, with their marriages, divorces, and deaths, my mother has over a dozen or two grandchildren, and uncounted great-grandchildren.
I am an extra thumb in this room, and more are arriving soon. Although my mother has an IV of drugs, she is still filled with smiles and alertness, and suggests that I go home for a bit to recover. It has been several hours since ‘the button’ was pushed, and even she can see how frazzled I have become.
I trudge out to my car through the biting cold, which cuts like a knife against my skin, slicing through my thick winter coat and furry vest. My mother gave me this vest for Christmas some years ago, and every year I’ve used it to guard against the cold.
It is so cold.
I drive with exquisite care, returning to my home along snow-blown highways. The cold has bitten deep within me, keeping me from relaxing even in the slightest. I make a trip across the street to check on my mother’s home, turning off any lights I missed the first time and making sure the stove is off. She will return to this house of far too many stairs. I know it. I say it quietly to myself while I cross the street to my own home and take my delayed shower, turning the water on high to melt the last bits of ice.
All that is left is the waiting. I curl up on the bed, phone next to my head and try to rest. My sister is coming up from Texas and will be here tomorrow. Both of my brothers are at the hospital. They are operating to put a pin in her hip soon. I cannot stop trembling, blowing my nose, or dreading whenever the phone buzzes.
My temperature is over a hundred.
The same cursed bug that every one of my siblings has recovered from managed to strike me down at the worst possible time. I text the group that my siblings have set up to keep us all up to date, all fifteen or so phones, and return to bed under the influence of NyQuil and Motrin, my only two friends.
The next day, I am worse, trapped in my bed just like my mother, only I can make the staggering path to the bathroom. Drink, take medicine, sleep, check texts. The days pass in tar-like rapidity. My boss from work tells me to take as much time as I need. She lost her father last year. Lost. We say that so casually as a species. I lost my own father twenty-two years ago, like we were at the mall and he wandered off. My time beneath the covers gives me the chance to contemplate the great mysteries of life and death while my mother recovers from her surgery.
She is ninety-five years old. I am forty years her junior, and I am flattened by a simple virus.
By the time I am feeling remotely human and non-contagious, they move my mother to the nursing home where my sister-in-law works so she can undergo rehab. It is a small nursing home in a small town, much more friendly than the big city hospital, and less expensive. That will please her. My mother is — to put it lightly — cheap. She was ten years old when the Great Depression started. We had a garden at the farm, filled with rows for me to hoe and beans for me to pick. Harvest meant canning, and carrying glass jars down to the cellar. I still cannot get used to green beans out of a tin can, or jelly that does not have a skim of paraffin across the top to keep it from molding.
It will be an exceedingly busy day for her, but my sister-in-law has things well under control. I go in to work, battle the beasts that rise from paperwork left untended, and prepare to go visit her in the evening when I get another text.
Mom had a heart attack.
Far from recovering in the nursing home to regain her mobility, she now has been moved to the small town hospital. It will be a very busy time there tonight, so I am discouraged from visiting.
The second night, I am given the permission I did not really need to ask for. I am a man of more than fifty years. I do not need to ask to see my mother. Then I see my mother in the hospital bed, looking so thin and worn, and I am once again a little boy who only wants to be picked up and held.
I do not cry. Our family does not cry much at all. I must be strong for my mother, who is stronger than the pillars that hold up the sky. I stay and talk while my sister helps her eat dinner. We laugh a little, and I keep my mother company while my sister leaves to make some phone calls.
My mother will recover. She is strong. She has to be, for there are so many people who come to see her. Cousins. Brothers. Relatives related by marriage somewhere up several limbs in the tree. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren by the handful. A schedule is set up. Hope emerges again.
My sister is staying at mom’s house, doing some of her work remotely and traveling to be with my mother at times during the day. She is not used to the countryside around here after dark. There is an infinite space of nothing between our house and the small town hospital, a darkness that eats up headlights and suggests bounding deer. I find myself driving home several nights with her behind me, so she does not fret. I am the baby of the family. She was old enough to babysit me when I was born, and now I return the favor.
Then another call. Another heart attack.
My sister-in-law gathers my siblings in the evening after we leave the hospital. She is a strong woman, much like my mother, while we are much like sheep with this hanging over us. She talks. We listen. Hope dies. The dreaded ‘hospice’ word is used, as well as ‘do not resuscitate’ and ‘mom says.’
Ninety-five years. There will not be a ninety-sixth.
The schedule tightens. There is a relative with her every hour of the day now. I fling myself into work to avoid thinking. Things that have been delayed for months get done. Things that don’t need to be done for months get done too. When my time to stay with mom comes, I travel to the hospital. I help feed her. Barbeque chicken. Pudding. Sips of juice. Just like she used to feed me when I was too young to take care of myself. I do not cry. She makes sure I know about her bible and hymnal, with the verses and hymns marked. There is no talk of her estate because she has settled that already. Her only property not sold under contract is her own house. Even her car, which she has been unable to drive since three years ago, has been passed on to a grandchild.
Hope blooms a little in my heart. She seems so much stronger. I escort my sister back home and guard her against the darkness.
Then my phone rings as I am getting into bed. Another heart attack. Not going to make it. Come now. I am throwing on my clothes when my sister calls from across the street, asking if I’m ready to go, which I’m not. She’s down the driveway and off to the hospital before I can find my shoes.
Our car needs gas. When we are at the station, filling up, my brother arrives. We are much more alike than I realized. We drive together through the darkness to the hospital.
Mom has passed.
My sister arrived just before. She got to say goodbye. I did not. I don’t regret it. I am a frail reed, and the weight would have broken me in half. The body in the bed is not my mother anymore. She has gone to be with my father and all the rest of her relatives who have already passed.
I cannot look more than once, and even that I regret.
We mourn. Later, the four of us gather in the hospital lobby. The minister arrives and says a few words. There are things that need to be done. Papers to be signed. Unpleasant realities. Tears, but only a few. We are our mother’s children, after all.
The rest will wait until later.
I find myself back in my mother’s kitchen, where I stood two weeks ago. I can still feel her here in this house, much like I could feel my grandmother in her house many years ago. For her, it was grandma’s cookies. For now, it is the package of Oreos that I always tried to keep on her kitchen table. She was so thin over the last few years, and any calories we could trick into her was a victory. Besides, if I kept the cookies in my house, my children would devour them in a day. It made a good excuse, along with the soda in her garage fridge giving me an excuse to drop by every morning before work to check on her.
For now, cookies and soda have taken a back seat to the funeral preparations. So many things we should have done years ago, so many pictures that needed a scribbled notation on the back to tell what distant relative was in the Army in 1945. The simple request she made for her hymnal and bible is complicated by our search, finding four different hymnals and twelve bibles.
As the siblings we have not been for many years, we four gather together and evaluate the pictures, the notes, the bookmarks, and the memories. I find my father’s grade cards and feel vindicated that I at least was marginally more successful in school, although not by much. To examine every picture would be impossible because of the sheer volume, but we separate out the ones of only mom and dad, putting the rest to one side for me to digitize later. It will be another one of the tasks that I should have done before, but…
The time before the funeral is odd, flowing at an erratic rate. There is the trip to the funeral home, where we four brave children chicken out and pick the same casket and vault that our mother did for our father twenty some years ago. A trip to the mall to buy a suit coat for my tall son, who towers over me. A single day at work to crush problems which could not wait. The first of many days cleaning out the house for the inevitable sale. Canceling credit cards and phone service, including a call to the ‘button people’ to express our thanks for their service, which was critical in my mother’s hour of need.
Then the visitation.
My suit is worse than useless, binding around the shoulders and limiting how and where I can reach. Even the pockets are fakes, leaving me nowhere to put my cold fingers when the wind cuts through the thin suit. Too hot in summer and no protection in winter, although I wear my mother’s gift sweater underneath it, and that at least helps. At least until the visitation begins, and the sweat begins to damply accumulate. Polite smiles. Bob the head. Try not to ask just who these people are. I swear more than once that at my funeral, I’m having name tags made up. It won’t matter to me, but the survivors will cheer my memory.
The visitors shake hands and say a few words before going to the casket. I have not done so yet. Not until my wife goes with me as a brace against my foolish emotions. Once again, this is not my mother. They have done wonders with makeup and the other tools of their trade, but I refuse to admit her reality even as I admire the way her red hair still looks just as it did before, without a single strand of grey. My father was nearly bald by my age, but I have her genes, although not the color. Bits of reddish brown decorate the chapel from grandchildren and great-grandchildren, including my eldest brother who wears just a touch of red like a brief kiss on the head. My own children are here, just as brown-haired as most, and my one new grandchild, who has long locks of coal black.
My cousins, four boys from my childhood who have never grown up, come over to talk, as well as neighbors and friends and relatives of all kinds. I still want to do nothing but hide under my bed, but this is something far better. I see them all so infrequently, scattered to the corners of the country with families of their own. I only see them at… funerals, come to think of it.
When the visitation that I dreaded so much is over, I regret how short it seemed.
The wind at the cemetery cuts through my suit again, making the sweat from my time in the small church freeze into stiff ice splinters. It seemed oddly familiar in a time-traveling way to go back to the church of my youth with all of the congregation having aged and greyed and wrinkled into near unrecognizability. There were barely enough pews there, but not everybody traveled through the biting Kansas wind out to the cemetery. The minister blessedly seems just as cold as the rest of us, and hurries through a few brief words while we huddle for warmth. My oldest son is with me, but my youngest daughter remained behind to nurse her child. Less than a month old, he is far better off to remain out of the weather.
As we gather, young and old united in our love for my mother and our search for relief from the cutting wind, I am reminded of all the funerals she served at. They were countless, both in this small rural town when they lived at the farm as well as after she moved to town, across the street from me. Funeral cake after cake, serving the relatives as they attended the reception after the funeral of friend, family, and church member. Years and years of cakes, her parents, her sister and two of her brothers, spouses of her children, and the grandchild she had lost.
It is my turn now, seated on a thin metal chair in the freezing wind with my siblings. Where my mother was the eldest child, and is survived by three of her brothers, I am the youngest, and will most likely see my siblings pass before me. Then it will truly be my turn to be mourned while my children bear my casket and my grandchildren eat cake with distant relatives afterward.
Then, before we all freeze, it is over, and everybody heads for their vehicle to return to the warm church and lunch. As I pass my mother’s casket, I reach out and touch the frozen steel with my bare fingers before walking onward, back to the car, back to the church, and to hold my grandson in her stead.
Until I see you again. Goodbye, mom. I will do my best to make you proud.
Message in a Bottle - A Matter of Nautical Communication
Orpo Van Heusen did not want to be on a Coalition corvette
He also did not want to be held captive by the Khanate’s thugs.
And in particular, he did not want to have a nerve disruptor discharged into his lower back on any setting, even the lowest ‘shock’ that the round-cheeked thug behind him had just fired.
Through the red mist that danced in his eyes, Orpo struggled to keep his ears open and not throw up across the deck plating.
“Second!” barked the officer-thug, a tall and gaunt man who resembled a knife blade. “This slime will not perform his function if you kill him.” Any thoughts of benevolent grace were brutally driven out by a rifle-butt placed right where his nerves were still dancing from the electrical discharge. As Orpo sprawled out across the deck and tried not to retch, the officer continued to berate his subordinate, mixing in a few blood-thirsty threats with his blistering profanity. Once his supposed ally was properly squelched, the officer grabbed Orpo by the back of his hair and dragged him over to the engineering station, which was lit up with more red lights than a shore leave pleasure street.
“Slime will fix the fusion reactor or you will be exterminated,” he barked. “Previous crew attempted to damage it before we liberated this vessel for the Khan and spaced them. Fix the damage or die.”
Orpo stumbled forward into the engineering seat and stared at the blinking lights and readouts, tabbing through several status screens filled with errors and strobing alerts despite the blazing fire that seemed to cover his entire back. After gingerly touching several of the indicators and taking some time to recover, he turned the seat and faced his captors, each of which had a weapon of various lethalities trained on him.
“All of these controls are supposed to be monitored by the ship’s AI.” He waved a hand at a full screen of pure blinking redness. “There must be some sort of failed circuit—”
“The mechanical intelligence in this ship has been executed,” snapped the Khanate officer. “All systems are on auxiliary control.”
“Executed?” said Orpo with the intent of cautiously going further down his line of inquiry. That idea died quickly when the officer pulled a plasma arc from a leg holster and sighted down it, as if he intended on blowing a certain nosy engineer’s head off.
“Our captain melted the abomination down, then jettisoned the escape pods,” said the officer in the same cold fashion. “We will return to our clan in victory or die. No mechanical brain can be trusted to be loyal to the Khanate.”
“Without the AI, I can’t fix the reactor,” he started in clipped tones without a pause, “but I can baby it along, keep it functioning until we reach a maintenance facility.”
“You will fix it, then take your place among your crewmates in the brig,” said the officer, still pointing the plasma arc between Orpo’s eyes. “Our Khan will reward us for bringing him such valuable slaves.”
“If I fix it as much as I can without spare parts or engineering assistants—” like my crewmate your fellow thugs blew apart when you boarded our freighter “—the fusion bottle will only fail again while I’m not watching it. This time, it might not go into emergency shutdown mode. It might just rupture and kill us all. And I want to live.”
His last words were spoken with as much emotion as Orpo could force into his voice. He expected them to be his actual last words if the disgusted expression on the Khanate officer’s face was any indication, but after a few long moments, the tall man slipped the weapon back into its holster and issued his ultimatum.
“We have seized all of the engineering spares from your vessel. They will be made available to you to expedite repairs. You have an hour.”
Rather than the lethal option of telling the thug to go pound sand, Orpo turned back to his panel and regarded it with a tense urgency. “The spares from our freighter won’t cut it. The military grade magnetic containment is leaking in three places, you’ve got a dozen plasma focusers out of alignment, and the deet injectors are eroded like they’ve been run over temperature for several days. This isn’t just sabotage by the previous crew. Somebody stupid has been running this board.”
The officer’s eyes flickered to the other thug, who looked as if he were about to shoot Orpo again just out of spite, only this time with the nerve disruptor turned to lethal. The officer shifted position to place the muzzle of his rifle squarely on the round-cheeked soldier’s back and spoke with an air of command that the weapon only emphasized.
“Skull Bambar, you commanded this duty station for the last half-period. Did you damage our power source so we would be helpless against the Enemy?”
While the thug gasped for words, Orpo checked a few more relays on his chair. “Sir, it doesn’t look intentional. I’ve seen similar issues with cadets at the Academy.”
“Do you hear?” The officer prodded his subordinate with the muzzle of his rifle. “Slime defends your honor, so you have the honor of slime. Since you have fallen, you shall have no title until we reach our destination. If this one dies, you die. If this one is injured, you will be injured too.”
“When we reach our destination, will I be given the opportunity to regain my honor in his blood?” asked Bambar in what seemed to be a ritual question that was far too close for Orpo’s comfort.
“If you can pay the price, his blood will be yours to spill.” The thin officer looked at Orpo with unmistakable contempt. “An engineer will be valuable indeed.”
“I will spend all I have and all I can claim,” said Bambar. “My blood is the Khan’s.”
“Witnessed and sworn.” The officer took his rifle out from between the shoulderblades of his subordinate and turned it back to Orpo, which did not seem to be any more friendly a gesture. “Slime will repair what he can. We will watch and judge. Perform well and you will survive until tomorrow.”
The electrical and control systems were different than what Orpo was used to, but still close enough than he only had to consult his sleeve about half of the time. Spare parts were a different matter. The Coalition corvette had spare parts, but Bambar had done a bang-up job of melting or abusing all of them that he could get his hands on, then proceeded to install the new parts without even considering what had caused the old ones to fail. The thought of simply forcing a fusion bottle breach occurred to him several times, particularly when fighting a surge that threatened to do it for him. It certainly would kill the dozen Khanates on board, but also the thirty or so freighter crew that they had locked into the brig, friends that Orpo wished to save.
The captain of The Merry Snark had voluntarally responded to the corvette’s request for a spare part for the recycling system, but once docked, the boarding party that swept aboard was anything but Coalition. The captain and the first officer had been the only armed crewmembers, and despite the boarders having a half-dozen suits of powered armor in their assault, the two officers had somehow managed to kill five of the attackers.
The rest of the crew had been forced to watch the fate of their captain and three random crewmembers as the Khanates took out their frustrations, and from the low vibration in the deckplates while Orpo was being dragged to the engineering spaces, a torpedo had taken care of any remaining evidence of their assault.
The Coalition might not even know they had been captured. If left to their own devices, the Khanates might still manage to get their crippled corvette over the border to their own territory. It held recognition codes, weapons, and whatever they had looted from the freighter in their orgy of violence. Worse, the Khanates had to have been high-value prisoners being transported back to a core world for interrogation. Such a small victory would certainly not win the smoldering on again/off again war, but it would kill far more people than a simple freighter could hold.
The thought held him captive while Orpo programmed and bypassed, bringing the fusion reactor up to a thready half-power that still gave the occasional surge or wobble in the magnetic containment. Triggering it into overload and destroying the ship would not be instantaneous, despite the lack of an AI. An alert or even semi-alert thug with knowledge of engineering would easily be able to shoot him and still have time to shut down the reactor, which would damage it, but not destroy the ship. If the belligerent thug who had manhandled the controls up until now could keep it running at even partial power, the ship with its stolen secrets would be gone and his friends from the The Merry Snark sent into unrecoverable slavery.
Unless…
“I think I can give you three-quarters without blowing anything up.” Orpo tapped the collection of red and orange warning lights on the console screen. “That should be enough to run the drive at full, or the weapons and shields for a brief engagement, but that’s all. There’s enough harmonics because of the damaged components that I’ll have to baby it along.” He gave his Khanate counterpart a bland stare. “Provided you can keep his hands off the controls.”
Although Bambar’s hands twitched, he did not point his weapon directly at Orpo again, most probably because his superior officer would have blown him in half.
“Your value as an engineer goes up the more power you are able to produce,” stated the officer plainly as if he were declaring that liver was going to be served for lunch. “Your survival once we reach our destination will depend on how much you are worth. Consider that as you manage the engines. Bambar will watch you, and esure you do not fail.”
The thug growled, “The moment that power indicator drops below half—” The sharp jab of a rifle in his back made Bambar stop, take a snarling breath, and continue. “If the power drops, I will notify my Respectful Superior.”
“Very good.” The tall officer turned and walked away with no further comment, vanishing into the corridor with the hatch closed and dogged behind him. Bambar waited for a moment, then lifted his nerve disruptor with a practiced sneer.
Orpo turned his back and began working his way through control menus while waiting for another disruptor charge, only lethal. “I wouldn’t,” he cautioned. “The bridge is most likely monitoring our actions.”
“It would be worth the punishment,” snarled the Khanate behind him, although the reflection in the control panel showed he was reluctantly lowering his weapon. “If you deceive us, you will die in pain beyond comprehension.”
Keeping his face neutral, Orpo returned to his work. The rhythmic tremor of the drive beneath him started in a few minutes, which he checked against the power flow from the reactor and began to log. All of the ship systems were interconnected, which would be a good thing once he started on his plan. For now, all he did was map out the power flows and assign priorities, from life support to drive and weapons systems.
The Khanates loved the weapon systems of the corvette. There were already a series of blinking requests to charge them queued up on the console, so Orpo assigned a few of them power, and then a few more, until the limited power going into drive systems reduced speed to a crawl and the hull rang with the twanging pops and snaps of outgoing fire. Their captain was obviously displeased because the weapons pods went offline one at a time in a line as Orpo could imagine a furious Khanate stalking down the corridor, shouting into each weapon hardpoint until the soldier inside stopped pressing all of the colorful buttons and wasting power into empty space.
“Why are you not bringing the reactor to full power?” Bambar’s nerve disruptor prodded Orpo in the back, right in the spasming spot where the previous demonstration shot had discharged. “Tell me or I will kill you.”
“I’m setting priorities for the output,” said Orpo just as calmly as he could once his back had quit spasming. “It doesn’t matter how much power we generate if it is allocated to nonessential systems.”
“Drive and weapons,” commanded the Khanate with another painful prod of his weapon. “That is all.”
“And life support, if you wish to keep breathing,” added Orpo. “And lights, so that your compatriots do not come down here and criticize you for making them stumble around in the dark. Sensors so we do not crash into a spatial anomaly or intersect another warship, and—” He cut off abruptly at another painful jab from his captor.
“Get back to work,” he snapped. “I’ll watch.”
That would put a crimp in Orpo’s plans, but he had time. The question was how much time. The Merry Snark had been plodding between two systems a long way from the ongoing conflict, but warships had long legs, and there was no easy way to find out just where they were going without opening up the navigation files. At least there were listening posts they would have to pass, small space stations in empty space with sensitive gravitational distortion sensors. They could spot a drive bubble from a week’s travel away, even if the only thing they would notice was a small Coalition warship.
But first, he had to stabilize the fusion bottle to the maximum extent possible.
Several hours worth of back-breaking work later, the worst of the malfunctioning deet injectors had been replaced, two of the plasma focusers had been purged and reprogrammed to factory settings, and Bambar had discovered some of the ship’s games. While he was destroying armadas of alien ships, Orpo edged the power up another several percent and slipped the ‘balancing’ script into the focuser hardware, manually adjusting its datestamp back a few months just in case.
Right on cue, the Khanates on the bridge reacted to the increase in power by directing it to the drive, and the background whine rose. Then a little more. Then the expected brief drop in drive for just a second before it returned to the new spaceplus velocity. Bambar looked up for a moment, then returned to his game while Orpo started breathing again, watching the time indicator on his console. A little over a minute later after three other brief drive pulses gained him no additional attention, Orpo put aside the ruined deet injector he had been toying with and returned to his work.
Time passed in excruciating slowness. One advantage of the engineering station that Orpo found himself dozing in front of was that quite literally, everything in the ship demanded power. When individual room ‘freshers were flushed, power. Whenever one of the Khanates went into a room, life support automatically directed that much more energy to their comfort. In dribs and drabs, not trusting the equipment to write the information down, Orpo determined that there were only twenty-two humans outside of the locked brig, and that the prisoners inside had been locked out of the food delivery chutes totally. They still had water, although that was most probably due to the Khanates’ oversight than any concern, and the cells had been welded shut, so there was no chance of electronically unlocking his shipmates. At least the number of surviving prisoners had remained constant, and since the cells were welded shut, none of them were being dragged out to be repeatedly raped.
The repeated surges in the drive had kept the Khanates on edge, and after the first day, the officer from before had stormed into the engineering space only to find Orpo up to his waist in a control panel, supposedly trying to chase down an erratic connection.
“Slime will stop this incessant wobble in the drive,” he snapped, slamming one fist into the panel casing and making Orpo’s ears ring.
“You’ll have to drop to half-speed,” said Orpo, carefully disconnecting one fibre cable and threading a replacement through the supports. It had taken him considerable time to splice together from spares, but should fix at least one persistent problem. “The entire aft magnetic coupling has been stressed beyond failure limits because somebody had not watched his panel closely enough. Then when he was installing the spare, he torqued the connectors off, so we’ve got the original back in there now, and there are some melted together spots inside it, so it surges under heavy load.”
“Install a replacement!” snapped the officer.
Orpo tried to pitch his voice as sincere as possible, because the irate Khanate sounded as if he were about to put a shot right through the panel he was underneath just to kill him. And the more angry he could make the officer, the more likely he would spill some actionable intelligence. “We don’t have a replacement. As it is, this coupling should last about a week before the surges get too powerful and you’ll have to reduce speed.”
“Use a coupling from the other ship’s spares!” spat the officer.
“That’s a civilian-grade coupling. The connectors won’t fit, and even if I could cobble something together to make them match, it would take a week and I couldn’t get a quarter of the power out of this fusion bottle.”
“In a period, we will be home,” snarled the officer. He gave a brutal kick to Orpo’s exposed legs. “You will keep the reactor functional until then, or your worth shall be lessened to nothing.”
He remained silent instead of responding, other than a few anguished grunts of pain that he did not have to feign as the Khanate kicked him in the leg more times before storming out of the engineering space. Bambar took the opportunity to wander over and give Orpo a good solid kick in the leg too, just for good measure, then a second.
“You did not have to tell him about breaking the part,” he said, adding a third brutal kick that made Orpo bang his head in the narrow space he had wedged himself into.
“I had to!” Orpo braced himself for the next kick, which did not help much when it crashed into his knee. “The only other spare magnetic coupling would be in another Coalition ship, and it’s not like you can just ask for them to give you one.”
The next anticipated kick did not arrive. Instead, after some discussion over the ship’s intercom which he was too far away to catch, Orpo eventually wriggled out from under the panel to find another fierce Khanate at the engineering space hatch. Conversationally, it was a bust, because his new jailor did not speak at all other than to point the nerve disruptor when Orpo got too close.
That was perfectly fine. Orpo determined that his leg was not broken before he settled down at his console again, flipping through the colorful tabs of the management program until he found the screen he was looking for. The duplex fibre he had just threaded into the control panel allowed access to the navigation station on the bridge, with the course laid out in lazy curves to avoid other planetary systems and ending at a major Khanate world several days behind the battle lines and about eight days from their current position. There were at least a dozen other ships visible to the ship’s gravitational sensors spread out over hundreds of parsecs, but none of them seeming to be a Coalition rescue ship, which was good and bad.
All he could do was wait and hope the seed he had planted would bear fruit and the trail of breadcrumbs he was leaving would attract the right attention.
Over the next several days, Orpo saw several of the Khanate crew as his jailer, each of which was more taciturn and violent than the last. In order to keep his wits sharp, several ‘malfunctions’ in ship sensors were arranged, from a delivery mishap that sent several dozen packaged mealpacks into the brig cells to an oxygen sensor issue in engineering that let him crawl over the area with an appropriate set of tools. It was hard to look sufficiently concerned without breaking into a smile as he made the final adjustment to the maneuvering couch electronics, but the thought of what the barbarians had done to the freighter captain kept his concentration intact.
The surges grew more severe, even after the bridge reduced the drive strength slightly. By that point, Orpo was sleeping in his console chair with the empty remains of several disposable mealpacks scattered in the vicinity and enough deflated coffee bulbs to make walking hazardous. A low current from his sleeve woke Orpo up from a fitful doze just enough to open one eye, take in the slow-motion waltz of starship motion in the navigation screen, and become aware that Bambar had returned to the engineering space with a nasty grin and the repurposed Coalition space suit he had begun to wear after the first oxygen alert in the engineering space.
Once the other guard had departed, the Khanate turned his leering attention to an awake and alert prisoner. He sat down in the acceleration station beside the door and put his helmet in the seat next to him while waving his nerve disruptor vaguely in Orpo’s direction.
“Soon, Bambar will once again be Skull Bambar, and will have more honor than ever before.”
“How are you going to do that?” asked Orpo. He had turned his chair so he could keep one eye on the navigational screen and the other in Bambar’s general direction. The drive had been cut back to maneuvering levels and no power had been put to the shields, which was probably a good thing with the size of the Coalition escort destroyer maneuvering to a docking intercept outside, but the rest of the engineering power distribution was under control of the bridge at the moment.
“Bambar had an idea.” Bright white teeth showed in his grin, which was the first smile Orpo had seen so far from the Khanates, and hopefully the last. “Since this ship had no problem boarding your pathetic vessel, the captain begged a nearby slime ship for assistance. They will let us dock, and then our armored warriors will sweep their vessel clean of their filth. We will return to our Khan with two vessels, or perish in glorious battle. And then—” Bambar caressed his nerve disruptor and aimed at Orpo’s head. “You will take days to die for the indignity you have heaped upon Skull Bambar. Your teeth shall decorate my new necklace, and—”
“Alert,” sounded the intercom. “There is a change in the plan. The slime ship has noticed our life pods are missing, so they are sending over two shuttles. One will be empty for us to keep, and the other will have the part we requested, along with several engineers to install it.”
Bambar’s grin grew, and he adjusted a setting on his nerve disruptor. “Ah, the Khan will not need you anymore.”
“Don’t get impatient.” Orpo kept his hands in plain sight and away from the console controls. “Remember, pillage before burning. Those engineers may not be as cooperative as I am.”
After a moment, Bambar let up the pressure he had been putting on the nerve disruptor's firing stud. “Truth. They may have livers worthy of warriors. We shall see.”
“Clear the shuttle bay,” announced the intercom again. “All armored warriors are to remain back until the slime have exited the shuttle and been subdued. Then we will send them back on the same shuttle while the other warriors prepare the second shuttle and the gun positions prepare to blast breaches. They will be unarmed and defenseless, like grain before the thresher. Fight and die gloriously for your Khan.”
“My blood is the Khan’s,” repeated Bambar, his eyes narrowed and fierce.
On the navigation screen, Orpo could see the bulk of the destroyer, larger than the corvette but so much smaller than the cruiser he had once served on, settle in comfortably at short weapons range and the two small dots of shuttlecraft burning up the distance between them. It looked to be a Sheffield class from the active sensor emanations, a nasty customer in a fight with enough armor to shrug off one or two shots from the corvette before blowing her to plasma. The shuttles had to be the new Agna class assault craft and piloted by experts if the sharp maneuvers were any clue to their general level of competence. There were a few more intercom announcements as the first shuttle swept down into the docking bay and the second one paused aft, in a fuzzy shadow that the corvette’s sensors and weapons could not cover.
“If there’s any fighting, you should put on your helmet,” said Orpo calmly. “One loose round could depressurize the engineering space and kill me, but at least you have your suit.”
“I am not a coward,” snarled Bambar. Still, he dogged down his helmet with the experienced motions of a seasoned spacer and plugged his auxiliary oxygen into the acceleration couch’s fitting.
Taking advantage of his captor’s momentary distraction, Orpo lifted one finger and tapped a key on his display before returning his hands to their previous position. Deep in the acceleration couch, an altered sensor the size of a matchhead reported that the O2 being sent into the suit was actually at zero degrees Kelvin. A heater was triggered to warm the chilly flow, and since all six of the heaters had been rewired during Orpo’s supposed search for a defective environment sensor in engineering, the resulting pure oxygen forced into the space suit was heated into a near plasma, which proceeded to burn anything organic it could find.
Bambar did not even have time to scream.
Taking a brief moment to pray that his efforts over the last few day had actually worked, Orpo sprinted over to the engineering space hatch and dogged it manually, ignoring the heavy nerve disruptor that had been flung a few meters away from the burning corpse of his captor. If he was right, holding onto a weapon was going to be a very bad idea very shortly.
And if he was wrong, there was going to be a lot more death he could inflict from an engineering console than running through the corridors with a light weapon that could do nothing more than irritate a man in a suit of powered armor.
“Hull breach!” blatted the intercom. “All warriors—”
Whatever the captain was commanding was cut off abruptly as Orpo touched several more controls, chopping all power except for the motors on the airtight doors on the bridge. Another simple touch cut the lights and air, but before he could touch anything else, one outside wall of the engineering space flared into light and burst open.
He was knocked sprawling, but Orpo managed to put his hands on top of his head and hold his breath while armored figures dashed into the reactor room from the breach, heavy grav guns sweeping the corners for ambushes or hostiles.
“Clear!” called out one of the lead Coalition marines. “One hostile dead, one captured. Secure the reactor.”
“Secured!” called out another. “And… it’s shutting down?”
“I should hope so,” managed Orpo through his coughing. He had always disliked the stench of breaching explosives, despite their usefulness. “I’m Master Gunnery Sergeant Orpo Van Heusen of the New Yent defense forces, combat engineering. The crew of The Merry Snark is secured in the brig, probably hungry as hell and smelling like crap, but they should be fine. There’s twenty-two hostiles on board that I could tell. Don’t take any chances with them. They broke out of the brig and captured this ship about two weeks ago, spaced the crew, and were headed to—” He broke out coughing again, only to have the armored squad medic slap an oxygen mask over his face, which he appreciated, and a set of plasticufs around his wrists and ankles, which frankly he could have done without. And the quick search could have been more gentle, even if the searcher was wearing powered armor—
“They’ve got six suits of powered armor,” he managed.
“Primary squad is taking care of that,” said what must have been the commander of the squad despite looking identical to the rest of the armored suits. “Henway, Knock Knock, you stay here with the prisoner. Everybody else, follow me.”
In moments, the room was empty except for the smoldering corpse and Orpo’s two new captors, which he intended on treating much more respectful than the last one. They displayed respectable training, with one keeping his weapon pressed against Orpo’s chest and watching the door while the other kept an eye on the fusion bottle shutdown process, just in case.
After sufficient time for the distant snapping sounds of hypervelocity rounds to die out and the unconscious tension to fade slightly, Orpo licked his dry lips and asked the lesser question that was bothering him.
“So… Knock Knock. You’re the squad breacher, right?”
The marine nodded briefly.
“From your presence, I have to assume my message got through.”
Another nod and a female voice added, “All they told us was that the Khanates had captured the ship, and that there was some crazy fucker who found a way to get a message out. Sir. They did include your picture, but it just doesn’t do you justice at the moment.” The marine straightened up from her crouch and quit pointing the grav gun directly at Orpo. “Captain Lancer reports the ship is secure. Sixteen live prisoners.”
“Tell your Captain Lancer that he does excellent work, and pass along my compliments. Also, I’d suggest that each one of those bloodthirsty bastards be wrapped in razor wire and suspended in salt water while being transported to wherever they were headed in the first place, but I don’t think he’ll accept that. Bound and drugged at the bare minimum. Don’t underestimate them, and if you have to shoot, give them an extra in the head.”
The marine nodded, apparently passing on the suggestion. After a few more minutes, she took off her helmet, revealing a short mop of black curls and sparkling brown eyes that went well with her high cheekbones and natural dark pigmentation. She took a deep breath of the faint haze of smoke still lingering in the engineering space, then wrinkled up her nose.
“Nothing like the smell of Boomite after a mission, except you went and stunk up the room,” she remarked with a sharp sniff. “One of ours or theirs?”
“Theirs.” Orpo coughed spat to one side. “Teach him to screw with an engineer.”
“Challenge accepted,” said Knock Knock with a sharp smile, much as one might find on a shark. “On one condition, once you’re cleaned up and debriefed.” She bent down and looked him right in the eyes. “The AI on the ship is busted, you had one of them holding you at gunpoint since you were captured, and from the looks of it, you’ve been in that chair the whole time. How did you get a message out?”
Orpo pointed as much as he could by jerking his head in the direction of the fusion reactor. “If a reactor isn’t tuned right, it interferes with the gravitic drive. Communications use a high-frequency variant of that to send and receive messages, but I modulated the fusion bottle to pulse once every few seconds and sent my message by Morse code. The ship’s AI could pick out the message, if they had not melted it down. I was just hoping a passing ship would read the message and not promptly call them up to report some prankster fiddling with the fusion bottle.”
Henway looked up from the engineering console. “I don’t see any indication of tampering with the control run software.”
“I buried the code in the actual hardware,” explained Orpo. “They only kept me alive as long as they needed me, so my goal was to be needed as much as I could.”
Knock Knock burst out with a short giggle. “Oh, now I see. That’s funny as hell, Sergeant Van Heusen.”
“What?” Orpo frowned, then winced. “Oh, I’m never going to live this down, am I?”
“Live what down?” asked Henway.
Knock Knock gently patted the fusion reactor casing with one armored hand. “Sergeant Van Heusen is the first navy officer in centuries to send a distress call using a message in a bottle.”
Up close, you can see three young fillies with another, perched at the top of a steep hill while at the bottom, a ramp lies waiting for their arrival.
But we shall not tarry there to see the inevitable conclusion. Instead, consider the bakery at Sugarcube Corner, where a young apprentice baker is stuffing the oven with a freshly constructed cake filled with confetti and fireworks in the hopes of making a discovery in the field of party science.
No, we shall not wait for the explosion, no matter the drama and awesomeness it promises.
Perhaps we should examine the boutique instead, where a young farmer holds herself as steady as she can while her friend constructs a work of art around her. It is a scene of balance which is hinted at by the few dry apple leaves in the artist’s mane and the traces of mud on her hooves from a more physical labor which is just as much a work of art as her current endeavor.
But no, this is not what we seek either.
We shall travel past the park, where a young musician plays with eyes closed in front of her bowl of bits, her music and heart meant for only one other. Past the house filled with junk and love finally reunited, the home of pure music divided and united by the same, a post office filled with lost letters, a shop filled with clocks and other bits of timey-wimey merchandise, a young dragon running in the direction of an upcoming disaster, a dozen mares caught in song about the love of a reluctant stallion.
No, what we want to see is over here, where there once was nothing but grass until the memorable day when a crystal castle appeared in a flash of rainbow light.
And now there is nothing but grass again. Strange. Perhaps what we want to see is not here.
Let us away into the sky, past the colorful drifting home of a colorful pegasus, up into the air past the clouds, past the city perched on the edge of the mountain, past any and every thing until we reach…
Glass.
A strange thing to find up here, thin and protective around all that we have seen so far. Perhaps we should go a little further until we can see the castle appear, floating in a timeless void. And inside the castle, a young alicorn driven to sleep by her intense fatigue is holding the fragile glass container we have just left. Her forelegs are wrapped around the cylinder of glass and life, with her lips constantly moving even in her fitful slumber.
“I can fix it,” she mutters through gritted teeth. “This time, for certain.”
There are few things more useless than a mage who cannot use magic.
Zephirum was fully aware of his limitations, from the time when he had been found by his master several years ago until this very moment. He shoved the worn book away and cursed under his breath at the world. His master had a library with dozens of tomes, filled with the wisdom of magekind, but even this grimoire with the simplest of spells had eluded Zef’s grasp from the first time he had been permitted to open it.
He had no excuses any more. Every line had been explained, every conundrum traced out by his master until the only thing left was for Zef to master the simple spells and move on to more advanced theories. The master was patient, even kind in the way that he had implied was unusual for the practitioners of magic. There were far too many mages who abused their pupils, crippling their abilities to learn or even draining their weak powers to feed their own. The master had been almost fatherly in the way he treated the young orphan, giving him a name and a place in his small but tidy home outside of the village of Vatche. The only other alternative Zef had was to beg for a living or be thrown out of any other employment as his ‘gift’ manifested in broken crockery or unexplained accidents.
It was become a mage or starve.
That was not completely true. He could have always gone the Church, devoted his life to the study of his gift under their benevolent thumb, and be killed when he opened his mouth to criticize one who he disagreed with. Unable to control his magic or his temper, a lifetime in the Church’s service would be short indeed.
Zef closed the book and moved it away from the table, just in case a spark from his casting would catch a page on fire. Then he let his power flow in small increments through the spell he had just reviewed for the thousandth time. A bucket of snowmelt sat to one side of the plain desk, a reasonable precaution in consideration of his spellcraft history. The threads and sparks of the spell formed in his mind and across the table, making a weak yellow glow that threatened to exceed that of the oil lamp, held still and constant for one anticipatory second that perhaps this time it would work, then dissipated with a series of sharp snaps and pops when Zef became distracted by a noise.
Fighting back a curse, Zef stood and stretched, making sure that no leftover sparks of spellfire were hiding to set the house on fire when he turned his back. It was no mansion of a powerful court mage, more of a cottage out in the woods with all the amenities that the master’s comfortable wealth and his spellcraft could provide. There were other houses and apartments far away, which he had only informed his lowly apprentice about in passing. After all, fame was fickle, and a violent mob was not appreciative of one’s fame yesterday, just whatever slight they imagined today. Still, this was Zef’s only home, and he kept it just as neat and tidy as he could with only his hands and no magic. Each of the two tiny bedchambers were kept aired and the beds turned, even if Zef preferred to spend winter’s nights before the ceramic stove’s dying embers in the middle of the cottage. Not all of the master’s books were related to spellcraft after all, and he spent many pleasant evenings studying the histories and mysteries of the limited library in order to assuage his infinite curiosity, even if he could not cast a spell worth spit.
It only took five steps to open the front door, a thick timber structure much like the walls that would discourage even the most curious bear, then poke his nose out the outer door and check the weather. It did not take a spell to see the way clouds were stacking up on the horizon, a vicious storm which only looked to be more bitter than last week which had taken forever for Zef to shovel paths through. The wood pile was still nearly as large as before, the product of many hours of frustration taken out on defenseless dry windfalls in the forest, even if last week’s snowfall had left a portion of it hard as a rock when water melted, flowed between the loose logs, and froze again.
And somewhere behind that immobile lump of cut firewood came the plaintive noise that had distracted Zef in the middle of his spell.
“A cat,” he muttered. “Probably crawled back there to have her kittens and eat all the mice. Good riddance, pest. And shut up so I can study.”
The cat responded by making another tiny ‘mew’ of fear and loneliness before the closing door cut off its voice and Zef returned to his studies. After throwing another stick into the stove, Zef bit down on his bottom lip and opened the book again. This time he brought out the candle, embossed with helpful sigils and runes.
There was far too much fire in him already, so lighting a candle with a simple spell should have been as trivial as when his master would give a casual wave and light a dozen beeswax tapers at one time. All it took was concentration, as the master had said many, many times. A mage’s power was limited by their will, and the master had reassured Zef far too often about the power he could sense in the young man. A power which refused to reveal itself, even when Zef had raged in incoherent fury against the impassive candle or held himself in a meditative trance for days.
This afternoon, all of the will in the world would not have helped Zef, because every time he focused what little concentration he could muster, he could hear the stupid cat. After enough sputtering pops had burned new pits into the wooden desk, Zef used a damp sponge to mop it down and returned to the cottage’s front door to check on the storm.
Even more clouds were climbing into the sky, heralding a blizzard that was going to be more powerful than any Zef had seen since moving here. The intensity of the upcoming storm explained why the master was late returning, or at least that was what Zef was hoping. Even the sun was dimming behind the cloud cover, making him turn up the dim light of the oil lamp when he returned to his book. Several more attempts of the other simple spells went even worse than before without even sparks to put out by the time he slammed the book shut and surrendered to the events of the day.
“Can’t blame the cat for this,” he muttered while doing just that. “Well, I can. Just won’t do any good.”
It would not be a pleasant task to bring snow-covered firewood inside during the storm, so he used a broom to vigorously clean off the nearest end of the cord and began to lug the pieces inside. The activity helped keep his mind off his failure, and if he brought in more firewood than needed, so be it. To make space, the furniture in the main room had to be moved into the bedrooms, an activity that made him sweat with exertion by the time the main room was sufficiently full enough of wood to keep him warm even if the storm were to rage for days. With every trip outside to pick up an armload of wood, the cat in the wood pile took the opportunity to give out a tiny plaintive cry and increased his frustration.
“Shut up, cat!” he snapped in the middle of one trip to the wood pile. “I’m doing the one thing I can do well, and you’re complaining! Go… eat a mouse or something.”
It did seem to quiet the cat for a time, giving Zef the hope that its mother had returned to drag the noisemaker somewhere else more sheltered from the cold. It took some pounding to free the last chunks of wood from the frozen pile, and it would probably just freeze up again by the time he needed any more, so he left the cat’s hiding place alone while continuing to prepare for the storm.
The stove used an outside vent by the door, which Zef checked and made sure it was clear of any birds’ nests or debris so the stove would not choke up in the middle of the weather. All that was left was some vigorous sweeping to clean up after the wood restacking and Zef pulled his sleeping mat in next to the warm stove, where it would most probably remain for the next week.
Zef had planned on one last trip outside to look at the sky and check to see if the master was returning. A plaintive wail in the wood pile made him get down on his knees—dampening his trousers in the process—and peer into the stygian darkness where the cat was hiding. It had to still be in there, because he could hear it, even if there was no sign of the little pest. He spent some time calling for the cat despite himself, feeling the fire of frustrated rage in his chest grow as the pest continued to refuse the refuge of the cottage, instead preferring to freeze to death inside the firewood pile.
He went back inside. Alone.
Out of spite, Zef picked up the next book of spells on the shelf, the one he was supposed to open only after mastering their lesser forms. There was a familiar tantalizing sense of threshold about all the spells in it also, more complicated formulae and processes that much like their younger siblings he could learn and cast, but with most likely much the same miserable result.
He tried anyway, forcing the magic through new pathways and stopping only when the candle he was trying to light melted down into the desk, leaving a hissing hole. He grabbed the desk to throw it outside into the snow, but the burning oil lantern stopped him as the desk tilted and he was forced to grab it before the inevitable crash.
“Sonofa—” Zef darted outside and stuck his hand into a snowdrift until the minor burn quit hurting. The noise must have disturbed the cat again, because it began to mew from the depths of the frozen firewood pile, which only fanned the flames of his anger.
“Worthless, weak creature!” he shouted. “Mewing for help instead of helping yourself! There’s a perfectly good house right here, safe from the snow. My master will take you in no matter how worthless you are, feed you, care for you! All you have to do is come out!” He stalked back into the house and returned with a handful of dried beef, throwing it into the holes in the firewood piles like it was a weapon.
“There, you stupid cat!” he snarled. “Now you can freeze to death with a full belly! Are you happy!”
The snow was packing into the soles of his woolen socks, melting around his toes, and not improving his mood in the least. He flung himself forward at the wood pile, peering into every snow-rimmed hole until he spotted a pair of glittering yellow eyes. A frantic grab left him holding nothing more than a few bits of bark and the sound of the kitten vanishing further into concealment. He grabbed a piece of firewood and beat the top of the wood pile, making ice and snow fly with every blow as his fury raged until at long last, the wood fell from his hands and Zef sat down on the packed snow of the pathway, feeling the dirt turn to mud beneath his rear.
“Stupid cat.” As hard as he tried, he could not stop the hot tears that began to trickle down his face. Above him, the dance of darkness continued as the storm clouds rose with all their fury. Before long, the temperature would plunge until even the inside of the cottage’s windows would be thick with horfrost. Any creature who could not find a fire would die, much like Zef had nearly done before his master had rescued him from the driving snow.
He stumbled into the cottage and got more shreds of dried meat, leaving a trail from the ice-covered firewood to the door before returning inside and adding wood to the fire. The shivering that wracked his body was only partially due to the cold, the tender edges to his ears that had never fully recovered from years ago, the memories that refused to leave. It was an agony that he had sealed away, a scab ripped from a wound to bleed again and again.
There was no sincerity to his attempts at study now, only an open book and the low glow of a lantern while the failed mage in front of them did nothing but cry like a baby. It would be dark soon, with the wind howling around the cottage so fiercely that the door would need to remain shut and latched.
And the cat would die.
Sometime in the spring, he would unpack the firewood enough to find the tiny body, dry and lifeless with maggots wriggling over the corpse. Dead because of him. Just dead. Mages could crack open the sky, bring fire down upon their enemies, curse them into oblivion. He could not even make a simple light spell.
The tears would not stop falling. He was all alone again, with the storm and the snow outside, and the tears would not stop, even when he found himself on his knees again, praying to a God he had almost forgotten.
“God, help him. I can’t. I’m too weak. Give me… no, I don’t deserve anything. I’m worthless. Just help the cat. Please. It does not know where to go to be saved because it does not have another cat to lead it.”
The howling of the wind rose over the cries of the lost kitten, but the inside of the cottage was silent until Zef began to move with deliberate intent. Pressing the right knotholes on the floor opened the concealed trapdoor to the master’s secure library, and he plunged down the ladder at nearly a dead drop, only to emerge a few moments later with a thick tome tucked under one arm.
He slammed it down on the table, paging through it until he came to the spell that he was dreading. The consequences of casting something so far beyond his skills could be easily lethal for an experienced mage. For him… It was the only thing he could do. Everything he was and could be placed on throw of the dice. He took one last look at the spell while the storm built to a demonic howl outside.
Then he drew all the power he could and began to cast.
The mage had no name that he would claim for more than a week or more, no home that he would stay at for long, or any real friends other than a young orphan he had found a few years ago. The wind beneath his wings and a fat hare in his talons were his happiness right now, particularly since the blasted storm had finally cleared, allowing him to return to his mountain cottage. He swooped lower, taking in the thin trail of smoke coming from the snow-covered cottage with as much of a smile as his present form would allow.
There was a cleared space next to the door, allowing the mage to land and shift back to his human form while dropping the dead hare. Zephirum was a wonderful cook. With a few hours of work, cleaning, and a few dried vegetables, the young man would turn the hare into something delicious which would provide them both a good meal while they caught up on the events that had passed while they had been separated. He might never make a mage, but the boy could cook, and for that he could stay as long as he wanted. Never underestimate the value of a reliable person who could keep you with a full belly and watch the house while you were called away.
It took less than a step inside the door for the mage to realize what had happened while he was gone. The boy sat at the desk with the soft glow of a perfect light spell illuminating his book and a small sleeping kitten cradled in the crook of his elbow.
Words were not needed.
The mage walked over to his apprentice, who looked up with a smile, took in the sight of the dead hare, and passed the sleeping kitten over so that he could begin his task in the kitchen. The process of cooking the hare took several hours, with the kitten being fed tiny bits of it in the process, before the two humans settled down at the table to eat.
Before they began their meal, the mage could not resist saying, “I told you.”
“Many times.” Zephirum nodded while dishing out the thick stew. “I’m sorry I did not listen to you.”
“I’m just pleased that you listened to something.” The mage allowed a tiny bit of stewed hare to fall to the floor, where it was immediately pounced upon.
“As am I.” The boy lowered his head and said grace, but stopped before dipping his spoon into his bowl. “Things will be different now, master.”
“Fewer mice in the kitchen, for one. And an apprentice who is good for more than just boiling potatoes. I will adapt to the occasional cat hair in the wrong place. How about you, Zephirum?”
“No.” The boy looked thoughtful while a playful breeze rattled the windows. “I think that name has served its purpose.”
“Agreed.” The mage considered while they ate, and only spoke again after the meal had been completed and the dishes cleaned. “What would you think of Zephyr?”
The newly named Zephyr settled down at the table with his master and picked up the kitten. “I would like that very much, Master.”
The stars were mere blurs of light, constantly spinning around and around and—
Instinct broke in, the trained reflexes of simulators and drills that overrode the blurred sensation of awakening. One hand moved in this direction despite the sharp pain, while the other arm moved that way, and the spinning slowed, then stopped. Stephenie sucked in another breath and held it for a while, just listening to the hiss and click of her spacesuit systems.
I’m alive.
Her only view of the engagement had been little more than a graser crew would normally get, but since their only task in combat was to manually fire the weapon in the event that battle damage cut them off from central control, and they had needed to fire far more than she had ever practiced…
The explosion should have turned her into chunky salsa, and being blown out through the ship’s grav drive wedge would have only mixed the whole gun crew into an indescribable paste, but other than a brutal bruise on her left arm, she was still in fair shape, so the ship’s power had died before the explosion. The skinsuit had some red lights on the heads-up when she gave a sharp nod to bring it down on the inside of her helmet visor, nothing too serious. She toggled the open suit frequency and listened for the warbling sound of other suit beacons, but the only thing she could hear was her own beating heart.
Her eyes flickered to the HUD display again, to the yellow light next to COMM and the red light on BEACON. Without communication, it did not matter which side won the ongoing battle. A rescue shuttle of either side would not be able to pick her skinsuit out of the scattered wreckage, and she would drift until something critical broke down in her suit. Or herself.
“Any vessel, this is Ensign Stephenie Greenhaven of the Grayson Navy requesting assistance. My beacon is broken, so you’ll have to home in on this signal. Please respond.”
Her voice on the damaged comm was still clear, but since she was unable to pick up any transmissions, even the interstellar hiss of static, most likely the antenna had been sheared off in the explosion, and the only way she could talk to anybody would be if they were only a meter or so away. It was still worth a try, so she set the message to repeat endlessly, listening to it in the background as she tried her best to focus her thoughts.
An hour later, she turned the volume down.
Watching with the bare eye for starships in the vastness of space was futile, unless the ship passed close enough for the shimmer of the drive fields to be visible. On the vast scale that battles tended to, the probability dropped considerably. After another hour…
Three hours later, she had taken just watching the distant stars. The system primary was far enough away that she did not have to polarize the visor at all, so the bright starlight stood out in sharp pinpoints. At some time during the last few hours, she had even managed to pick out the closest primary star, a brighter spot that still cast a large enough hyper shadow to prevent her wounded warship from slipping away before being destroyed. There were millions of other humans on the worlds around that star, most of whom probably never even knew there was a battle, let alone that one of the survivors was looking back at them.
After five hours, she closed her eyes. The intrinsic velocities of starship combat would have flung her suit and the few pieces of wreckage she could still see far out of rescue range. The suit would quietly go about its job of protecting her from the endless vacuum and cold until it ran out of power in a few weeks, but by then…
There was enough power for the damaged RCS to make a small adjustment to her delta-v, but without knowing where a rescue ship might be, the only thing that would gain her would be to make her position completely lost instead of only hopelessly lost.
At twelve hours, she had turned down the comm volume so far that her repeating voice was a bare whisper.
At fourteen hours, she turned off the volume and just listened to the silent stars.
At eighteen hours, something touched her on the shoulder.
“A dog.” Cheerilee looked down at the two dejected unicorn students, who at least appeared to be honest in their explanation of why their four-page report on Equestrian rivers and streams was absent.
“Well.” Snips scuffed one hoof against the schoolroom floor. “We thought it was a dog.”
“It grabbed our report when we were coming to school,” declared Snails. “After we had spent hours and hours and hours—”
“and hours on it!” said Snips. “We chased after the dog, but it ran really, really fast and just when we were about to catch it—”
“The dog turned into a changeling!” said Snails. “Like a real arthropod with wings and everything! I wanted to put it in a jar, but it still had our report.”
“It tried to fly but we shot magic at it! Boom! Pow! Zap!” declared Snips, hopping around the floor.
“And it crashed into the river.”
“With our report.”
“We tried to use our magic to pull out the pages before they got too wet.”
“But they were all soggy and came apart, except for one page that Snails was pulling really, really hard on.”
“Only it wasn’t a page of paper,” said Snails. “It was a sea serpent! A great big one with a giant mustache like the ones the Great and Powerful Trixie gave us when she beat the giant Ursa Major.”
Cheerilee held up a cautionary hoof. “I thought Twilight Sparkle gave you two mustaches after that disaster. And it was an Ursa Minor, and Twilight was the one who made it leave town.”
“Well…” Snails got a look of extreme concentration, or perhaps constipation. “Maybe.”
After a brief pause to scratch the itchy area on her forehead, which was most certainly not a facehoof, Cheerilee said, “Okay. What about the sea serpent?”
Snips nodded. “Yeah, the Great and Powerful Trixie could chase away the sea serpent if she really wanted to.”
“I think she wanted to know about our report,” said Snails. “But we could go get Trixie and show her the sea serp—”
“The report,” said Cheerilee a little harsher than she wanted. “Just… The report, please.”
“The sea serpent couldn’t help us get the report back either,” said Snips. “But he said he’d help us re-write it, if you give us another day.”
“Or two, if you want it writ up really good,” said Snails.
Cheerilee had just gotten done silently counting the first twenty primes and was seriously contemplating taking up a hobby like skydiving when there was a light tapping at the schoolhouse door, done by a welcome and familiar pony.
“Raindrops,” said Cheerilee in what she hoped was an indoor voice. “Are you here to escort your brother and his friend home?”
I hope.
“Yes, Miss Cheerilee,” said the ever-polite pegasus. “Are they in trouble again?”
“No, nothing too bad,” said Cheerilee with a cautionary glance. “Just a paper they need to rewrite by tomorrow.”
“Awww,” chorused the two troublemakers.
“Now hurry on home,” said Cheerilee. “I expect to see your report on my desk by the morning bell.”
Snips and Snails shuffled out of the schoolhouse and down the road next to Raindrops until they were out of sight, at which time their dejected trudges turned into eager gallops.
“Come on, Thorax,” called Snips over his shoulder.
“Yeah, Mister Magnet said he’d show us where a whole bunch of frogs live down in the river.” Snails stopped galloping and gave several long, springy hops. “I want to put them in this report. Frogs are the best part of rivers and screams.”
“I’m coming,” said the changeling as he shifted into his natural bug form and began flying to catch up. “Are you sure you two didn’t get in too much trouble when I grabbed your homework? It was just so full of love I couldn’t help myself.”
“Naa,” said Snips. “We do this to Miss Cheerilee all the time. She loves it.”
“Weapons free,” snapped Captain Grayson. “Hard right rudder, set course two five degrees, all ahead flank. Set General Quarters.”
The bellow of the USS Cooperstown’s gas turbines ramping up to full speed came almost instantly, a tribute to many hours of drill time the captain had put his mismatched crew through en route to their dangerous mission. It still would not matter one bit if the ship did not fight its way through this attack.
“Missile away,” called out the Air Warfare Officer, a fuzz-cheeked young Japanese boy with the tragic nickname of Junebug, who looked like a child in his baggy navy uniform. His age did not affect the speed at which his fingers danced over the controls before the roar of the departing missile had died away, priming a second shot in case the first one missed. Launching without confirmation was far from normal Navy procedure, but Grayson was operating about as far away from the staff pukes who had written the manual as was earthly possible, and he would rather waste a missile on a false contact than have some Chinese fighter jockey paint a US flag on the side of his jet.
“What have you got on that vampire?” growled Grayson while trying to hold onto something solid to compensate for the tilt of the ship in the tight turn.
“Range twelve klicks, speed subsonic, missile locked and closing,” snapped Junebug, followed almost instantly by the Electronic Warfare Operator by his side.
“EWS says it’s a Chinese TL-10, dropping down to sea-skimming… damnit! No contact!
“That’s a miss,” said Junebug, his voice dropping to something closer to calm. “It’s still out there, closing. Time to impact one minute.”
“Course nine zero degrees,” snapped Grayson. “Chaff and flares ready.”
“Second vampire detected,” rattled off the AWO as if it were a video game. “Missile away.”
“No ship on radar other than a fishing boat,” said the Surface Warfare Officer, who was as old as the missile jockey was young. “Told you we should’a Harpooned it the minute we saw it. Brace for impact?”
“Brace for impact,” called out Captain Grayson, shocked out of his momentary mental paralysis by the grizzled old veteran. “All hands, brace for impact.”
“All hands,” shouted the duty officer into the intercom, “brace for impact, port side. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”
“Yes! Second contact destroyed,” snapped the AWO. “Take that, you chinks. First contact should be above radar horizon in ten— NOW!”
The Rolling Airframe Missile launcher coughed, sending a streak of red fire out against the ocean just moments before the countermeasure launchers thumped, both driven by the video-game reflexes of a sailor who most probably had not been born when the ship’s keel had been laid down.
“Right full rudder,” snapped Captain Grayson before the tactical officer grabbed him and dragged him to the deck.
“Everybody down!” bellowed Petty Fuentes. “Hit the deck!”
The sharp ‘Blaaaat’ of the CIWS punctuated an explosion to the aft of the ship, making the armored windows of the bridge shake, but not burst into deadly fragments that would have shredded every person who had not flattened. Captain Grayson staggered back to his feet with the rest of the bridge crew, barking out a quick, “Damage?”
“Radar good,” said the teenaged AWO over the ringing in Grayson’s ears. “No contacts.”
“Minor shrapnel damage to the flight deck, no fire.”
“Do you want to kill that Chinese fishing boat now, Captain?” Command Master Chief Petty Officer Fuentes punched in the coordinates of the mentioned boat with experienced fingers that had most likely done the task a hundred times in drills.
“The missiles didn’t come from the fishing boat,” said Seaman Dikes at the electronic warfare station, which shared a display with his young friend. “See that, Hiro? They came in with a fishhook turn from behind the island.”
“That’s not much of an island,” said Seaman Junebug. He poked one thin finger at the display and traced a circle. “If they were more than a few hundred meters back, they could shoot over it, but if they’re huddled up to the side—”
“Yeah, that’d give SSM’s a fit.” Dikes grabbed a post-it note off the stack next to her and scribbled a ship-shape on it. “I’d stick a missile boat at anchor against the shoreline here and use the fishing boat to spot for it. There must be a few hundred Chinese PTs with T-10s still floating.”
“Most of ‘em carry four,” cautioned Junebug, who turned his attention back to the radar screen with an abrupt jerk.
“If you children are done,” cautioned Petty Fuentes, “we have a spotter to kill. If I can get the radar to lock onto it.”
“Shit!” Seaman Dikes jabbed at her EWS console. “They’ve changed their transponder to squawk a Greenpeace code and turned off their radar.”
Several months ago in the middle of the on-again-off-again Wet Firecracker War, Greenpeace had triumphantly announced how it had hacked both forces and introduced viruses into their weapon systems so that China and the US would be forced to declare peace. The Americans blamed the Chinese for using Greenpeace as a proxy for their military. China remained quiet. A month later, Greenpeace’s headquarter in the Netherlands vanished in a truck bombing with radioactive waste sprinkled in the explosives, but that did not help the chaos left behind.
“Harpoon’s are out,” said Fuentes. “They’re all Block Three and got corrupted firmware updates, so they won’t lock on with the surface radar giving them targeting cues. Transponder gives us a clean target, but I don’t have anything for you to hit it with, sir. Should I arrange a boarding party again?”
“Not with that potential patrol boat out there. We’ll take it out with Sea Sparrows when the time is right. Set course two eight zero, slow to full speed so we don’t stress the engines. How long to launch an observation drone?”
Captain Grayson bit his bottom lip while staring out the bridge window, wishing that he could just get to where he needed to launch the helicopter rescue mission instead of screwing around with the scattered remnants of the Chinese coastal forces. It would be nice to have a task force sweeping into the assault with a few hundred Marines, a wave of cruise missiles to take out any fixed defenses, and the air cover of a carrier battle group, but the only carrier that had survived so far was the USS Vinson tied up in a dock in the radioactive ruins of San Diego, and Grayson felt confident that it would remain there until it decayed into rust before Fleet would get up the courage to put it out to sea again.
“We’ve got the Blackjack stowed to make space for the chopper,” said his executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Stack, who had been arranging things for their primary mission during the initial attack and just stumbled onto the bridge. “There’s some concussion damage in the area, but we can’t bring it out and the helicopter both. We can get a Wasp up right now if you want.”
“Do it. Our helo has top priority once we get clear.” Grayson forced himself to breathe slower, waiting for the sound of another incoming missile or torpedo— “Spotters to the sides,” he relayed to his XO. “Watch for torpedo tracks. It’s not much, but we’re nearly deaf at this speed, and I don’t want to loiter. And ready the Nixie.”
“Aye, sir.”
The blue-green underwater laser plotter on the bow should be able to pick up an incoming torpedo track or an unexpected underwater mountain, but Grayson was not feeling very lucky. The US Navy had left far too many state-of-the-art hulls littering the seafloor around China’s coast to make the aging ship he was in command more than just another statistic if he got sloppy. The buzz of the launching drone was at least a little comforting, although it left his EWS operator doing double-duty with the Apple laptop tied down to the side of her station. There should have been an official Navy installation for the device with a Navy guide and Navy procedures to follow involved in every shipboard system, but the first nuke that had gone off in the San Francisco harbor had scattered the US forces in order to not give the unknown enemy a concentration of forces to hit. The important Navy ships had gotten first pick of the replacements and supplies after that. The older and more slipshod ships with flakey electronics systems and patchwork weapon systems had to scrounge for what they got, which was how Grayson wound up with a pair of Japanese teenagers working the Cooperstown’s digital eyes and ears.
“Drone aloft and relaying,” said Seaman Dikes. “Headed for the fishing trawler, ETA four minutes or so.”
“Negative. Take it over Quinpeng Island.” Grayson moved over to the laptop and looked over Dikes’ shoulder. “Keep it high.”
“Too high and we won’t see the patrol boat,” said Dikes, but she did raise the nose of the drone and gained altitude.
“I don’t think that’s a patrol boat up there. Commander Stack, remember that report we had of the Chinese welding one-shot missile tubes to their Kilo class subs to make up for their torpedo shortage?”
“Yes, sir. That’s awful shallow water for a sub, though.”
“If I’m right, that’s a good thing.” Grayson pointed to the digital chart and the fuzzy aerial photo of the tiny island. “Those subs are getting really old, and submerging one does not guarantee it will come back to the surface, particularly since Russia started shipping them booby-trapped spare parts. Every time they dive, that’s more wear and tear on their batteries, and a greater chance of something rupturing. They’re almost blind against our own subs, and the Chinese have sunk more than one of their own by accident. So if they strip them of all their torpedoes but one salvo and leave them docked beside an island like this—”
“We should be expecting a torpedo, I presume?” The XO measured several quick distances on the digital map. “We’re within their range, if they dogleg it.”
“The closer and dumber we get, the more the Chinese captain will like it. The fishing boat isn’t trying to get away, is it, TO?”
Fuentes scowled at the digital display. “No, sir. Our present course and speed will let us pass Quinpeng Island in thirteen minutes, and intercept the trawler in about twenty.”
“Right about there.” The captain’s finger tapped the map display. “Right where we go past the island. The water’s shallow, just perfect for mines. I’ll bet there’s a minefield laid from the edge of the beach down to the deeper water on both sides of the island. If that is a sub laid up over there, they’ll have spotters up on the hill by now, and there’s not a darned thing they have to do but watch the big, dumb American ship go plowing into the minefield and blow up. And if we do miss the mines, they can put a shot right into our tail when we drive by. We’d never pick up the sub on radar with that island next to it, and our active sonar would be worthless. They wouldn’t even have to submerge to periscope depth.”
“So, we scrub the rescue mission, sir?” Commander Stack zoomed the display out and measured. “Two hours until sunset and thirty kliks out from our planned position. That’s cutting the chopper’s fuel reserves tight. The zoomies aren’t going to last too many days out in the woods without all the luxuries they’ve gotten used to on base.”
Their primary mission resulted from the Air Force ‘quietly’ sending seven B-21 bombers into China to deal with what the Americans called a geosynchronous satellite laser swatter, but the Chinese called an ‘experimental satellite defense platform’ several days ago, but one of the bombers had caught a golden BB on its way back out and crashed. Fortunately, the burning bomber had remained on autopilot after the two man crew ejected, crashing twenty minutes later into a forest somewhat north of the USS Cooperstown’s present position. Unfortunately, one of the pilots of the most sophisticated flying machine on the planet managed to prang his simple parachute into a tree and break his leg, so simply hiking to the shore and waiting for a rowboat was right out. This section of the coast was slightly less radioactive than the straits between Taiwan and China, so the pilots were not likely to glow in the dark if their rescue were delayed by a day or two, but…
“Seaman Hu, is the fishing trawler broadcasting any radio signals?”
Hu nodded, although the chubby Hawaiian kept his eyes closed, concentrating on the headset he had plugged into the ship’s radio systems. Grayson doubted he had even moved during the missile attack, because nothing could distract the Chinese immigrant when he had his mind set. “Their radio operator has a terrible Gansu accent, but they’re broadcasting in the clear with code words, so I don’t think they’ve got a current encryption key for their scrambler. Did you want to challenge them, sir?”
“Standard command, heave to and prepare to be boarded, yes. Repeat at intervals. Try to sound German.”
“Ja, mein Kapitän.” The young linguist turned to his microphone with statico commands while Captain Grayson held a quick bridge conference, sketching out the details of his plan of action and keeping an eye on the drone’s video feed. Since the hacked surface radar network fed both the Harpoon missiles and the 76mm gun, accurate targeting of the fishing trawler was nearly impossible, but there was no such issue in giving the top of the small island a high-explosive massage.
Firing single shots and adjusting the fall of the shells provided enough smoke and dust to allow the drone a single pass over the island, revealing a bustle of activity around a slim shape in the water on the other side.
“I think we can arc the shells enough to scare them,” mused Fuentes.
“Kill ‘em, don’t kiss ‘em is what my old Surface Warfare instructor always used to say. Take another pass over the peak of that island. I think I see their observation team.” Grayson waited until the drone lined up on the stubby peak and pointed with one finger. “Target laser and set up fire mission, five rounds rapid.”
“Aye, Captain. Seeker, five rounds rapid on the way.” The slow, steady thumping of the 76mm gun abruptly turned into a staccato thumpathumpathumpa, followed by a brief pause as the ammunition feed switched back to standard high-explosive. The top of the island fairly erupted in flames on the screen, with the distinct image of a human being, or at least most of a human body flying up into the air before the signal was abruptly cut by a piece of flying debris.
“That should do it,” said Grayson. “Ready the decoy, Dikes. Junebug, give me two Sea Sparrows on that target up ahead.”
The words had barely left his mouth before the roar of two RIM-162 ESSM missiles filled the bridge, streaking downrange to the fishing trawler like bright dots, then big puffy clouds of airburst detonation.
He did not expect the massive explosion that followed, a blast so strong that Grayson blinked and turned away with the instinctive motions of somebody who had seen one nuclear explosion and did not want to see another. The detonation was far too small to be a nuke, but the tower of flame and smoke rising from the target could probably have been seen in Taiwan.
“Holy shit,” murmured his XO. “Glad we didn’t board that ship.”
“Take a memo, Commander Stack. As of this point, we no longer board enemy fishing vessels in the vicinity for resupply, no matter how low on fuel we are.” Grayson checked the course plot, and took a judging look at the nearness of the island. “Dikes, drop the decoy. Helm, bring us around to two five degrees, slow to twenty knots. Go to ECM blackout state.”
“Course two five degrees at twenty knots, aye. Powering off all radiation sources,” echoed the XO.
Behind them, the crew rolled what looked like a fifty-five gallon barrel off the fantail, but on hitting the water, it rapidly inflated a huge mylar balloon with several small flares, making an oddly-shaped heat source that was boosted by a digital recorder squawking on both radio frequencies and through several speakers in the main body. It never would have passed through the Navy procurement system, and it only lasted five minutes or so, but the captain had approved making several of them out of scrap at the last port call, and certainly no enemy would ever anticipate seeing a giant inflated dog or mouse bobbing in the ocean. Besides, it had turned into a bit of a creativity contest for the stressed Americans, who were halfway around the world and needed something to distract them.
“Twilight Sparkle is broadcasting,” said Dikes, taking a look at the rear camera on the bridge and watching the glittering silver alicorn bob in the waves of their passage. “No other signals detected.”
The island crawled by at the slow headway the Cooperstown was making on traveling to the other side of the island, but the activity on the bridge more than made up for the slow pace. Another Wasp drone was prepared for launching, the VLS system was programmed for an ASROC launch, and the surface warfare computer system was being purged and reset to clear the lockouts that the Greenpeace hacks had activated.
“Seems a little overkill to use an ASROC and a Harpoon on the same target,” said Seaman Junebug once he had the system set up.
“There is no overkill,” said Hu, “there is only Open Fire and Reload.”
“Amen.” Captain Grayson checked the surface plot again. “Launch the Siren. Let’s give that sub something to watch other than its ass. And prep the gun with laser seeking rounds.”
The countermeasures launcher gave a solid thud and the British rocket popped up into the air, rocketing to a spot a few kilometers further west and deploying a parachute before broadcasting a radio signal designed to look like the Cooperstown’s radar.
“Coming up on the intercept point. Launch the Wasp but don’t turn on the camera until it clears the island.”
“EM free launch, aye.” Seaman Dikes tracked the dot on her laptop screen while the XO counted down the time. “Coming up on signal in fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.”
“Harpoon set to Vector Launch,” said Fuentes. “Main gun loaded with seeker rounds.”
“ASROC programmed and set,” said Junebug.
“And… we’re live.” The Wasp drone’s camera began transmitting, and an image of the rocky nitche where the sub had been resting filled the screen, only the submarine was moving away from its safe anchorage with a few crewmembers still scrambling to get down the hatch before it dove.
“Launch,” said Captain Grayson. “Surface action, no radar. Bring the gun around, just in case they miss. Ready with guided rounds, slow to ten knots.”
The thunderous double-whoosh of launching shook the bridge, one missile roaring up at a low angle before it dropped the solid-fuel booster and extended its wings, while the other shot nearly straight up.
“Harpoon approaching programmed turn,” said Fuentes. “Radar active, homing on any target it can find.”
“ASROC is still falling,” said Junebug.
“High-frequency screws, dopplering away.” The sonar operator, who had been nearly silent to this point, regarded his waterfall display with his nose almost pressing against the glass. “Looks like two torpedoes, fired at the location of the Siren decoy.”
“That was too close. Dikes, is the sub laser designated yet?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Give him five guided rounds, standard.”
Between the gun rounds punching holes in the top deck, the Harpoon missile ripping into the conning tower, and the late-arriving torpedo from the ASROC, there was not much remaining of the Chinese submarine as it ruptured and sank. The torpedoes were still running, so Grayson kept the Cooperstown still and silent until they ran out of fuel. Then he brought the ship back around to the leeward side of the island and considered his next move while the ship secured from General Quarters and some of the screaming tension eased out of his nerves.
Sinking a submarine and a decoy trawler did not bring him one step closer to rescuing the Air Force pilots, because the Chinese defense forces may have been chopped up and distracted by nuclear strikes and internal rebellion, but they still had guns and bombs a plenty to pursue one obsolete US frigate once they got their act together. Seaman Hu interrupted Grayson’s musing with a quick hand motion beckoning the captain over while holding a hand over his microphone.
“Captain, I’ve got somebody from the Chinese command calling on the same frequency as the fishing trawler was using, asking for a status report. I don’t think they had a chance to send a message before we blew them up.”
Grayson considered his situation, weighing the survival of his ship and crew against their assigned mission and the certainly alerted Chinese forces. “Do you think you can impersonate our exploding friends?” he asked. “We’ve got a burning ship we can claim was us, and I’m not sure if the sub got a message off.”
Hu just grinned. “I bet I can have them asking us to bring them some fish.”
“No glowing sushi for the Chinese military,” cautioned Grayson. “Keep it simple, as long as they stay off our fantail for the evening. If the helo takes off at sunset with extra jerrycans of fuel, we can have the Air Force pilots back here by sunrise and be gone.”
“Yes, sir.” The chubby Hawaiian gave Grayson an abbreviated salute before returning to his microphone, leaving the captain to see to the rescue mission preparations.
Then came the worst part.
In combat, every order he gave could make or break the ship. The SH-60A vanishing off into the darkness was a factor he could not control. He had given the helo everything he could think of, from a forged transponder code the ESM operator had pulled off a military transport some distance inland to several recorded responses in Chinese in case they met one of the air-defense artillery installations. The only thing he could do was sit and worry in the darkness, with the ship running civilian lights and Seaman Hu snoozing by the radio in case of an unexpected query.
The USS Cooperstown steamed in glacial circles, no more than two or three knots, just enough to keep the towed array from snagging on the ocean floor and the passive sonar ensign busy marking out other ship traffic in the formerly busy waterway. He took a few short naps in the peaceful darkness, broken by a curious Chinese fighter who overflew the area shortly after sunset, and the sonar operator talking to one of the other sailors about an old Chinese nuke boat rattling and clattering in the general area of Grayson’s planned escape route back to Taiwan.
The dawning sun had just begun to paint the horizon in dusky red shades when the Coop’s helicopter skimmed into view, making the difficult landing in one smooth attempt and shutting down the rotors. Grayson immediately gave the orders to turn for open waters at a slow cruising speed, ‘sailing casually’ as the helmsman like to call it. There were no holes in the helo, or injuries to the disembarking crew other than the aforementioned pilot’s broken leg, so a small section of tension on Grayson’s heart lifted. The rest would not go away until the ship was once again docked on the far side of Taiwan, and even then Captain Grayson would still have a part of his soul onboard.
Far too many ships had fallen over the last few years for Grayson to believe he was going to make it through this war alive. Death would come for him by blazing missile or silent torpedo, and the only thing he could do until that day was do his duty to his country, his crew, and his oath.
He took a few peaceful hours to stare out across the waves and soak in the beauty of the morning before returning to his cabin. Tomorrow there would be another mission, and he needed to rest.
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.
— Walt Whitman
2019 Through a Mirror Brightly - Long Distance Beauty Calling
“It was probably inevitable,” said Twilight Sparkle.
“I’m not quite following,” said Princess Twilight Sparkle. She pointed with her scepter at the surroundings of the crystal castle and gave out a huff of breath. “If I had any idea this was going to happen when I cast my spell, I never would have done it.”
“Me either,” murmured Twilight.
“It’s only obvious in hindsight,” said Twilight Sparkle, adjusting her glasses and pulling a book from the surrounding shelves. “Starswirl’s Laws of Convergent Dimensions—”
“Fourth law or fifth law?” asked Twilight.
“Fifth,” said Twilight Sparkle. “As clarified in his Thaumetic Dictat, Seventh Printing—”
“Ooo, we only have up to the sixth printing,” said Twilight. “Remind me to get with you after this is over and compare notes.”
“Twilight!” chided Twilight. “Focus. Go ahead, Twilight.”
“Thank you,” said Twilight Sparkle. “In summary, all covalent dimensions share certain traits with their paired dimensions in an n-orthogonal fashion, so given a Twilight Sparkle of standard specifications within those covalent dimensions, there are synchronized aspects of our personality and physical forms that maintain an equivalence across all of us.”
“With some minor variances,” said Twilight, looking at Princess Twilight Sparkle’s wings, or at least the princess closest to her.
“True again,” said Twilight Sparkle, flipping through the book she was holding in her magic.
“Obviously our series converges,” stated a Twilight, “or the end result would have been an infinite influx of dimensional teleportation spells that would have destroyed the universe, rippling back down the multiverse and dooming all life in existence.”
“I can see how that would be bad,” said Twilight Sparkle. “Thankfully, we all worked out the math ahead of time, although it appears we all made the same mistake in our calculations.”
“Not exactly a mistake, more of a preconceived experimental bias,” said Twilight Sparkle. “As I suspected, despite obvious differences, this dimension’s Twilight Sparkle has exactly the same problem all of us had. See, right here.”
She held her hoof under a line in the diary.
Date: #214. Summary: Failure. Again. It’s like there’s no pony anywhere around here who is a perfect match for me.
“Hey, that’s personal,” said Twilight Sparkle, who managed to grab onto his diary and wretch it away from the dozen or so Twilight Sparkles who were reading it. “Besides, I didn’t go anywhere. You all came here. So what were all of you…”
Prince Twilight Sparkle backed up a step, holding the diary to his chest as all of the other Twilight’s in the room took a step forward in his direction.
“I’ll be down the hall if you need me,” said Spike, hopping to his feet and making good speed through the doorway. “Don’t need me,” trailed out behind him.
“Why, Grandmother,” I murmured just under my breath. “What big teeth you have.”
The thing that had been hiding under the sheets of my grandmother’s bed moved, uncoiling with a howl of rage as it leapt. If the feral beast had hidden anywhere else and jumped me when I first came into the house, it might have had a chance.
Trying to make a leap from a waterbed was its last mistake.
The sawed-off shotgun I had concealed in the picnic basket went off with a roar, dumping both barrels into the beast’s chest. Contrary to movie physics, the bulk of the wolf-creature kept moving in my direction, making me drop the shattered picnic basket and roll to avoid being clawed to death as it spasmed. The heavy Colt .45 felt like a feather when I pulled it out from the small of my back where it had been concealed, but the roar when it went off was just as deafening in my grandmother’s living room as the shotgun had been a few seconds ago.
I put three rapid shots in the spasming beast’s center of gravity where the combination of silver and cold iron shot had chewed open its chest, then cocked the heavy pistol and aimed. The single-action shot blew brains and skull matter all over grandmother’s clean linoleum floor, and the beast quit moving.
A second shot to the head was overkill. I did it anyway.
“Reload, reload,” I muttered, grabbing the double-barrel shotgun out of the remains of the picnic basket and scattering the paper-wrapped sandwiches and apples that it no longer could hold. Two shells from the holder on the stock fed into the action almost automatically and I snapped the action closed, placing it beside me as I reloaded the heavy Colt with gleaming silver shells.
“Grandma!” There was not much hope of getting a response, but I called out anyway. “Are you in here?”
Over the ringing in my ears, I could barely hear a noise which I tracked down to a nearby closet. Grandma normally stored galoshes and umbrellas in it, although after carefully opening the door with the barrel of the shotgun, it obviously now held a slightly overweight elderly woman, who was matted with blood and tied up.
“Werewolf,” she managed to say once I got the gag out of her mouth. Grandma spat once to the side and took a trembling breath. “Caught me outside. Foolish old woman. Harbinger said I should have never retired.”
“It was newly turned,” I said, trying to look in all directions at once since werewolves liked to sneak up when you were distracted, and my grandmother was distracting the heck out of me. “There’s an old wolf working its way up the valley, making spawn to cover its tracks. Cost us two Hunters so far.”
I froze with the knife just inches away from the bloody ropes that bound up my grandmother. She obviously knew why, because she rasped, “I can’t tell. It could just be claws.”
“Or it could be a bite.” It took considerable physical and mental effort to pull my grandmother out of the closet and get her up on the couch, still wrapped in her ropes. “I’ve got a medical kit for this,” I babbled. “There’s an injection in there and everything. It’s supposed to work at least some of the time—”
There was no way that I could meet her eyes.
We talked for a while that evening while I did what I could. She told me some old stories about Earl Harbinger, and her years with the agency. I told her about how things had changed since she retired. She made a few phone calls, a very few, with me holding the receiver.
“Specialization is for insects.” — Robert A. Heinlein
I always get the sparks before a drop.
The headshrinker says it’s nothing serious, even expected from more powerful unicorns. The thaumic passageways clearing themselves for action, preparing for the overcharged power a combat suit can generate. Excess thaums generated by stress hormones and suppressed pacing urges. Psychological urges dating back when mares used to fight for their mates. Interference between hyperspace and unicorn magic.
I still worry. It helps to think of our goal. Optrunco Thysanoptera. Kill the bugs. I remember the massive ship descending on Canterlot. The flare of planetary defenses being destroyed by one-bug suicide ships, little more than a drive unit and a changeling drone. The last desperate defense by the Royal Guard, their bodies falling like burning leaves as the changeling defenses cut them down. The gloating changeling queen who had bypassed every unsuspecting defense of our world, drained Cadence of her magic, entombed Celestia in a cocoon, maneuvered Luna into a situation where she dared not act for fear of destroying that which she was sworn to protect.
Then the light as Cadence and Shining Armor joined their powers. We are the light. They are the darkness. We will be victorious, or the darkness will consume everything. And to that end, Optrunco Thysanoptera.
“Awright, shut yer yaps and pay attention,” barks Captain Moondancer, bringing my mind back to the ship “Last check before drop. Line up for inspection.”
It seems like such a short time ago that Moondancer was in my class in Canterlot. She always seemed so insecure and hesitant back then. Now she is an experienced officer in the Mobile Infantry, commanding every soldier onboard the Celestia’s Crown, a far cry from the little filly who used to check her answers against mine in alchemy class. She clicks and clanks across the steel deckplates in her command suit, bulging in unexpected places with extra power packs and various packages of nastiness. Powered armor can turn even a smallish mare into a goddess of battle, capable of breaking an enemy in half or delicately cracking an egg. My own armor is as much of a skin as I have ever worn, but I have seen Princess Celestia and Luna rise into the sky with their own alicorn command suits like wafting feathers, soaring in glory without a single flicker in the immense power shared between them. Since the original changeling attack, they have been the final defense of our homeworld, a blazing fire of sun to melt any more assault craft into vapor and the bright shield of battlestation moon, buttressed with missiles and beams until the surface is one glittering pattern of lights.
The darkness will not fall. Optrunco Thysanoptera.
The troopers each in turn allow our commander to examine suit readouts, exchange a few private words, and move on to the next while the butterflies in my stomach churn.
“Private!” barks Moondancer next to me. “Two degrees of fever. Report to sickbay.”
“But Ma’am,” starts Blossomforth before being brutally cut off.
“This mission is too important to have you barfing in your suit,” she growls. “The rest of your squad will have to pick up the pace. Thankfully, this is such a critical assault that the geniuses upstairs planned for some slack or we’d have to scrub the whole mission because you couldn’t go to sick call. Go!”
Then it is my turn.
There is a faint click of a private channel before Moondancer asks, “Hey, Twilight. Estrus meds not cutting it, sis?”
I shake my head before remembering that my motions are only fractionally transmitted to the outside world through the armored visor. Thankfully, Moondancer has been as close as a sister to me through school, which is why she likes to tweak me as the only sibling she never had. She picks up on my motion anyway with a low chuckle when I add, “They’re like throwing water at a volcano, but I’m under control, Ma’am.”
“You better be. One mare missing from your squad and restrictive rules of engagement mean this is going to be a real nutcracker. If you come back to the retrieval boat with one unexpended bomb or round of ammunition, I will be severely disappointed. Understand?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” I respond instead of nodding.
“Just don’t go dragging any of the Skinnies behind a bush,” she quips, giving me a friendly pat on the shoulder that would have torn a limb off an unarmored pony. “Save it for the stallions when we get home.”
Sooner than I wish, it is time to back into the cold embrace of the drop capsule. Steel and ceramic surrounds me like a fragile eggshell around a pony yolk, and my sparks get stronger, giving little jolts of pain on the top of my head. If not for the tiny thread of a communications wire, my imagination would have me believe all the rest of the universe has condensed into a sphere no larger than my armor’s reach. Out of rote training, I check the condition of each of my squad and they blink back, tiny green lights in my heads-up display. As much as I wish one of them could be a stallion to quench my disturbing fire, I understand far too well why each ship of the Equestrian Navy is segregated, particularly now as I await the final word from the starship’s pilot.
“Two minutes to drop. Exiting hyperspace.”
And just like that, the sparks stop. I am not the only mare to find Fluttershy’s quiet voice comforting, because I can see the vitals monitors of the entire platoon from my command suit. According to the plans, the Cadence-class battlecruiser Love Tap will emerge a fraction of a second before us, using her additional internal space crammed full of weapons and decoys to occupy the planetary defenses in a way Celestia’s Crown could never manage by herself. This is not merely a hit-and-run on a Skinny distant colony, but a message passed on from Equestria herself.
The Skinnies have provided aid and assistance to our enemies. This will change.
They will suffer casualties from our attack, because it scarcely could be otherwise. Every body, every injury, every destroyed building or disabled vehicle will need to be measured for their impact on our goal. Too little, and we will be ignored. Too much, and we will be judged a force too powerful to negotiate with, and the negotiations which must be underway will be broken off and drive the Skinnies further into the manipulative limbs of our enemy. The chain of logic is like a beautiful checklist which keeps me company during the long wait for—
The stunning noise of the accelerators slamming out capsules two at a time echoes through the inside of my helmet. Pairs of lights begin vanishing from my HUD, decoys meant to sprint down through the atmosphere and draw fire, jammers howling their electronic shrieks to their sensitive electronic brethren, and kinetic kill devices departing in a streak of light to destroy whatever targets the computers have determined will aid our assault. Then officers go next, to evaluate the situation and provide accurate intelligence to the troopers descending in their wakes.
I am so caught up in the plan, embossed into my mind with hypno-training and memorized checklists, that the slamming impact of launch takes me by surprise. Since there is nothing for me to do for the next several seconds, I make one last pass down my checklist for landing. The slamming impact of atmosphere is far more gradual than the launch, building to a piercing shriek that even layers of the capsule are unable to dampen totally. The first shell peels away in molten droplets and vapor within seconds, shaking my ride in a welcome manner because even the most precise ground fire cannot predict where I am going if even I do not know. The second lasts slightly longer, then the third and fourth peel off in giant strips that are designed to foil radar and thermal imaging. The sky above the Skinny capital will be lit by now with the flash of detonating missile bases and smoke from fires.
I am reminded of the innocent Canterlot foals swept up by Changeling attackers to be dragged back to their massive ship, and I harden my will.
The first ribbon chute lasts only one sharp tug before it too parts company with the shedding capsule and joins the thousands of pieces of junk floating down. A second lasts a few moments longer before it too is stripped away, carrying another layer of glowing protective armor with it. Then the third, which crushes me to the floor as it sheds velocity at a maximum rate. Activating my radar through the thin window exposed in my capsule would be foolish, but at least I can finally look with my own eyes.
Without hesitating, I blow the last connectors holding my capsule together and pitch forward, trying to make my descent as rapid as possible. A march of red triangles spreads across the HUD, concealed missile launchers being engaged by the Equestrian Navy with me between them. Streaks of white light ascend and descend around me as I spread the crystalline wings in the armor and shift my landing to apparent safety. It is a good decision I tell myself when something in the sky behind me explodes violently, most probably a portion of my capsule that the defenders have disposed of before it littered their city.
Landing, as always, is not my best skill. I have no idea how Rainbow Dash manages it, although to be honest, she has piled into the ground in ways I can’t even imagine. It does leave a hole into the top floor of the building I picked for a landing spot, so I drop one of my bombs inside before bounding away on jet-boosted wings.
One thing I have in great abundance for this mission is bombs. The Y-rack on my back spits one or two out with every armor-powered bound I make, depending on what the suit sensors or my own intuition has marked for destruction. Controlling powered armor is a dance, a mixture of movement and actions tied together with training in a way that not one mare in a hundred can master. As I leap along my marked route with thruster-assisted bounds, I mark targets before tossing my infrared snooper back up next to my horn with one twitch of my neck, designate power junctions and communication arrays, snap commands to my fellow troopers, and deal with hostile enemy fire from their own soldiers scattered across my path. Training and experience guide my motions, recorded for later review by my Princesses
I serve their will, leaving a trail of lethal fire across the face of the enemy capital city far more precisely than any orbital bombardment could manage.
“Sparkle!” snaps a voice inside my helmet. “Pick it up. You’re falling behind.”
The marching green indicators in my helmet show Moondancer is correct. In my effort to be complete and neutralize every target encountered, I have lost track of my schedule. If I am to fulfil the will of my Princesses, it is a weakness I must rectify, and I acknowledge the order even as I tap my thrusters hard to head for the top of a larger building in my path.
I have been entrusted with two special thaumic weapons for this mission, and I pick out the best targets I can before my armored hooves crunch into the top of the building. Pulling the first rocket from its bracket, I prime the warhead for a density disruption charge and send it toward what can only be a lurking starship on a nearby hill, concealed from the orbital assault by a webbing of nets and several atmospheric missile interceptor launchers which will be unable to stop my attack. The second thaumic warhead I program for hydrogen vaporization and send into an unsuspecting water treatment facility glittering in the valley below. The first warhead will rupture nuclear power plant shielding, disabling the starship and anything nearby until the radiation is cleaned up, while the second will send gouts of expanding steam through the city main water lines, cracking pipes and allowing the fires nearby to burn unchecked.
Then I jump again, watching the building behind me vanish into a cloud of fragments as some defender decides too late that it is worth the destruction if they can kill one of many hornets buzzing around in their city.
There are far too many targets around my location to deal with in a systematic fashion, and I am already behind schedule. Landing in front of another building, I drop my infrared snoopers down over my eyes and reduce the aperture on my plasma flamer to minimum to cut through a wall, since I calculate that going through rather than over will be faster and less dangerous.
I have seldom been more mistaken.
All across my visor, the Skinnies glow brightly in the infrared spectrum, packed in tightly like I have interrupted some sort of concert or city meeting, although the probability it is a peaceful civilian gathering is unlikely since my armor is rocked almost immediately by small-arms fire. Out of instinct, I grab one of Pinkie Pie’s special bombs from my armor and toss it inside, where it begins to scream in the local language.
Surprise! I’m a sixty-second bomb! Fifty-nine! Fifty-eight!
The Skinnies begin running everywhere as I duck back out my self-created door, but only for a moment. I activate my shield and dart back inside, using my magic to set off an illusion disrupting spell in the process.
Three of the armed Skinnies shimmer and change, allowing me to selectively pick them off with focused bursts of plasma as I charge through the room. A fourth true native hesitates, and I leave him alone as an object lesson. There is a collection of paper notes and folders near the front of the room, and as I pass them on my way back to the street, I pop dragonfire pods across the whole table. The resulting smoke will flash up into the sky and rematerialize in the receptor onboard the Celestia’s Crown, but I can not consider that right now.
The dance continues at a more rapid rate, and the rest of my squad moves in perfect synchronization again, with Moondancer in her more maneuverable command suit flitting between targets as needed. As we approach the extraction point, we are moving through a more governmental area now, and I find more targets for dragonfire pods. We also find more resistance, and the command channels fill with rapid communication. Pinkie Pie has found a vehicle park and Rainbow Dash is moving to assist. Rarity has come across an entire wave of Skinnies ‘in such tacky uniforms’ and Applejack has dropped a building to obstruct their movements.
And I found a tank. Or to be more correct, a tank found me.
A series of stuttering explosions catches me mid-leap, flinging me sideways into a building and making my ears ring. The tank had been placed in exactly the right spot to catch my movements, and I could see its turret tracking my trajectory, most probably until its automatic loader could accumulate another stack of shells to finish me off. Despite my every instinct demanding that I run, I jumped toward the tank, activating as powerful of a thaumic burst as I was able on landing that scatters the surrounding civilian Skinny ground vehicles in all directions, and tips the tank up on one side.
Even in that awkward state, it was still dangerous, so I popped the armor’s claws and dug them into one of the hatches, pulling it off the tank with a screech of failing hinges and tossing another one of my friend’s special bombs inside.
Beg pardon, but I am an adhesive bomb, and I will be detonating in less than a minute, so you might want to get some distance. Oh, and I see a lot of lovely ammunition in here with me, as well as a power plant, so it’s going to make a positively glorious explosion. Now go on, scoot!
Skinnies in their peculiar mottled uniforms began to swarm out of the remaining hatches, and I hit my thrusters to leap away, only to cancel the jump when I spot something out of the corner of my vision.
One of the soldiers had not made it all the way out of the tank, and was trapped in the hatch.
It took a complicated bounce off a nearby building and a heavy application of thrust, but I managed to land next to the disabled tank with seconds to spare. What to do with the Skinny was less obvious, particularly when I heard the bomb.
So terribly sorry, but it’s time to explode now.
Throwing all my energy into my shield spell, I threw the Skinny up against a nearby building and hunched over him while energy and concussions slammed into the armor repeatedly. Apparently, there had been a lot of ammunition stored in the tank, which performed the task of clearing the immediate area of hostiles quite admirably, although most probably not in the fashion which the manufacturers anticipated.
Once the explosions ceased and a gust of cool air swept through the area, I pulled away from the Skinny and took the opportunity to look him over. There was a red line of blood trickling down from his helmet, making me relieved that I had at least not rescued a changeling from certain death, although he was less than appreciative, since he almost immediately pulled out a hand weapon, forcing me to hit him in the face again and make another bleeding pressure wound across his forehead.
This would not look good on the recordings.
Triggering my foreleg pod dispenser, I select the medkit and cover his face with medicinal goo. Between Zebra herbs, unicorn magic, and Equestrian nanites, he should recover without significant impairment, and at least he cannot identify me as his assailant. And since only their officer class carry pistols, I make a quick swipe of my claws to open up his uniform and give the revealed papers a pod of dragonfire before taking off for another thruster-assisted jump.
From the images on my HUD, the rest of my squad has begun to converge on the pickup point, but the other squad is scattered, and a cold dash of fear goes through my heart when I do not see Moondancer’s identifier. We make a quick sweep to catch the Skinnies who are obstructing them in a crossfire and clear their path even as the retrieval beacon’s welcome voice sings out across our ears.
♫ Mares of virtue, mares of renown Remember the fallen and lift your heads high Where shines the light, shines the light of Celesta’s Crown ♫
Lieutenant Daisy of the second squad is carrying a gruesome burden, the reason why their progress had been hampered. Whatever weapon had struck Moondancer had peeled her armor away in multiple places, leaving only charred flesh covered in medical goo visible in the rents. I dropped down and grabbed her other side, and gave a heave when Daisy grunted, guiding the three of us in painful hops in the direction of the retrieval beacon.
This close to their center of government, the Skinny resistance was brutal, but our troopers had come together as we approached, and clusters of resistance melted away under precise plasma fire and the exuberance of mobile infantry with leftover ammunition they did not want to take home. In the middle of the firefight, a line of fire traced down from the sky with the black dot of the retrieval shuttle an insignificant speck at the top. It was still so far away but so close also as we struggled with the unmoving bulk of our fellow mare, laying down fire between jumps.
The retrieval shuttle burst as it neared the ground, shedding the unneeded descent stages around it while landing inside the protective fire provided by the weapons hardpoints that had been engaging targets at a rapid rate ever since leaving orbit. Each turret was linked into our suit’s fire control network and covered the boarding with profligate extravagance of munitions while we pressed in close array, moving Moondancer into the interior space first before the rest of her squad, while those of us with unexpended munitions clamped our suits to the exterior of the shuttle.
Fluttershy was not one to wait for a millisecond longer in a combat zone than needed. At the moment the last trooper fastened their restraints, the ascent engine roared and the shuttle shot up into the sky, jinxing and dodging what few shots came from the burning surface of what had once been a beautiful city, perhaps the equal of Canterlot.
Once my Y-rack clicked empty with the last bomb spiraling down to an unseen destination, I looked into the receding flames and tried to convince myself that this had been a victory, that our precise assault on the Skinnies’ homeworld had demonstrated enough Equestrian strength and restraint to make them change sides.
That the results were worth the cost, and together we would crush the changelings just as thoroughly as my own heart had been crushed when Shining Armor and Cadence had sacrificed themselves to save Equestria.
And that the changeling queen herself would not escape again, ascending into the sky in an escape vessel much like this one when she had been defeated in Canterlot.
