Ryk E. Spoor's Blog, page 12

Demons of the Past: RETRIBUTION, Chapter 19

Taelin needs more friends...

-----

 

 

Chapter 19

Taelin:

"Taelin? Taelin Mel'Tasne, what in the Emperor's Name are you doing here, you pictureboy?"

Taelin turned around, already feeling the grin starting. "And that has to be Remin Canta, the Imperial warning symbol for 'think once, act twice!'"

Canta – only slightly taller than Taelin but outweighing him more than two-to-one with his heavyworlder build – caught up Taelin in an exuberant hug that sent Taelin's breath whooshing from his body. "This can't be an accident, not in the whole breadth of the Galaxy! What're you doing here, Tae?"

"Ugh! Let me get my breath back first!" As Canta released him, Taelin let his arm slide down, bringing the mind-shield bracelet into momentary contact with Canta's hand. Thank Atlantaea . . . no reaction. He didn't even notice. He saw Trey's face relax just the slightest fraction, reflecting his own immense relief.

Now sure that Canta was truly himself and not . . . something else, Taelin surveyed the blocky Guardsman; the black eyes matched the hair, but there were a couple of lines on the square face that hadn't been there ten or twelve years ago, and a fine white scar stood out from the medium-brown skin, running from the cheek down to the corner of the jaw. The rank wheel glittered with a rainbow of color, with red uppermost. Full Guard Force command – two thousand or more under him.

Canta noticed his glance. "Yeah, you believe that? And me the guy everyone had to keep coaching back in the Talanda."

"Not because you had trouble leading, though. I always figured you'd get there if you kept focused." He gestured behind him. "Canta, you remember Trey, right?"

Canta gave a huge, exaggerated Six-and-One and grinned at Trey, giving her a wink. "You think I could forget? She dumped me for you, remember?"

Treyuusei grinned back. "Can you blame me?"

"Ouch! Well, no, he'll look a lot better in the family portraits. Anyway, me and Amalandi have been married for eight years so it's not like I never dated again." He glanced more narrowly at Taelin. "But you didn't run into me by accident."

"No, we didn't, but it's nothing bad. I know, the way things are in the Galaxy everything we didn't expect looks like a danger, but don't worry. It's a good thing. Come on, I'll brief you."

"My people will be –"

"I sent word on ahead that you've got an important meeting with the Five Families. No one'll question it."

"Families' business? Great, just what I tried to stay out of." Despite the grumbling, Canta looked intrigued, and paced next to Taelin and Trey as they headed away from the Intrijia Base entrance.

"You'll like this business," Trey said. "It gets you a trip to the Capital. With your whole Force."

Canta stopped dead, and Taelin couldn't help but laugh at his dumbfounded expression. "Wha . . . you can't be serious!"

"Come on, Canta," Trey said. "We'll answer all your questions when we get to Valabacal."

"Wait, what, your starship? We're not –"

"We have to head home anyway," Taelin said, enjoying watching Canta try to deal with the sudden disruption to his routine. "But not another word until we're in private."

Canta maintained silence – with an expression that indicated constantly-rising pressure – as they took the fast shuttle to the spaceport. But when he saw obviously-familiar cases being loaded into the ship, he couldn't remain silent. "What in the . . .? Taelin, I don't care if you're Five Families or not, I am still just a Guardsman, and I can't just go running off to –"

"Remin," Taelin said, with another grin, "Do you think I don't know that? This was already cleared with your superior. They know you've got a priority call from the Families, even if they don't know the details. Now up the ramp, Guardsman!"

Canta glanced at the two of them suspiciously, then turned his hands up and looked skyward. "Torline's Will, I suppose," he said with a sigh, and walked up and into the waiting ship.

The three of them reached the control room a few minutes later, and Taelin glanced down at the telltales. "Loading's almost done. Ours was completed earlier, anyway."

"Now can you tell me what's going on, or do I have to beat it out of you?" demanded Canta.

"We have to get you to Oro in time for your Security interview," Treyuusei said.

"Security?" Canta looked suddenly nervous. "Wait, now. I haven't done anything to draw Security's attention. Or I sure hope not!"

"Not true at all. But it's the good kind of attention. Your unit's been decorated four times in the last seven years, and despite seeing a lot of combat your attrition rate's been very low. No scandals in your ranks – and when you've got a couple thousand people below you, that's pretty impressive. Multiple awards for personal heroism in your command, too, both for your people and a couple for you—"

"—I just pulled my people out of the crap when it got too deep and they gave me a medal for it."

That attitude was so familiar that Taelin felt a touch of painful nostalgia. "And there is why people thought you and Sash were alike."

At the mention of Varan, Canta looked suddenly downcast. "Yeah. I guess."

The control light went green; Taelin touched the panel and sealed the lock, then checked all the security indicators to make sure there hadn't been any unwanted additions. "Intrijia Control, this is Valabacal. Requesting a departure window."

"Valabacal, this is Intrijia Control, you may depart from your current berthing location in four minutes thirty seconds, with a five-minute window."

"Thank you, Intrijia."

Canta's brows had been drawn down, the very picture of the Guardsman trying to think something through, and just as Taelin clicked the D-Comm off, his expression cleared. "An interview for a posting. On Oro. That's what you mean!"

"And not just any posting," Trey confirmed.

"But why the racing speed? They could've sent for me through regular channels –"

"Because there's five other Forces who want the post, that's why, and all but one of those are in the inner systems. So four of them can get in on the interviews and politics easy. Sending for you through channels? They might already have picked someone by the time you got there. Probably would. You'd get your interview, but unless you turned out to be the reincarnation of Torline it wouldn't make any difference."

Canta stared at the two of them. "So you're . . ."

Taelin slapped him on the shoulder. "Paying back a promise. Told you I wouldn't forget what you did for me and Sash on Xaltine, you and Diorre. Now hold on a couple."

While Taelin finished prep and, a few minutes later, launched Valabacal into its home element, Trey absented herself. She came back into the cabin as the little starship settled into its maximum-automatable drive speed, pushing eighty percent of the speed of light on its way to the safe conversion limit. He saw her give a tiny nod, and relaxed.

"So," Canta said slowly, "you're going to get me to Oro in a couple weeks instead of a month or two. Still, that won't guarantee much."

"By itself, no," Taelin conceded. "But who does the interview, and what they say, will make a difference, and in this case you're going to get interviewed by the man at the very top."

Understanding dawned on Canta's face. "Ohhh. You mean that your brother, Lukhas, is going to personally conduct the interview?"

"Targeted that one dead-center," Trey agreed. "And unless you completely lose your head, Canta, Lukh will give you top rating. No one except Shagrath or the Emperor Himself would be able to overrule him, and they're not likely to. So you should probably start thinking about what it's going to be like to be the man in charge of the Palace Protectorate."

"Palace Protect . . ." Canta swallowed his obvious disbelief. "The main Guardsman force protecting the Imperial Palace? My people are going to be the Protectorate for the next cycle?"

"That's the plan."

"I sure hope Lukh knows about this plan!"

"You think we just came up with this on our own? Security whittled the candidates down themselves over the last year. What happened was that Lukh recognized your unit in the set of final candidates; knowing I owed you, he let me learn that little fact and that he'd be willing to do the interview. Assuming I thought you could handle it."

Canta had the look of a man just recovering from a concussive blast. "Protectorate. Handle it? Atlantaea's Sinking, I don't know. That's . . . that's the highest post for a Guardsman Force there is."

"And the way things are going these days, it might not be a quiet one. That's why I want you around, Canta. Your group is tops in battle readiness and combat experience; some of the others are good but they're a lot more inner-system types."

Taelin could see Canta understood what he meant; Canta's Force hadn't just faced minor riots or other civilian disruptions, but actual military assaults. If unrest or war came to Oro, the Emperor was going to need a Protectorate that knew how to deal with the big things. "And the fact that you're pretty tight with the Emperor means I'll be able to keep an eye on you and yours, too. But what about Amalandi?"

That's a different problem. But hopefully not for too long. "She'll probably be able to join you later, once they offer you the post and you've accepted. You've been on traveling duty quite a while, it's about time they let you have some sit-down time."

Another light blinked on the board, and Taelin activated the TC Drive. The distant high-pitched whine sounded, and abruptly the screens went dark with Conversion space.

Canta looked up as Taelin's grin shifted. "And now," Taelin said, "we can really talk."

"I got your messages. I think. Something about Varan . . ." he hesitated, watching their faces, ". . . not being a monster?"

Taelin nodded.

"Towers. But the recordings –"

"Faked. We don't know how."

"Isn't that supposed to be impossible?"

"Yes, it is," Trey said. "But it's happened just the same."

Canta leaned forward. "Sasham's not a killer psi? But your brother's own office is pushing the –"

"Because whoever's behind this is at the top," Taelin said quietly.

Despite common protestations, Canta was not, actually, stupid in any way, shape, or form. His face went noticeably paler. "But . . . the Prime Monitor?"

"And maybe even the Emperor, now. Look, Canta, this is going to be a dangerous assignment. The most dangerous you've ever been put on. Your message back in associative code said you'd do whatever you had to, but . . . well, you're not nearly as good at it as me and Sash are. We'll have to practice it more on the way, but first we have to fill you in."

Canta did not ask any questions as they told the story – from the time of Varan's delivery to the Prime Monitor, to his departure, the mysterious three-word message, and other events. But Taelin could see his old friend's features hardening like setting pourstone.

Finally, they finished. Canta sat silent for a moment, then stood, looking out the port at the faintly-twisting scene of Conversion Space. "So Varan's demons were real after all," he said finally.

"It's the only thing that makes sense of everything," Trey said.

"And what do you think's going to happen?"

"You know Sasham. He's still alive out there. He's doing something, and Lukh's sure that whatever he's doing is keeping Shagrath nervous. The Empire's right on the edge of destruction. I want the right people on-site to help, so that if there is anything we can do, we've got our best chance. The fact that Shagrath's made Varan the biggest psi threat ever tells me Varan is out there doing something big. He's going to try to stop Shagrath somehow, and I think it's going to come down to a war."

Canta cracked his knuckles as he thought, a habit Taelin remembered from their childhoods. Finally he turned to them. "It is going to be a war," he said slowly. "Anyone can see it's coming. But if you're right, it's not going to be fought out there on the Rim; it will be fought on Oro."

He bowed, and his Six-and-One was rock-steady and perfect. "I'm in. Varan protected our backs when we were young; we'll cover his now."

Taelin felt a fierce joy and relief burn through him. Canta would make a huge difference. "Then let's begin!"

 

 

The post Demons of the Past: RETRIBUTION, Chapter 19 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

LEGEND: Chapter 9

You can't just visit your therapist once...

-----

 

 

Chapter 9.

"How it started?" he repeated. Dr. Hsui nodded her head. "Um . . . You think that's important?"

She tilted her head questioningly. "I would think so. That's what led to your current problem, isn't it? In the end analysis?"

"Well . . . sort of, I guess." Her eyes weren't exactly brown, they seemed sometimes almost gray, sometimes even touched with green. And I'm distracting myself from the task at hand again. He gave a snort of laughter. "And I'd guess that the fact I'm dancing around the question probably means you're right."

She acknowledged that with her own smile. I wonder if she uses those treatments to keep that smile so white? Ben brushes but his aren't like that. "That is one of the traditional assumptions in therapy, yes. The more someone evades a subject the more important it is." She shrugged. "Of course, sometimes you're just pushing on something that's important but not relevant."

Legend thought about that, but the tension within him did not yield, and that told him what he needed to know. At least I know how to be honest with myself . . . mostly. "Not this time." He took a very deep breath. "All right." Even after saying it, he found he couldn't quite get started.

"It was the night the riot started in Albany," she said helpfully.

"No . . . actually, it wasn't." He nodded at her surprise. "That was . . . I guess you'd say that was my first public debut, so to speak, but I'd given a private performance earlier." He thought back to that day. Have to tell her . . . but try not to give away everything. I'm not sure if she should know, yet. "I was home, sick . . ."

*****

Benjamin John Stephens closed his eyes and leaned back in his bed. The pillow was damp from sweat, so he reached back and flipped it around. The cooler, dry side felt good as he sagged back, the momentary effort having been enough to leave his heart pounding and feeling lightheaded. I hate the flu. Hate it.

His stomach complained and he reached out, making sure the large plastic bowl was nearby. I think I finished worshipping the porcelain god last night, but I'm not taking chances.

Of course, his gut might also be complaining because there was nothing in it. Frozen fruit bars in the fridge . . . \ha, that's alliteration . . . but that's downstairs. Mom and Dad were both at work, wouldn't be back for several hours, so he couldn't ask anyone else to do it.

Heck with it. If going downstairs doesn't make my guts turn over, then I can probably survive a fruit bar. I'll just stay down for a while.

Somewhat to his surprise, he made it down the stairs without either falling or throwing up and got one of the fruit bars. He collapsed into the living-room sofa, feeling like he'd just finished a marathon while wearing a lead backpack. Or like I think a marathon would feel like. I'm probably all wrong on that.

He glanced over at the end table where his backpack was leaning. No way I'm doing homework today. Good thing it's Friday. Of course, that also meant that he wouldn't be going out tomorrow night. Hopefully the game's not at a crucial point – don't want to miss out. The Saturday night RPG session was, as his dad often pointed out with a subtly concerned air, just about the only social interaction Ben had, and he didn't want to miss it. On the other hand, Joe, Shana, Jasmin, and the others wouldn't be happy about a chance to get his germs, either.

He almost smacked himself in the head when he realized he'd left the stack of new manga upstairs. He considered going back up. Nope. Not ready to tackle that yet.

Look on the bright side, he told himself. That means you'll have all of them still to read when you go back up.

With a sigh, he reached out and managed to grab hold of the remote and click the TV on.

Instead of the usual shows, there was a special report. Just a quick glimpse showed smoke amid rain, shattered buildings, a hillside unnaturally slumped, white, horrified faces or sprawled bodies – unconscious or worse.

He almost switched the channel – these kind of things could give him nightmares, and always left him crying over what was happening, and he'd been made fun of more than once for being oversensitive.

He saw more flashes of faces, hurt, shocked, terrified, watched a building that had survived the initial disaster waver and collapse, felt the stinging in his eyes of tears for the people he didn't even know. It's stupid! I shouldn't cry about this! It's terrible but it's not something I did, not something I could do anything about, even Mom and Dad couldn't do anything! I . . . I should just stop, switch it off, not look any more . . .

But he remembered the times he'd been cornered by others, kicked or punched or insulted, and no one had watched, they'd turned away so they couldn't see what was happening, wouldn't be involved, wouldn't have to face the bullies themselves . . . and he couldn't quite make himself turn away.

He couldn't let himself turn away.

"—only fifteen minutes ago, Maury," a young woman was saying over the drone of the helicopter she was in. "Aftershocks are expected, but the devastation is already incredible. We were already in the air so we were not affected, but we can't stay here much longer; we have to make it somewhere we can land and refuel." The camera tracked across the devastated landscape – from the remains of the buildings and the shape of the hills, Ben guessed it must be somewhere in South America – showing collapsed homes, fires, and people. Ben felt the horror rising in him as he saw a man collapse to his knees, the limp body of a girl half Ben's age in his arms.

"Oh my God," the reporter murmured. "Maury, there's a new housing development up here and . . ."

Ben saw houses, some collapsed, some still standing, in a small valley slightly higher up the mountainside . . . and above that development, a dam.

A dam that was clearly on the verge of collapse.

No.

The camera zoomed in, showed dozens, hundreds of people trying to recover from the quake. A few of them, then more, pointing, realizing that the danger was far from over, that death hung above them. "Linda, is there any chance they can get out of there?"

Ben was leaning forward, nearly out of his chair. He no longer noticed how tired and sick he was. The terror on the screen overshadowed everything.

"I . . ." The reporter's professional tone wavered, broke. "No. No, Maury, I can't see how. If you look on the other camera feed, you can see water's already starting to trickle out of the dam. They have minutes, and half of them are probably still stuck in their houses." She shook her head, tried to recover, as a family of six appeared, stumbling away, trying to flee but with the father limping, covered with blood, the mother carrying an injured baby. "And the rest of Nuevo Vista, a Chilean city of over thirty thousand people, is directly in the path of the outflow, it's built on the bay where the river . . ."

Ben felt his eyes filling with tears and found himself reaching out toward the screen, toward a little boy and girl who were fleeing something they couldn't outrun. Someone should do something!

I want to help them. But I can't. I can't!

The screen-in-screen view showed a part of the dam start to shift.

No! It's not fair!

He knew it was stupid, idiotic, he should just shut the TV off, there was nothing anyone could do, not anyone, and especially not some skinny little American kid ten thousand miles away, and he shouldn't be watching, it wasn't his problem . . .

But I wish it was! I wish I could see things that were wrong and make them better! I want to . . . want to . . . be a hero . . . a hero that matters . . .

He felt something, a pressure, a tension, building in him, something he'd never felt before, but it also felt like all the pain and anger and terrible, burning sadness he'd ever felt, for himself when he'd come home hurt but hiding the bruises because he was ashamed, for his mother when her father had died after a drunk driver crossed the line into grandpa's car, for other kids being bullied or worse, for everyone he saw suffering something they didn't deserve, because he knew the world should be better than that, the world could be better than that.

He pressed his hands against the screen, tears cold on his cheeks, and saw the crying children looking back, looking at him, pleading, asking for the cameraman, the reporter, anyone for help as their terror was transmitted across the world to be duplicated, packaged, and sold, and that pressure rose higher.

"No," he heard himself say. "No. No, don't let this happen. Someone stop this."

He turned away, and as the pressure within him reached a terrifying peak, screamed, "STOP THIS!"

There was a golden blaze of light.

He was confused; how had he gotten here? He had sensed the boy's desperate cry of need and urgency, and so he was here . . . but no, the urgency was not for Ben Stephens, he now realized. It was for those faraway people, and there was so very little time now. So very, very little.

But there was just enough.

*****

Legend managed to keep from blushing as Dr. Hsui stared at him for a long moment. "That . . . that was you? You were the Earthquake Miracle?"

"A clumsy first outing that almost ended up killing people itself and they call it a miracle." Sheer luck, if you want to call it that, that the earthquake had already sealed off a connecting pass. "I wasn't . . . entirely clear on who I was then. I wasn't Ben, I knew that, but I didn't have an identity yet, just a . . . a purpose. But I knew how to do things, and when I got there I knew there was no way to hold that dam together. So the only other choice was to bust a hole in some direction that wouldn't get people killed."

She laughed. "So the conspiracy theorists who claimed something had shot into the lake just before the localized shock that took out the southeast corner of the lake and let most of it drain harmlessly away . . . they were right."

He smiled. "I guess they were at that. The chopper did get a small clip of the plume I left when I hit the water."

Dr. Hsui was now more serious. "So this . . . change happened because you were so upset, so focused on the injustice and the pain, that the only thing you were thinking of was wanting to do something about it all."

He nodded.

"It sounds to me like you were very young then."

What? I thought I'd carefully avoided saying anything about how old I was, what school I was staying home from, anything! "Why do you say that?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Well . . . um . . ." His thoughts seemed to just run down. How much do I really need to hide? How much can I hide and expect her to do her job? "What do you mean by very young?"

She just looked at him.

He tried to just look back, but that wasn't working. First of all, her eyes were very pretty and that was distracting him, and making him feel guilty, because why should he notice that at all given why he was here in the first place? And second because he knew she was just waiting for him to answer her question, and he'd come here to answer her questions, and maybe his own.

"Okay. Okay, I was . . . I was a freshman in high school."

She nodded. "I thought so. Making you, what, nineteen now?"

He blinked. "You thought so? I mean, before just now?"

"I had guessed your rough age by the end of our first session."

Okay, I can't hide much from her at all, I guess. "You are either psychic or just a lot better even than I thought you were."

"Age groups have patterns of behavior – often ones they are not directly aware of." She was still looking at him with that curious expression that he couldn't quite interpret. "So you say that you didn't know exactly who you were then? You weren't Ben, but you weren't Legend, either?"

Wait. How did she know Ben's name? And then he remembered mentioning it just a few minutes ago. I suck at this. But she asked a question. . . ."Yes. It's . . . really hard to describe. Those days are pretty foggy in my memory, too. I had a purpose and a drive, and I could think, but I . . . I didn't exactly have an 'I'."

"That's very . . . intriguing. When did you find that you were . . . someone, then?"

"Oh, that's easy. The riots. I remember those five thugs leading the mob – the first empowered crooks the world ever saw, but only one of them, Mangler, ever amounted to much, if a villain can amount to something. Anyway, Ben saw them on TV, I . . . awakened, I guess, and I . . . or we . . .went there, and I looked down and saw them almost kill one of the troopers and that's when I dropped down and told them to try picking on someone their own size. And when it was over and the police asked me who I was, Ben answered through me:"

"'I am Legend,'" she quoted.

"And in that moment, suddenly, I was. I knew that was my name, I knew it fit, and I knew who I was, what the name and image meant and how I would work to live up to that name."

"That's even more interesting," she said, her tone serious. "I'd like you to think about what that whole sequence of events says to you, and perhaps we can talk about it in our next session."

He was startled, but the clock didn't lie. And he wasn't sure he was comfortable with thinking about . . . whatever she thought he should think about. "I will," he said, with an effort – because by saying that, he knew he was committing to actually doing it. Still, that's why he'd come to this place to begin with. "Same time next week?"

"Unless you have a problem with it?"

"Well . . . not next week, but the week after I have an . . . an exam that I can't avoid."

"Then we'll arrange a different time for that week." She shook his hand. "Until next week, then."

"Next week."

He was twenty miles away before the warmth faded from his hand.

 

 

The post LEGEND: Chapter 9 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

Demons of the Past: RETRIBUTION, Chapter 18

Varan and his friends are finally together on their own ship again...

-----

 

Chapter 18

Varan:

Yes. You have become immensely more powerful since last we were together. Vick leaned back and studied me closely. Proportionately even more so than I would have expected.

"Really?" At his crest-rattle I held up my hand. "I'm not really doubting you, but I can't feel it, you know. I haven't had much to compare myself to, after all."

You – and I, following my own treatment – were improving along a strong, but well-defined, curve. I have continued to follow that curve, albeit some months behind you; your current level, however, represents a serious discontinuity.

"That's good for us, though," the Eönwyl pointed out, taking a sip of her samahei. "The stronger both of you are, the more certain we can keep in contact even when separated – and of course the better chance you'll have when we finally run into Shagrath."

"No doubt, no doubt," agreed Guvthor in his deckplate-rattling, good-humored voice – another thing I'd missed more than I'd realized. "Yet it is a mystery. Does this mean that our friend Sooovickalassa will soon experience a sudden elevation of his powers, or has some other factor intervened? Captain, can you think of anything that might have affected your development?"

I felt myself frown, thought back over my months of imprisonment. "Not really. I mean, the first month or so I was not thinking very clearly anyway, being locked up in a Zchoradan prison, no one around that I knew, surrounded by creatures I was still seeing as monsters, guarded, and of course I couldn't even use my powers since they had the psi-screens on constantly. Later on I . . ." I trailed off, struck by a sudden thought, and Vick's green-gold eyes met mine. "Psi-screens."

His head tilted, crest chiming again. An interesting hypothesis.

"You mean . . . if he was practicing his psionics inside a psi-screen, it would be like, oh, exercising with weights on?" the Eönwyl asked. "Could that work?"

For a normal psi, no. Their development is roughly set when they emerge, and while they gain in power for a short time the limit of that gain is predetermined. But for one subjected to my process successfully . . . yes. Yes, that makes perfect sense. How many layers of concurrent screening did you have at once, Captain?

"Honestly . . . I don't know. They increased it at least a couple of times, but I didn't really keep track. I could ask."

Do so, if you could.

Since there were controls now conveniently placed in all the inhabited areas of The Eönwyl, and we were meeting in the cargo bay which served Guvthor as a cabin, I just stretched up and activated the D-Comm. "Sasham Varan to Zchorada; might I speak with the Grasper?"

The response was immediate; obviously the communications watch had instructions to be ready for anything we said. "Wait a few moments and we will find out, Captain."

I picked up a milkpuff and bit into it, then tried to catch the cream filling before it hit my shirt. Finishing it without making a terrible mess occupied the few minutes before the familiar voice of the Grasper came on. "You wished to speak with me, my favorite prisoner?"

"Yes, Grasper. If it would not be a great trouble, I know that during my incarceration you increased the shielding on my quarters for security purposes. I was wondering if you could tell me how many concurrent layers of psi-shielding were used at maximum."

The buzzing rattle was an unmistakable laugh. "Your imprisonment required . . . very interesting innovations in shield adjustment, despite the fact that our people have had many centuries to perfect the technology. By the end there were no fewer than seven concurrent phased layers of psionic shielding."

I was speechless. I'd seen three layers before, and heard of four or five, but . . . "Seven?"

"Assuredly. Is that all, Captain?"

While I was still stunned – and from the way his crest was jangling, so was Vick – I hesitated. "Actually, not quite. How are your new prisoners?"

"We were able to save both of the Guardsmen," the Grasper said promptly. "They will recover in time, although I am sure they are not pleased with their circumstances. Admiral Dor'Kane is still . . . shocked by the turn of events. Do you have any specific instructions with respect to them? They are your people, after all."

My people. It was not merely a courtesy from a Zchoradan to say that; it was her acknowledgement that I was the protector of the human race against an enemy they did not yet know. "Yes, I do. I want them to be fully briefed on the situation. They may not believe any of it, but they can't possibly understand unless we give them a chance. And just maybe he will believe it. He's one of the Five, and probably one of the few the Kaital haven't touched yet; that's why he was the one sent down, so you wouldn't sense something wrong. Maybe he's seen something. It can't hurt. Treat them all well regardless, as well as you treated me."

"Ahh, Captain, that I will not guarantee unless they, also, behave as well as you. But they shall have proper care and comfort, at the least."

"Thank you, Grasper. We will be leaving soon, so if we do not meet again – many, many thanks for everything you did for me."

"We are balanced, Captain. But your thanks are appreciated; take my own, and our good wishes for the future of both our Nests."

"And to you and yours."

Seven, Vick said as I clicked off the D-Comm. Extraordinary control they must have over these systems. And it does explain your strength. A rising excitement was in his thoughts. I will begin this process myself, and you should continue it, although I am afraid seven layers will be beyond us.

"Perhaps . . . perhaps not, my bescaled companion," Guvthor said. "You do have me to assist you, and my astrophysical speciality includes extensive dimensional technology background."

A hissing chuckle. True enough. And if there is any to equal me in the science of mind-technology I have yet to meet them. Perhaps together we can succeed.

"So, what exactly are our plans, Sasham?" the Eönwyl said. "You're going to Ptial, of course. I guess I'll have to get ready to go out to Thann'ta again, but I'm not sure we have time."

That may be something we can alleviate, Vick said. With the combination of the Masters of Minds here, and the Masters of the Light on Thann'ta and myself to focus and coordinate, I believe we may be able to transfer The Eönwyl directly to Thann'ta. We would have to use more mundane means to travel to Thovia and, of course, the fleets would have to follow at a normal pace, but effectively we should be able to halve the trip time.

I stared at him. "Wait. You think we could teleport the entire ship? I thought that was something only Khoros –"

Khoros' feat was, of course, far more impressive because it spanned a far greater distance and was performed by a single being. But with these massed powers, yes, a small vessel should be transferable. A link does not exist, unfortunately, between the Zchorada and the Ptial, as far as I know, so you will have to take the longer route. It is, however, a shorter distance.

"That should work out, then. You'll only have to make the one-way trip at normal speed, with the fleet you can get from Thann'ta and Thovia." I knew that Thovia wouldn't have many ships to offer, but even a few like Hoorai'Gon Bal would be a hell of a symbolic force.

"How will you get there?" the Eönwyl asked.

"Our Zchoradan allies have small craft I can borrow for the trip. We'll have to choose a good meeting location, but if we can manage a psionic link over that distance . . .?"

I expect we will. We will come up with a semi-random table of contact times to minimize the ability of our adversary to predict when they might catch us with shielding down, and keep the length of communications to a minimum.

I nodded.

"But after we have the fleets assembled . . . and, I suppose, after I've gotten good enough with this combat-prescience of mine to be of use . . . we still need a way to pull Shagrath's mask off, Sasham. Yes, maybe we'll be able to take Oro, but if we can't win the people to our side –"

"I know. And I think I know how – the only possible way how – to do that." I looked around my little group of friends. "We have to get him to take the mask off. And he has to do it at just the right time. We'll need Taelin and Lukh and Trey's help, and maybe a couple others."

Guvthor looked at me, huge brows raised. "And you believe you know how to convince our enemy to remove his mask?"

"Yes. I started to figure it out back on Earth, when I learned about who he really was, and I've had time to plan it out. Like I said, it's delicate – it's a one-shot possibility that we couldn't even have thought of if we hadn't gone there in the first place – but I think it's a solid plan, because it doesn't depend on us overpowering him. It depends on him being who and what we think he is – Viedraverion, one of the destroyers of Atlantaea and the one who killed the Eternal Queen."

I outlined the entire plan then, watching their faces as I did so.

"Fallen Towers, Sasham . . ." the Eönwyl said slowly. "If any of that goes wrong at all you're dead. And the rest of us not far behind."

Yet . . . I like it very much. It is psychology you are using, and psychology well supported by what we know of this being. Your tactics could work. They should work. And the very audacity of this plan . . .

"Indeed, audacity is an excellent term," Guvthor rumbled. "But I concur. It is a desperate plan. It is a delicate plan, and one that must be properly arranged. But it is also the precise type of plan that Shagrath will not understand. He will not see this coming, because the set of circumstances that make it possible at all is, essentially, unique, and depends on facts he will not know."

I sighed, letting myself relax. "I thought you were all going to argue me out of it."

If I had any reasonable alternative I assure you I would forbid this plan. Vick's thoughts were both worried and humorous. But its very insanity makes it the only course of action likely to succeed.

"Insane. But . . . yes, Sash. It makes perfect sense now that I think about it. And . . ." she smiled. ". . . and the really dangerous part's only at the end. If we can't get all the set-up prepared, you won't have to take that last step."

"Yeah," I conceded. "And by Atlantaea I would really rather not take it. But if this doesn't work . . ."

If it does not work, Vick completed grimly, the Galaxy will pay the price for our failure.

 

 

The post Demons of the Past: RETRIBUTION, Chapter 18 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

LEGEND: Chapter 8

Jennifer was meeting with someone my readers have met before...

-----

 

 

Chapter 8.

"Thank you so much for agreeing to see me on such short notice, Mr. Wood," Jennifer said.

"No problem," Jason Wood said, waving her inside his office. "Call me Jason, as long as I can call you Jennifer." He gave the trademark slightly-lopsided grin that was familiar to just about everyone on Earth by this point and ran his fingers absently through streaky-blond hair. "I don't think I've ever had a psychologist . . . sorry, psychiatrist . . . contact me for a consultation before, and especially not one sending me an NDA as an opening commentary."

She returned the smile. "I suppose you wouldn't have, Jason. But I think you'll understand the reason I insisted on a nondisclosure agreement pretty soon." She took the most comfortable seat, a large red leather chair in front of Wood's desk.

"I'll admit, I've been pretty curious ever since. Just don't tell me you have a Wolf for a client. Been there, done that. So to speak. Twice."

"Twice?" She remembered the Werewolf Trial, of course, but . . .

"Can't talk much about the second time." He offered her coffee, she asked for tea instead. "Yeah, I'm more into tea myself these days. I'll put the water on." There was a small nook with a two-burner stove in the corner of the office; from other little indications, she suspected that it was not uncommon for Jason to spend the night in his office. "Anyway, here you are and I've got some time that I've carved out of all the other urgent-can't-wait stuff – so what can I do for you?"

"It is about a new client of mine, that much you have right. But it's not a werewolf, a vampire, or anything like that. My client is Legend."

Jason's eyebrow quirked up over one green eye. "That's . . . interesting. And he's given you permission to go around talking about this?"

"He's given me permission to talk to whomever I think I need to so I can understand his problems, as long as I keep his essential secrets." She got the signed permission out. "He'd already mentioned you in a context that indicated he trusted you and that you knew a lot about . . . well, his kind of people."

"I don't know if I'd say I know a lot . . ." he said slowly, taking the paper she extended and glancing over it before handing it back. "But I do probably have a fair amount of information you're not getting anywhere else. And now I see why Syl told me I should clear a lot of time out."

"Your wife?"

"My wife, best friend, best partner, and the one person who I'd trust if she told me I should jump off a cliff, yes." He smiled. "She's got . . . very good instincts, let's say. So, what can I tell you?"

"I don't really know, yet. What can you tell me that might help me understand Legend and his circumstances? I presume you aren't privy to his other identity?"

"No, I'm not. I could make some guesses, but I don't see any reason to do that. Understanding him, though . . ." He scratched his head. "Well, first, he's pretty much exactly what he seems to be, personality-wise. He's one of the nicest guys I've ever met, and one of the most . . . clueless, sometimes."

She nodded. That fit with her first impression, but it was good to get multiple confirmations. "He says, though, that he – and most of the others – is a completely different person when he becomes Legend."

"Completely? He's probably exaggerating. Though . . . the changes can be huge. We're just starting to understand how huge, and the Heroes are just one – admittedly unique and peculiar – manifestation of the Reawakening, and it's hard to pin down the connections between them all."

"Do you know anything about how it happened?"

"The Reawakening, or Legend becoming who he is?"

"Um . . . both, I suppose."

"Legend's particular story is more for him to tell, though I can say it's got a lot in common with many of the others."

"Except he was the first."

Jason picked up the teakettle, which had started whistling, and poured them each a cup of tea. "Sorry, I've just got teabags. Expensive fancy teabags, but bags." He mixed his tea with lemon; she just added a little sweetener.

"Yes . . . and no, actually," Jason said finally. "He wasn't exactly the first empowered person on the planet. On the other hand, he was the first to spontaneously emerge. The others – the Five, to be exact – had been developed pretty deliberately and their powers triggered . . . in a very different place."

He looked conflicted, then sighed. "Look, I'll give you the compressed evening news background, because it might help you understand how everything connects . . . and those connections might mean something for Legend or you."

"Background?"

"To . . . pretty much everything." He looked distant. "A few years ago . . . well, more than a few now, back when I'd just found out some of the things that went bump in the night weren't just my imagination or Halloween trick-or-treaters . . . I learned that a lot of our history itself wasn't true. Oh, not the recent stuff, with "recent" meaning back to probably the Neolithic, but what we thought we knew about the history of mankind. And back then, if I'd told anyone about it, I'd have been putting them at deadly risk, but now, well, a lot of the deadly secrets are pretty much out of the bag.

"A very very long time ago – half a million years – there was a civilization called Atlantaea; the stories that came from ancient Greece and elsewhere were echoes of tales told by the few who knew about it. Atlantaea wasn't just some super-Greek city, either, it was . . . the biggest interstellar civilization you can imagine, but it started here, and it used magic, not just technology, and spread magic through the stars along with its civilization.

"But they had enemies, one enemy in particular, who didn't like the way they were going, and carefully, deliberately set up a plan to destroy them – and to seal magic away from the world. And it pretty much worked."

Her brain had finally caught up with everything he was saying. "Half a million—"

"Yeah, I had the same reaction. But the guy who told me the story had been there."

She tried to grapple for a moment with the concept of a living being that had survived for so long that the history of Western civilization would be like the matter of a month or two to her, then shook her head. "You aren't joking."

"There are times I wish I was. Anyway, I'm not going into details here, you don't need them, but the source of magic is a sister world of Earth's and the two have always been connected. Eventually someone figured out how to defeat the ancient enemy and break the seal.

"But of course that meant that about half a million years worth of magic came thundering down the pipe. There was a little delay, but when the big wave hit –"

"The Transformation."

"Yeah. That happened when the connection was re-established and the full force of magic returned to a world that hadn't had hardly any of it for hundreds of thousands of years – occasional little spurts, like a small overflow from a dam, that kept myth and legend supplied with new life, but mostly nothing. Then the Seal broke and magic didn't just return, it returned with a vengeance – more concentrated power for any with the talent to use it than Earth had ever had before, twice as much, three times, and it all hit at once.

"And it was at exactly that moment that Legend was born."

"You mean . . . born? Or transformed?"

"Oh, transformed, awakened, whatever. Jeez, no, he's not a kindergartener or anything. But when that connection was re-established . . . magic and the powers connected with it are wielded by people's intentions, their beliefs, their wills, and of course it's partly dependent on natural talent and such."

"The powers connected with it?" she asked.

"Thought you'd pick up on that. You've heard of lots of new cults springing up. Well, on that sister world there are a lot of gods. And they're real."

She blinked. "Gods?"

"Well, that's what they're usually called, though someone with the belief that 'god' means 'omnipotence' wouldn't call them that. But they're worshipped on that world, and sometimes they've been worshipped here, at least some of them. Some die, some get born, apparently, and there's a lot of different origins. But there's one that's very important to you –"

"You're joking."

Jason smiled wryly. "Ahh, I see you've jumped ahead. No, I'm not. You see, quite a number of the gods are either created by, or at least defined by, their worshippers – their hopes, their dreams, their beliefs – and they manifest for their worshippers in whatever way is most appropriate and effective.

"And the supers –"

"Are the modern pantheon, or might be, yes. One of many – there's old gods reawakening, crossing over from Zarathan – our sister world – maybe new gods created by various cults, who knows. But there's a lot of similarities, and I think this might be something you need to think about."

She shook her head. This was the most insane discussion she'd ever had. "A god?"

"If the word bothers you, call him a sufficiently advanced being or something. But his powers, his purpose, they're tied to magic and the fundamental forces beneath it – and that's also tied to human beings and our beliefs. I've watched a lot of the superhero conflicts, and if you look at them in the cold, cold light of day, they shouldn't work – in a lot of ways. Yet they do happen exactly the way we see them, and that means something makes the laws of physics and even simplistic rules of tactics take some kind of holiday, and not just in the obvious ways."

She nodded, forcing herself to try to grasp the implications. "What do you mean? Like the way they can, oh, lift buildings . . ."

" . . . without the building falling apart? Well, that's one, but it's one of the obvious ways. I meant more like . . . oh, what's the term the Jammer once used . . . oh, that's it. Like the Law of Dramatics had been enacted."

She understood. "So that's why he acts that way."

"That aura of importance? Yes. The cape staying out of the way. And things like the confrontations themselves – just a little too dramatic, yet no one watching them thinks they're staged – because they're not. It's just natural for super-beings to interact that way. We know that's how they act."

She felt a chill. "But that means . . . that means a lot of them don't have any choice."

"Well . . . yes. They have a lot of choice in some areas, but they can't choose to act against whatever their defined basic nature is."

"But . . . there are other things besides . . . the superhero types," she said. "They aren't constrained that way."

"No," Jason agreed, and he was no longer smiling. "And you're right; that is a huge potential problem. Maybe a standard super-villain can't really backshoot a hero with an instantly-fatal weapon except in really rare circumstances, but one of the emerging honest-to-god wizards, or some of the monsters – like, god forbid, the Werewolves, or demons – those don’t have any such limitations. They can use any tactics they want, but the Heroes, or the gods, have to stay true to their essential nature."

Like . . . a compulsion? Can I think of some of Legend's behaviors as some kind of offshoot of OCD? But other parts are purely his choice. Did he make himself this way? How much of it is really the original person? How does he deal with the contrast? "Can the . . . don't know, the human side of the hero . . . can it make choices the hero can't? Or does the fact that they're connected make them subject to the same rules?"

Jason looked surprised. "You know . . . I never really thought about that. I'm not sure. I could argue it either way, but I can't offhand think of anything that gives me a clear answer. I'll check, if you like. Though you should probably ask that kind of thing more directly."

"Oh, I will, Jason. But I'd appreciate it if you can see what your own sources say." She thought a moment. "What happens when this . . . surge of magic subsides? If I understand your explanation, the seal being broken means we'll always have some magic on this world now, but currently there's a lot more than normal."

Jason shrugged. "We don't know – not me, not any of my sources. The surge itself isn't going away anytime soon; it's been building for five hundred thousand years, and like a broken dam the flow will go on for a while. It hasn't even peaked yet. Before . . . my one friend had to leave, he made a rough guess that the surge won't die down for at least a thousand years."

She managed a laugh. "I suppose that means we don't need to concern ourselves with that part of the problem."

"No, probably not."

They talked for a while longer, but Jennifer had what she'd come for – maybe more than she'd come for. But it had given her some insight, crazy though those insights were, into what her patient might be like, what the sources of his problems might be, and – most importantly – what she had to learn about him in order to help.

As she left, she looked up into the clouded sky and wondered whether those that flew above those clouds knew that their powers were also a prison.

 

 

The post LEGEND: Chapter 8 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

Demons of the Past: RETRIBUTION, Chapter 17

Well, if our Heroes have made progress, it's probably going to annoy our villain...

-----

 

Chapter 17

Shagrath:

I have passed beyond rage and reached uttermost calm, Shagrath noted with a faint surprise.

Varan has eluded me again.

There should have been no trouble in this mission. He knew Varan was being held by the Zchorada. He had remained there, a prisoner, for months. Admittedly, there was that annoying and not entirely explicable blurring around him, but there was no doubt that it was, in fact, Varan; though the details of the figure could not be made out, its movements and posture and other factors – such as its routine to practice the easily-recognized forms of Tor – made it certain.

He was also certain he had read the Vmee correctly. They were naturally not trusting of the Empire, but they were not yet ready – and perhaps never would be truly ready – to confront the Reborn Empire directly, so giving up Varan for the sake of even a few months unmolested would be a fine bargain.

Shagrath had even considered the possibility that Varan had told them everything he knew, but without evidence? They would not have credited it.

He shook his head, still trying to find his center as he thought. The ritual would not work if he was not focused. What if Varan did have evidence? There was the nagging, simple fact that Shagrath had never quite figured out how Varan had seen through the façade that should have utterly deceived him. Obviously he had been assisted, nearly from the first, by Doctor Sooovickalassa, but the R'Thann surely hadn't had the faintest idea of what Shagrath was; had he had such suspicions before Varan's advent, he would have acted on them.

Thus it was, somehow, Varan who had penetrated Shagrath's disguise, and that, quite simply, should have been impossible. That fact had never stopped bothering Shagrath. Still, even granting that for the moment, whatever knowledge Varan had couldn't have been evidence. It would not have served to convince the cautious and justifiably paranoiac Zchoradan leaders to ally themselves with a renegade.

It had to have something to do with that incident on Mydrwyll some months ago. Why and how, he did not know, but for some reason it had been desperately important to the Eönwyl – and presumably Varan and his other allies – that she make contact with one of the former members of Teraikon's research complement.

That made little sense . . . yet it had to make sense. Shagrath growled to himself and rose, feeling the furious calm becoming unbalanced by his indecision and confusion. Think it through.

Item: None of the crew of Teraikon would remember the true sequence of events that led to Varan's escape, not even aliens like Mydrwyll.

Item: No records of the true events would remain either; the magic used would assure that, even if some member or members of the crew had secretly made other recordings and hidden them.

Item: Sasham Varan had to be aware of this by now. At the least he would have found and read the released log recordings and know that they had been modified, despite the fact that the Empire's science would claim it was impossible to modify such recordings without obvious traces. Knowing Shagrath's other abilities, it was essentially certain he would know that not only recordings, but memories would be useless to him.

Conclusion: Sasham Varan believed there was some other data of vital interest, presumably that could be used to convince someone that he was not insane, held by one or more members of Teraikon's crew, but that data was not directly associated with the events that led to his escape . . . and thus would not have been erased.

The logic held. But what could this information be? The Mydrwyll had been a student of various species and cultures. Offhand, Shagrath couldn't see how that could possibly benefit Varan; neither the Kaital nor Shagrath himself were or had been members of such cultures, at least not as themselves, and most of the ones that might have known something of them were long dead.

It doesn't matter. Accept for the moment that there was such evidence. That was the only thing that made sense of the actions of Varan's friends . . . and of the subsequent events. The emissaries, with two Kaital overseeing them, had arrived to take Varan, and after that . . . nothing. The Nest had, of course, not been in direct contact with those two at the time; the risk of simply having the bodiless intellects in the task force was already high enough. But that did mean that neither he nor his allies knew precisely how it had all gone wrong.

Still, I know enough. The Kaital were wiped out, and by sufficient power that they were literally unable to even make contact with the Nest before it happened. The only force that could reasonably have achieved that would have been a union of the Zchoradan Masters of Minds – thousands or tens of thousands of powerful psionics attacking at once. And the only reason they would have attacked so swiftly and savagely would be that they knew what they faced.

And now they know for certain.

The question was . . . what would they do now? And what should he, Shagrath, be doing to ensure that it did not disrupt the entire plan? The very thought of it coming apart now was infuriating; if he could not coordinate the collapse properly, he'd have to start over again much sooner and it would be that much harder to eliminate the traces of his presence.

Time to get some information. Having followed these thoughts to their conclusion, Shagrath felt his mind at least reasonably in balance. But after assaying the power of his circle once more, he found himself little more informed than he had been previously.

No longer a blur. Varan is gone now, invisible. Which, of course, meant that he was back on board that never-sufficiently-accursed vessel, behind the wards that Khoros and the Sh'ekatha had placed upon it. Whether he was still within the Zchoradan systems or had departed, Shagrath could not tell. Moreover, the defenses of the Zchorada had been fully activated; the number of both mechanical and living mindshields was immense.

What will he do now?

Shagrath considered the question – and realized that now he was viewing Varan as his adversary. The former Imperial Captain was not a fugitive, not a loose end; he was becoming the catalyst of any effective resistance, despite everything that Shagrath had done to neutralize him. A small part of Shagrath felt a grudging respect for the sheer indomitable tenacity of the man, but mostly Shagrath simply felt a cold, venomous hatred for Varan.

"Very well," he said aloud. "What are you going to do, Captain?"

Speaking aloud seemed to crystallize his thoughts. It was, suddenly, obvious. Varan now had allies – in fact, he had just gained the one group of allies he absolutely had to have if he was going to move against the Empire under Shagrath's direction.

But both Varan and the Zchorada would know that they didn't have sufficient forces to stand anything like an even chance against the Reborn Empire. Therefore . . .

Shagrath felt a slow grin starting. "Therefore you still have work to do, Captain," he said to the empty room.

The Zchorada would be increasing their production, attempting to build and crew as many vessels as possible, of course, but they'd need more allies. Varan was the key there again; there was only one more stellar power of any note, one which also incorporated psionic individuals into its innermost workings: Ptial. Varan would have to travel to Ptial itself and convince them to join the war against the Empire.

Shagrath didn't allow himself any illusions; based on prior knowledge and experience, it was virtually certain that Varan would succeed, although Shagrath would do his best to throw as many obstacles in the Captain's path as possible. But the important part of this was that it would take time. Even with the help of the Zchorada's known Nexus gateways, getting to Ptial and back would require at least two months, perhaps more, and building disparate groups into a coordinated assault force would also take time.

Yes. That would actually work very nicely. In, say, two months he could announce the Zchorada's refusal to turn over Varan – that would be plenty of time for word to have gotten back and a response formulated. That would ratchet tensions right up to the breaking point, he could make final adjustments to deployments, final arrangements with the Kaital to trigger the proper events on multiple worlds at his signal, and then . . .

He allowed himself a chuckle. "And then, Captain, whether I can find a way to capture you or not . . . I will let you – your own actions, with your own fleet – be the trigger for the war!"

 

 

The post Demons of the Past: RETRIBUTION, Chapter 17 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

LEGEND: Chapter 7

Where there are heroes, there must be Villains...

-----

 

 

Chapter 7.

"Am I . . . alive?"

"You are, Lord."

Lord? He thought about that. Everything was vague . . . but he remembered anger. A face, a young, determined face filled with certainty and fury. Something about that face made him clench his fists. But he didn't quite remember. . . . "I am your . . . Lord?"

     A smile, gentle and cold as falling snow. "Now, yes. You have fought long and hard to be here, Lord."

Yes. Yes, I remember fighting. The words were thought to himself, not to the other, because though he had but the faintest traces of memories, still he felt surrounded by peril and possibility. I must be cautious, cautious. I do not know who she is or what she wants. I do not know who I am, yet, though I can feel the memory waiting. "I remember a battle . . . more than one. One a long time before these others."

She nodded, black hair curving down, hiding the left side of her face in shadow. "Your memory will return. Memory is the province of the living; the dead have no need of it."

"What?" He felt a chill of fear, and knew that for him this was rare indeed. But I remember . . . endless fighting. Through countless enemies in armor, pale and cold, swinging axe and sword and hammer without word or cry . . . "I am not dead, girl!"

"No, Lord," she said, with that smile again. "Not now."

He tried to laugh. "Dead is not a temporary state."

"Truth you speak, Lord. Yet for some few, even death may loose her grip, if they struggle against her enough, and if their strength be greater than that of mortals. Gods and demons have passed from that realm and returned whence they came; perhaps one of those you are, as well."

He was unsure if this was a trick, or something much better . . . or much worse. A part of me says that I have seen things nearly as strange, and such things rarely turn out well in legend . . .

     . . . in legend . . .

     "LEGEND!"

He was standing, fists raised to the dark stone above as though to shatter it, the shout still echoing through the umbral spaces around, and he saw that face, that determined boy's face . . .

The girl's hand touched his shoulder. "So you begin to remember, Lord."

"He . . . he sent me here."

"Not here. Much farther away, and through ice and fire and armies you have found your path, and commandeered the ship of Vigrid to sail where never she was meant."

I remember . . . a ship of ivory white, but scaled like a serpent . . .

But more, he remembered the black-haired boy, standing in his way, again and again, and finally . . .

He whirled suddenly, gripping the slender girl's arms in his huge hands. "What do you want? Stop with these games and riddles! Who are you?"

As he shook her, the head tipped back, the coal-black hair fell away from her face, and he froze, feeling disbelief and horror mingled with a cold triumph, because now he understood, now it all made a terrible and fearful sense.

And in that moment, he remembered.

 

The post LEGEND: Chapter 7 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

Demons of the Past: RETRIBUTION, Chapter 16

They had dealt with the immediate problem...

-----

 

Section Two: Hosts Assembled and Foreseen

 

 

Chapter 16

The Eönwyl:

For once, she didn't care the slightest bit about being controlled or measured; she ran, ran ahead of the others and caught up Sasham, kissing him even as she lifted him off the ground and spun, hugging him so tight she heard him grunt in surprise. She laughed, kissed him again, hugged and spun once more, and then stopped, but didn't let go. "I missed you," she said finally.

He laughed and touched her hair, ran his hands through it, his gray eyes wide and filled with tears of happiness. "Torline's Swords, I missed you."

Just hearing that archaic oath made her feel as though everything was finally right again, and she heard her own laugh echo through the Heart of Nests.

Such greetings are well and good, came the mind-voice of Vick, but we do have more important business to hand. Despite the words, the R'Thann's thoughts were suffused with a cheerful approval that was at odds with his usual calculated exterior.

Guvthor, of course, was never one for restraint; his own booming laugh vibrated the oversight nests above. "Let us not hurry them, friends; this has been a long separation and one filled with a great deal of uncertainty."

But Sasham reluctantly pulled away from her. She allowed it; after all, we'll be together from now on.

He turned first to the purple-skinned Mydrwyll and bowed deeply, presenting a full Six-and-One to Hmmmseeth. "I have no words sufficient to express my thanks, Child of the Seventh Hmmmseeth," he said. "I had hoped my friends guessed the meaning of a single word aright, but there were still so many –"

"Thanks are un-needed, Captain Sasham Varan," the many-tentacled creature responded, eye focused entirely on Varan. "You were owed Rational Debt; now, it seems that you are fighting a battle for all intelligent creatures, and Debt is even greater. I will assist you in this war as best I can."

He grinned, the lightning-flash of white she had missed more than she could say. "You've already assisted by getting me out – just in time."

He turned again, this time to the Vmee. "And my thanks to all of you, for giving my friends the time, and hearing them." He looked to the side, at the red-and-black Rizzivor. "And especially to you, for believing me and summoning the Minds of Power to stand by me against a foe I could never have defeated alone."

The Vmee Zschorhaza dipped his mandibles twice. "We merely fulfilled an agreement – and had nearly reneged. You owe us no thanks."

"And while I, and the Masters of Minds, accept your appreciation," Rizzivor said slowly, "I believe you may underestimate yourself. It was far from merely our power that crushed the Kaital so completely. One mind stood apart and above all the others, Captain Varan, and that one was your own."

He blinked in obvious surprise. "Are you . . . yes, I sense you are serious. But . . ." He shook his head. "Never mind, we have other issues to attend to."

"Yes," said the Eönwyl. "Vmee, what about the other members of the Admiral's task force?"

"Under control," answered another Zchoradan, a large squat creature with brown-and-green patterning. "Once their primary emissary vessel was dispatched without visible agency, the remainder surrendered immediately."

She looked at Sasham. "Sash, are there any –"

"—no," he answered instantly. "If there were any other Kaital anywhere in this region, I'd have known. There're no Kaital or any active psis in that fleet, so no messages getting out."

A minimally useful fact, if at all. Shagrath will undoubtedly know they have been destroyed – if not now, certainly within a few days.

"Indeed, my R'Thann friend," Guvthor said. "Yet still very useful. He cannot act as though he knows for quite some time, unless he is ready to tear the mask off. Oh, he will be able to prepare and position his forces and responses to be . . . fortuitously conducive to whatever action he decides to take, ultimately, but that action itself is still constrained by the time it would reasonably take for him to deduce that mission's failure. Weeks, perhaps a few months."

"We must plan our actions as swiftly as may be," the Vmee Zschorhaza said. "We are now committed to this alliance, and these events prove that we would soon be in opposition to your Reborn Empire in any case. But the situation is grave, and our analysts do not believe we have a great deal of time. Have you a plan, Sasham Varan?"

She sensed a new tension in him now, but it seemed . . . calmer. He made decisions, he thought things through, while we were gone. Well, he had time.

"I do," he said finally. "Parts of that plan will be kept to as few people as possible, because it's going to be delicate . . . by the Towers, it's going to be as delicate as any operation I've ever heard of. But in the end it's still going to come down to war. The only question will be if we can make it so that the war can be won, rather than everyone losing, which is what's going to happen if Shagrath's plans go into motion. I think it can be won, and if we just have enough time, we have the people to do it."

He looked around at the Vmee Zschorza, and she suddenly realized there was no longer any trace of the tension and fear she remembered. Sasham? Are you . . .?

     Cured, he thought back, with the impression of a joyous smile. What has been called 'immersive reversion' therapy. I had to be surrounded by Zchoradans, and by so being – and by them proving that they were nonetheless honorable and reasonable beings – I finally overcame that fear and I am, at last, whole.

He raised his arms in salute twice. "First, you know what must be done here in the Meld. You must assemble the greatest fleet the Zchoradan Meld has ever fielded, and prepare them to be directed to a single target."

The Vmee stiffened. "A single target? Captain, your Reborn Empire has tens of thousands of worlds and ships to match."

"No doubt," Guvthor boomed out, "yet Captain Varan is correct. There is, in this shadow war, only one true target, only one real enemy, and that is Shagrath."

Sasham nodded, and she could feel the rightness of this decision, even though she couldn't even begin to fathom how it could all be brought about. "Oro. The Capital of the Empire itself. That's where Shagrath is. That's where the center of the Kaital on his side are, I'm certain of it. We have to break them if we are to save anything. But more, we're going to have to have to break belief in them, change their story to the truth."

That, Vick thought, sounds like much the harder problem.

"It's going to be difficult as the Hells," Sasham admitted. "I have a good idea of how to pull it off, but that's for later. Meanwhile, we also need to figure out how to coordinate everything, because we need to gather in our allies. Vick, I know that Shagrath can mentally reach insane distances. How far can people like us communicate, outside of mindshields?"

A sensation of a bladed smile. A very long distance indeed, especially if it is mind-to-mind with both minds capable telepaths. The same is true of many other powers.

"Then are you now strong enough to reach Thann'ta and the Master of the Final Light? Could you tell him that it is time for the R'Thann to assemble their forces as well and meet us at Thovia?"

I will have to attempt it. You have grown vastly stronger than I in this time, but I, too, am stronger far than I was but a few months agone.

"Psionic communication will indeed be a vital factor," Rizzivor said with a bob of his mandibles. "The Zchorada will assist in this. With the power of our Masters of Minds, a link to your Thann'ta should be quite feasible." He looked to the Eönwyl. "You, Eönwyl, will require much training, as you will be a vital part of the force."

She blinked. "What do you mean? I'm just a –"

"You are far from 'just a trader', which I believe you were about to say," Rizzivor cut her off. "You are a psionic, blessed with one of the rarest abilities known – intala, as the ancient texts of your people call it, combat prescience, the ability to enter a deadly situation and sense which of many courses of action is the correct one to take. But you have done little with this power."

You are correct, Vick said, and she sensed his understanding . . . and an anticipatory amusement she did not like at all. She has avoided grasping this weapon that has been gifted to her, and no longer can that be tolerated. For it is clear what position she must occupy when the time comes.

A terrible, disbelieving foreboding stole over her. "No. I don't think you're saying what I think –"

Guvthor's laugh boomed throughout the Heart of Nests. "Of course they are, my intrepid trading friend. We will be assembling the greatest – and most diverse – combat force in the modern history of the Galaxy. They must be directed and coordinated correctly and there will be barely time to assemble these forces, hardly any to train them in coordinated maneuvers. You will be the Commander of Fleets, the Director of Combat, the High Admiral of the assembled warships of all the worlds we can ally to our cause!"

Appalled understanding broke through. Collapsing walls, no! "I can't possibly do that!" she heard herself say. That was, itself, a shock; her entire life had been built around declaring that she would do something.

But, she realized even in that instant, that was because it had been solely her life. Her life, her ship, her choices, her risks. The few times others depended on her it was still personal, it was people on board her ship, her friends. It was nothing that lay beyond that, that placed her in a position to affect the lives of millions, billions, quadrillions of others across the galaxy. I can't do that, she heard, echoing inside her.

"You must," Rizzivor said, and his deep buzzing voice was resolved. "And you must begin that training now, for time is increasingly our enemy."

She stared at them in disbelief. Me? Command a fleet? I've never directed more than three ships in my life, and that as a trader! I'm not an admiral, I'm just a free trader –

Varan's hand came to rest on her shoulder, and she looked, slightly down as always, into his gray eyes, eyes filled with both sympathy and grim agreement. "They're right, you know," he said quietly. "And I mean that: you know."

She swallowed. "I don't want to know. Sasham, I'm not –"

"I understand. Believe me, Eönwyl, I understand. I didn't want to become . . . what I am now. Either a psi, or a revolutionary. But I had to face it anyway. Ask yourself, Eönwyl. Ask that sense of yours. What is it telling you?"

She sighed, closed her eyes and calmed herself, then reached out, into that part of her mind she had only recently begun to understand. What should I do?

Instantaneously, absolute certainty came. It did nothing to dispel her fears, her doubts about herself or gut-deep revulsion about taking control of others' courses and destinies, but at the same time it was absolute and undeniable.

She opened her eyes, and saw the sad certainty mirrored in his own. "They . . . are right." She took his hand. "But at least we'll be together."

The shift of his expression jolted her. "We will be –"

"—not right away, no. Not once we really start," he said reluctantly. "Eönwyl, you, Vick, Guvthor, you have to gather whatever we can get from Thann'ta, and the few ships Thovia can offer, and get everything unified here, while the Zchorada are getting the main fleet together. And me . . . I've got another mission that no one else can carry out."

"What? You mean . . . oh." With a tremendous effort she forced protests back. She knew already that they would have no effect. "Ptial."

"Right. And – I'll explain later – the Empire, too. But that's going to be touchy. I'm only talking about that on board The Eönwyl, where I know we can't be spied on by anything."

So I have to learn to be a, what, prescient commander of starfleets, and you have to go recruiting more fleets for me. She nodded her head finally.

"But not right away," he said, and his smile brought her own back. "I think that even we can take a few days."

If you insist, I suppose, Vick thought, but there was an overlay of a smile that took the sting from the thought.

"Indeed," Guvthor said, and the rattling buzz around the Heart of Nests was laughter in a Zchoradan vein. "Only a few days, but I think even destiny can be held in abeyance for that long."

"Then a few days it is. Make your own plans and preparations in that time as well," the Vmee Zschorhaza said. "For our enemy will not give us more time than he must."

 

The post Demons of the Past: RETRIBUTION, Chapter 16 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

LEGEND: Chapter 6

Dr. Hsui is involved in something she never expected. So what do you do? RESEARCH!

-----

 

 

Chapter 6.

And now I spend half my Saturday working.

There wasn't any avoiding the fact that if she was going to be trying to counsel a . . . superhero, she needed more information. Fortunately, Yuki's friend Melanie Davidson was more than happy to have Yuki over for a play date, and Melanie's mother Dawn was even willing to do the pick-up and drop-off. "Thank you so much, Dawn," she said, giving Yuki a kiss on the cheek before letting her run off to the Davidson's van. "Maybe next week I can do all the work and let you have a day."

"Oh, don't worry about it. When the two of them are playing together I hardly ever see them except at lunch." She laughed. "Mark calls them Yulanie, or sometimes Melkari."

"They do rather fuse when they start playing, don't they?" Jennifer waved goodbye, then turned and headed to her home office.

The problem, she thought as she booted up her computer and connected to the Net, isn't finding information – it's figuring out which information is complete bullpuckey and which is real.

As usual, she went first to Factcopia; the user-developed online trivia warehouse-turned-universal-encyclopedia wasn't the most reliable source (bravo understatement) but it was very good at providing an overview of any subject that was good enough to point you in the direction of real sources and give you the more useful keywords to search with.

After half an hour of sorting through various sources, cross-checking ratings and the connections of the sources to generally reliable groups, she had enough to really start reading.

Supers, or Superheroes, or, as they are officially termed by international organizations, EEIs – Extraordinarily Empowered Individuals – are one of the most spectacularly obvious and troublesome aspects of the event variously called the Change, the Awakening, the Transformation, and so on. While presumably drawing upon the same general source of power, such beings are clearly distinct from the more typical practitioners of the power generally called "magic", began one paper. While written in a generally scholarly manner, it seemed to spend too many words to say not very much – mostly the obvious. All she got from that one which was at all useful was an official estimate of numbers: At the time of writing, there are one hundred ninety-seven known and classified EEIs, with estimates of the actual number currently active ranging from three to ten times that.

She sat back. No more than two thousand on Earth – probably less than a thousand – like Legend. Literally less than one in a million people. And really, there isn't anyone like him.

That was reinforced by most of the other literature. Superheroes or supervillains, EEIs were each unique. Oh, there were some general common traits and classifications; a large number had superhuman strength, speed, and toughness to one extent or another, and it appeared that all of them could take more abuse than ordinary people. There seemed, however, to be no limit to what kind of power could be granted; known examples ranged from the straightforward superhuman warriors like Superlative and, to a large degree, Legend himself, to technological masterminds like Steel Sentinel or Steampunk, to media-informed Heroes like Lightsword or Merlin.

The power levels were all over the map, too, from Street Dragon who was basically a martial artist just past the level of human, through people like The Rat or Crystal Visions who could probably take on several swat teams by themselves, all the way to the almost inconceivably powerful beings like Superlative, Endgame, and Valameon.

She noticed with some trepidation that Legend topped every list of powerful Heroes.

The other important changes directly related to the Heroes and villains, she knew, were the Shelters and Restructurization technology. How these things worked, exactly, was a very closely guarded secret, which at first absolutely gobsmacked Jennifer. "How in hell can they keep that secret?" she demanded aloud, incredulous. "What, are they trying to keep a monopoly, while people who need them are in thousands of cities around the world?"

The Shelters existed in a number of major cities – and a few minor ones that, like Albany, had a disproportionate number of super-beings about. Immense underground bunkers with widely distributed public access points, the Shelters were able to protect from the direct effects of most super-beings and the indirect effects of even the most powerful – at least so far. But there were many, many other cities which did not yet have even a few Shelters, let alone the pervasive Shelters found in places like Albany, and the thought that someone was preventing that from happening . . .

Following another link both answered her question and chilled her to the bone, thinking of the potential consequences of someone acting on the same unthinking fury she'd just had and trying to force the makers to reveal that secret. "Under no circumstances will we deliberately reveal the precise operating principles of the Shelters," the video clip showed Deep Sky, one of the empowered group called simply The Five, saying in a rare interview. "It's true that very few people would even understand the explanation, but some of those few are precisely the type of people from whom the Shelters are supposed to protect you, the general public, and at least a few of those would very deliberately use that knowledge to weaken or destroy the Shelters."

The Shelters, and the Restructurization technology, were both to a great extent a product of the work of Magitek, presumably one of the supers himself, along with major government participation and the assistance of the Five. Restructurization allowed a building or object which had been properly scanned prior to being damaged or destroyed to be restored to its prior condition within a few hours. This helped to reduce – though not eliminate – the repercussions of superhuman combat in city limits.

And that leads us to the other major change – legally.

Technically, of course, most of the superheroes were in clear violation of the original law of the land during almost all of their outings. Vigilantism, while always popular in fictional form, was generally frowned upon in any reasonably advanced society. Local and regional law enforcement forces were expected to handle lawbreakers.

The problem was, of course, that there was no legitimate local or even regional force capable of stopping a villain like F-6, who could control weather to an extreme degree, or Fenris, who was an almost invulnerable killing machine, or Autonomous, who could separate his own body into pieces which could look like almost anything – let alone beings like Valameon or Endgame, who considered entire navies or armies to be minor annoyances.

Her reading confirmed her memory; at least for now, the current legal stance of the United States and other countries was that there were problems which only the superhumans could reasonably be expected to handle, and for those problems they were automatically exempt from legal punishment as long as they made a good-faith effort to minimize casualties and damage. Other activities were currently treated on a case-by-case basis, but for the most part the superhero community had – thus far – managed to keep itself self-policing.

Naturally, of course, the various countries were more than willing to hire EEIs as special operatives, but to date there were very few takers; Jennifer suspected that many of those who might consider it were, justifiably, worried that they might end up lab rats more than government agents.

She skimmed information on some of the other Heroes, trying to get a feel for the people that Legend would obviously see as his peers . . . and realizing how very odd this case was going to be. What to make, for example, of the hero called America, looking like Abraham Lincoln dressed up as Uncle Sam, quoting from various historic documents as he battled adversaries like Homeland Patriot and Anarchy, often accompanied by Liberty and Justice? It sounds funny – like a farce, really – when I read it. But I remember seeing some of those battles and there was absolutely nothing funny about any of it.

Then there was Admiral Twilight, whose main power was generally acknowledged to be probability control – controllable luck. You'd think that would be the ultimate power in some ways, but I suppose it has limits.

She couldn't help but laugh at the entry for Gumband, a hero who had nearly unlimited elasticity as his main power; his outfit looked more like a Hawaiian vacationer, complete with patterned shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, topped with a wide-brimmed straw hat. Despite this he was described as a much more dangerous opponent than she would have thought.

Then there was Natural Selector, whose major ability appeared to be opening gateways through time and space to bring through animals of any era or location to obey her commands. She wasn't always considered a hero, though – she'd apparently had conflicts with a number of Heroes, including Speed and the Rat.

The Rat . . . she winced every time she saw the name. But his record, especially in the more authoritative documents, showed a man who spent a lot of hours defending everyone he could, and often getting the hell beat out of him for it . . . as he did when he fought Fenris, she admitted to herself. Most people say he should have been outmatched by that monster, but somehow it ended with Fenris unconscious, maybe dying, and the Rat standing – for about twenty seconds.

Then there was Traveller, controller of gateways to nearly anywhere, flyer, teleporter with the ability to use her power in a lot of frightening ways. If you can be anywhere you want . . . She often worked with Crystal Visions and Trinary. Fireflux and Caracal . . .

She sighed. "What am I looking for?"

Part of it she had; who the people were that Legend would consider his peers, his allies and enemies. But missing from the files – conspicuously and frighteningly missing – was any information on the key problem of being a superhero, of having an alter ego that, according to Legend, could be completely different from your real, original self. And that was what she really needed – insight into the people involved, something that she could use to compare with what she heard and felt from Legend.

In other situations, I would be absolutely thrilled. I'm the first. I'm starting in a completely empty field – minus, I suppose, deep-black security agencies who're trying to profile these people. And . . . I guess I still am thrilled. She really couldn't lie to herself; the idea that she was not only starting a completely new psychological exploration, but also doing so with the most iconic of all the new Heroes? Of course she was thrilled and excited.

But I'm also terrified – not just by what it implies to be even a tiny part of his life, but by what could happen if I screw this up.

She sighed finally, and picked up the phone. Only one real resource for any of the things I'm looking for that I can think of. The number wasn't hard to find, and the phone only rang twice before someone picked it up. "Yes, this is Jennifer Hsui calling. I'm a psychaiatrist in private practice in Albany.

"I need to make an appointment to see Mr. Jason Wood as soon as possible."

 

The post LEGEND: Chapter 6 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

Demons of the Past: RETRIBUTION, Chapter 15

They'd convinced the Vmee that they'd been telling the truth... but the Empire had come calling...

-----

 

 

Chapter 15

Varan:

The door slid open without warning and the Grasper lunged in. "Captain! Captain Varan, come swiftly!"

Even under ordinary circumstances I wouldn't question an order from a jailor, but the grim panic in the Grasper's voice lent it vastly more urgency. I rose from my chair; the Grasper was already turning away and I followed, feeling a rising sense of nervousness. Well, she didn't come with additional guards; I presume I'm not in trouble. "What has happened, Grasper? Where are we going?"

"You are summoned by the Vmee themselves; your friends have returned and given evidence sufficient to convince the Vmee that you were correct all along about your Empire and those now guiding it."

Vindicated! I felt my broadest grin spreading across my face, realizing that this meant that not only would I be free . . . the Eönwyl was here, was not more than a few hundred meters from me now! She was here, she had come for me, and –

But that would be no reason for panic. "What, then, is wrong?"

"It has been three weeks."

"Three . . . Torline's Swords. The emissary from the Reborn Empire –"

"—arrived within moments of the Vmee's acceptance of your friends' testimony," the Grasper finished. "Yes. And there is still a powerful minority that thinks the evidence at least somewhat weak, and believes that appeasing the Empire is the wiser long-term course. Even a few more months to a year would naturally give us more time to fortify –"

"—but of course the same's true of the Empire. Niaadea's Name, what rotten timing. A few hours and we'd have been well away and you'd at least have had an excuse for not handing me over." We passed, for the first time since I had been imprisoned, through the entrance of the prison, and I felt the psionic dampers lifting away, my psi-powers fully awakening. Despite the situation, that gave me a surge of confidence and elation. I was, finally, completely myself again. Despite the fuzz of many other psi-shields, I was sure I could sense the most beautiful mind in any world ahead of me. She's there. The Eönwyl is there. "What now?"

"Your friends' ship has been hidden. They are now in a room to the side of the Heart of Nests and we hope to at least conceal their presence from their emissary."

I thought fast. Shagrath won't want to give the Zchorada any evidence of my testimony's accuracy. So they're not going to send down a Kaital. But I will bet every Eternal I've ever owned that there's one running this task force. Maybe two or three. "So there's at least going to be discussion of turning me over, and they'll need to exhibit me."

"Yes. Had the agreements between the Vmee and you and your crew been finalized, you would have been able to depart, and the Zchorada would have been committed. But the situation changed at the worst possible moment, and the minority's position is much stronger than it was mere minutes ago."

"So . . . it's possible they will vote to turn me over to the Empire?"

When the Grasper hesitated, I understood, and felt my gut tightening to steel-cable tautness. "There's a good chance of them turning me over."

"I am . . . afraid so."

"Do they understand I have absolutely no intention of allowing that?"

"The Vmee Zschorhaza certainly does. Many others in the Vmee overall. But as the demands do not require you to be alive . . ."

Perfect. The allies I could have had moments ago might actually shoot me down so they could turn my body over to the Imperials. Something which would be just fine as far as Shagrath was concerned. "Grasper, if I am not presumptuous, you are on my side in this, yes?"

She did not hesitate. "Absolutely, Captain. The Vmee were convinced you had told us the truth, and if so, it is the very existence of all Nests that hangs in the balance. These cowardly . . ." she used a term in Zchoradan that meant, roughly, scavengers of offal, " . . . believe they can avoid the digger forever by sacrificing another Nest. In the end, there will be no Nests left to sacrifice."

"Then I need you to do me a favor. Will you be able to speak to any of the Vmee?"

"I will, but a few words only, and not to the Vmee as a whole. I am sure I could manage to speak with any given member, but only, as I said, briefly. The situation is desperate."

"Okay. Then tell . . ." I thought back over the Vmee I'd seen, ". . . tell Rizzivor this." I paused, making sure I condensed everything into as few words as possible. "Tell him, 'When the time comes, I need you to follow my lead, and drop the shields.'"

"He will want assurance that you will harm none of the Vmee."

"I will direct absolutely no attack against the Vmee or any of the Zchorada."

"Then I will do this."

"Thank you." I saw restraints in her claws. "I suppose I will have to be bound as a prisoner when presented."

"It is so." Her voice was apologetic; her next words, however, were lighter. "However, it is possible that these restraints may have failed to lock when placed on you."

I grinned, despite the growing tension of the situation. "I don't suppose my weapons might have happened to end up near me."

"Let us not expect the impossible," she said.

We came to a small room, unfurnished except for a pair of Zchoradan rest stands. The Grasper gestured for me to wait. "I must see if they are prepared . . . and pass on your message, of course."

The doors locked behind her. I took the opportunity to bring up the full discipline of Tor, from Fast Center to White Vision all the way through Mind Center. I must be absolutely calm, absolutely focused, ready for any event, yet anticipating none, only reacting to what is rather than what I hope or fear.

I could sense, very faintly, the Eönwyl's presence in another direction; Sooovickalassa was with her and, I guessed, so was Guvthor – though his Thovian resistance to mental powers made it impossible to be sure. At least they'll have a chance to get away, if things go badly here.

After a few more moments, the far door opened, and the Grasper beckoned me forward. "The message is delivered. The Vmee await you – as does the Imperial emissary. I pray to the Nests that you have a plan."

"I have a plan. It's a desperate one, and if it fails you're probably at war. But you would be soon enough anyway."

"I understand." She fell silent for the next few moments. Then the ancient wooden doors loomed before me. She buzz-whispered "Luck go with you," and then shoved the doors open.

The Heart of Nests was the same as I remembered . . . and not the same, with the prior overlay of unreasoning horror removed. Now I could appreciate the ancient, alien yet understandable beauty that lay within the worn, curved carvings of stone that supported the Vmee who lay above, rising to see me as I was conducted across the broad stone floor towards the three human figures waiting there; two in full armor, and the third in the uniform of an Admiral. As he turned, I recognized him: Altelle Dor'Kane, one of the first branch of that member of the Five Families.

"Admiral," I said, nodding to him.

"So they did have you," he murmured. "Even with the assurances I wasn't sure I believed it." He looked up at the Vmee. "May I assume that you are relinquishing all claim on this man?"

The Vmee Zschorhaza raised and lowered his mandibles. "You claim he is a traitor and guilty of high crimes towards your people. While we have a claim on him as well, in the interests of preventing open warfare, we will allow you to take him."

"Then our business is concluded," he said, and gestured to the power-armored guards.

I knew those two would have psi-shields on them, and likely would include such on any restraints they placed on me. This was the last instant I could act.

I concentrated, boosted my speed and strength as far as I dared. Instantly the guards slowed, startlingly so; I had expected to see them moving at what seemed a slow, deliberate pace, but instead they were turning so slowly in my direction that I felt I could run multiple times around them before they completed the turn. Rather than test that, I merely ran off to the side – so swiftly I could see their eyes trying, and failing, to keep track of me – and shed the restraints. I hurled one at each armored trooper as hard as my enhanced strength allowed.

To my utter astonishment, the restraints did not merely stagger the power-armored warriors, but punched through the e-steel armor and sent both flying aside, dead or badly injured. "NOW!" I shouted.

And for one moment, the psi-shields defending the Vmee Zschorza dropped. I reached out, scanning, calling on as many of the Zchorada to join me as possible, stretching, seeking –

And I heard a distant screaming.

Instantly I locked onto that sensation, saw a small, fast emissary vessel and sensed the presence of not one but two Kaital.

Hesitation would be fatal. We could not afford Shagrath learning exactly what had happened here. The Zchorada saw my mind, read my intent; the psionic conversation took less time to consider all possible courses of action than it took my body to blink once, and then we were united.

My power, joined with that of half the active psis on all of Zchorada itself, lashed out, caught the ship and its shocked occupants in a monstrous vise of mental power. For an instant I felt resistance as those hideous energy-eating things sought to win their freedom and perhaps more by consuming the very minds that attacked them; but then there was the sensation of shock, disbelief that the power ranged against them could be nearly so great –

- and the vise closed. Two minds – and, I sensed with an aching moment of regret, others far weaker – collapsed like drifting soap-bubbles in the draft of a furnace. The ship itself crumpled like a reed beneath a boot and exploded, erasing all trace of its existence from the cosmos.

The shields came back up.

Instantly there was a screeching and rattling and grinding of multiple Zchoradan voices raised in anger, fear, and confusion; despite the disappearance of my phobia, I still winced inwardly as well as outwardly from the fury and savagery of the exchanges; Admiral Dor'Kane shrank back, face drawn and shocked, gaze darting from me to the two fallen Guardsmen to the Vmee, who were now raised up in near-attack posture. Some of the Zchoradan tones reached the ultrasonic, piercing the ears with not-quite-heard daggers of sound.

Finally the argument began to subside, though it had been a very near thing indeed; I saw Rizzivor sliding his sidearm back into its holster, hiding the gesture from the rest of the Vmee. It must have been within instants of turning into all-out conflict.

Finally the Vmee Zschorhaza turned to me. "Captain Varan, you doubtless understand the situation. Have you anything to say to the Vmee, especially those who were in favor of turning you over to the Admiral?"

"Yes. Simply this: your people assisted in that attack. Ask them of the two minds they sensed. Were they an artifact of my allies? Were they a phantom concocted by the madness the Empire claims?"

Rizzivor raised himself up two segments. "I speak for the Masters of Minds. The beings upon that vessel fit, in every particular, the description given us of the 'Kaital'. They were of no species we have ever encountered before, and their minds were utterly beyond the ability of any Master to defeat alone. Only such an instantaneous and merciless strike would allow us to prevent them from communicating with their allies or masters. They were actively hostile to the Nests as well as to Captain Varan. This is the independent proof we have sought."

"Yet you risked the Vmee for this proof," another of the Vmee said. "They would not have threatened us –"

"Not today, perhaps," Rizzivor said, cutting her off. "But sense this mind, Ezzxalvi; is there anything of mercy within it? Anything, even, that hints of a possibility of co-existence?"

I could see Ezzxalvi quiver as Rizzivor transmitted the precise sensations of the Kaital – this time through a mind that was fully alert and had understood precisely what it was seeing – into his compatriot's brain. She gave a tiny screech, then sat there, quivering, for several moments before finally rousing herself. "No," she buzzed at last. "No. That is . . . that is beyond words, perhaps beyond thought. It is well they are destroyed."

The Zchoradan council exchanged a few more sentences in their own tongue, and then Ezzxalvi turned her head to me. "All objections have been withdrawn. The Vmee Zschorza is unanimous. Your alliance is accepted." A ripple of fear and anticipation chased the echoes around the room, as the Admiral stared in shock. "Now we must hope that you also bring us knowledge of how this abomination can be defeated."

I smiled, feeling a tremendous weight lifted from my mind. Terrible things still lay ahead . . . but now we had the chance we needed. "I think we do," I said. "But before anything else, I want to see my friends."

A wave of rattling laughter swept the Heart of Nests. "And well you should," said the Vmee Zschorhaza. "Call in the Grasper; Admiral, I am afraid you are now a prisoner of the Zchoradan Meld, and if your Guardsmen survive, they as well."

As the stunned Admiral was half-led, half-dragged from the room, the main doors burst open; framed in the opening was the titanic form of Guvthor Hok Guvthor, the whip-thin shape of Dr. Sooovickalassa, the low tentacled form that I knew must be Hmmmseeth . . .

And sprinting ahead of them, into my arms, the Eönwyl.

The post Demons of the Past: RETRIBUTION, Chapter 15 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

LEGEND, Chapter 5

Let's look in on a certain little girl...

-----

 

 

Chapter 5.

"Hello there, Virgina."

She was already turning, smiling. Somehow I already knew he was there. She ran to the tall, flamboyantly-dressed figure and threw her arms around him, as high up as she could jump. "America!"

He chuckled and hugged her back. "And who else? How have you been, Virginia Dare?"

"That's Virginia Dare Jefferson!" she corrected proudly.

He smiled broadly. "And that's just exactly right, Miss Jefferson. But still Virginia Dare to me, if that's all right with you?"

"Yes, sir."

"So how have you been, Virginia?"

She was puzzled. "Don't you know?"

"Even if I do – and I don't know everything, Virginia, a long, long way from it – it wouldn't be polite o' me to show it off."

"I'm . . ." she paused, and realized with wonder the truth of what she was about to say. "I'm . . . doing really well. I'm . . . happy," she said in an awed voice, hardly able to realize she meant it.

She'd felt hope before, of course, and never so strongly as when America had brought her to Eleanor Pilgrim. And when Sunny and Malcolm Jefferson had walked into the office where Eleanor had brought her that morning, it was almost as though she'd known them since she was born.

But she'd known hope before, and thought she'd escaped a few times before – that things would get better, would turn around, and Daddy would change, or Mommy come back, or something, and it never had. So she'd been terrified that something would go wrong for the longest time, even though she'd seen early on that both of her new parents would fight to keep her; the sight of Gordon Dare backing down before the furious glare of Sunny and Malcolm had been a precious moment to hold onto. But still . . .

"I'm . . . happy," she repeated.

"Then so am I, Virginia," said America, and she could see a sparkle in those eyes that hinted at tears. "So am I. You're doing well in school, I hope."

"Almost-straight A's. Well, two B's." She worried for a moment that he'd be disappointed.

"Don't you be worried about a few B's, Virginia Dare. You'll be doin' just fine."

She nodded, then tugged nervously on the ponytail that hung behind her. "Ummm . . . so you said you wanted to talk to me?"

"First, Virginia, I need to know if anything – anything at all – has been bothering you." The blue eyes studied her, intense and concerned.

She hesitated. This is . . . embarrassing. "I . . . kinda, I guess."

"Even if it's something small, something that sounds silly, I need to know."

"Okay. Well . . . sometimes? Sometimes I have dreams." She blushed. I'm ten years old. I shouldn't be saying stuff that sounds so stupid! Of course I have dreams, everyone does! "But they're . . . about you. About your adventures and things."

He nodded slowly. "And what bothers you about that? I know you were . . . a fan of mine, so to speak, long before we ever formally met."

Daddy says it's perfectly normal to get this kind of confusion. "I'm . . . probably just confusing things, but . . . when I have the dreams, they seem awfully real, and . . . well, it's before I read about them or see them on TV!"

"And your parents don't believe you?"

Even though she felt a jab of . . . annoyance at the truth of that statement, the simple, matter-of-fact way that he called the Jeffersons "your parents" warmed her. "No. They believe I have dreams but they never believe it's before I've heard about them – on the TV while I'm asleep or something. Dad said it's common for people to . . . selectively remember, I think he said, and that they confuse past and future in their memories. That doesn't make sense to me!"

"Well, Virginia . . . what he says is true, for most people. Memory's a funny thing, and the mind does play tricks on most of us. But for you . . . You remember the last time I asked you to meet me here?" He patted the statue next to them.

"I couldn't possibly forget, could I? I mean . . . Legend!" She remembered . . .

***

"I can't be gone too long," she said to America nervously. "M . . . mommy Sunny will worry if she doesn't see me around soon. I mean, they let me go outside on my own, but . . ."

"I understand, I surely do," America said, smiling down at her. "This will not take too long, Virginia, and I guarantee your mother will not know a thing about it."

As always, America's voice calmed her. She somehow knew he wouldn't – maybe couldn't – ever tell her a lie. She looked ahead, saw that they were nearing the intersection of River and Third streets. "We're – but we can't be! I haven't walked anywhere near that far!" She pulled out her little phone and checked the time. "And we only left my house . . . ten minutes ago?"

The hero chuckled. "Depends on who you travel with and what you're doing; you can lose track of time, and sometimes that means time loses track of you, so to speak. A little trick that helps me take people places without drawin' too much attention, you see?"

Virginia wasn't sure she did see, exactly, but if America was doing it, she was sure it was okay. "But your statue's just up ahead, right? Won't people notice?"

"They mostly haven't noticed yet that the statue comes and goes," America pointed out. "See, that's one of my little tricks – I am America, but you can't usually see 'America'; that there is a concept, a set of beliefs, an image people hold in their minds and hearts, and you can't really see that, or hold it, so unless I want 'em to, people don't see me, don't perceive me – or any trace of my presence, which the disappearance of that statue would surely be."

He nodded towards the park, just coming into view. "But today, we've got something even better to show you."

The park was shadowed with green, flickers of gold sunlight playing through the trees, and she could see the concrete turtle statue that was at the front of the tiny wooded area. Virginia looked ahead eagerly, knowing where the pedestal was.

But then there was a flicker of movement, one that became more obvious, something sparkling white-silver next to the statue – the statue!

For the statue of Uncle Sam stood there, proudly unmoving, gazing out at the passing traffic with polished metal eyes. And next to that statue, the tall figure with the tumbling black curls of hair over the glittering armor that the world had known for years . . .

Virginia realized she had stopped, her mouth open. America pulled gently on her arm. "Come on, Virginia; I've got an introduction to make."

"To him? Oh my God, I'm not ready, I'm just, I . . . why me?"

"You'll understand why not too long from now, and don't you worry none about bein' ready."

As they approached – and, she could see, with people strangely passing by, not noticing that they were there – America called out, "Hello there, son. I see everything's been taken care of."

"Yes, it has." Legend's smile was a flash of brilliant lightning, and she could feel the power resonating in him, a power as protective and comforting as that of America. He dropped to one knee to be on her level. "And you are . . . ?"

"Legend, this is Virginia Dare Jefferson. Virginia, this is Legend."

She swallowed her awe and put out her hand. "I'm very pleased to meet you, sir."

His grip was just strong enough to make the handshake friendly, neither too tight nor too weak. "And likewise, Virginia. But please don't call me 'sir', makes me think I've gotten old. 'Sir' is for people like my father."

"You have a father?" As soon as she'd said it she felt like an idiot, but . . . really, it had never occurred to her that he had a family. Legend was . . . Legend, himself, unique and only that.

Legend gave a laughing snort, a very human sound that made her relax the tiniest bit. "Er . . . yes, Virginia, I do have a father. And a mom. And all that other boring normal stuff. I just don't drag it all around with me when I'm in my cape."

"I'm sorry, that was really stupid –"

"Not at all. I understand what you meant." He stood and gestured to the statue. "America wanted you to see this. I gather you already know about who and what he is."

Virginia nodded; she looked around to reassure herself that no one else was listening. "I was there. I mean, the first time. When the statue . . . became America."

"So you must have realized that the biggest clue someone could get to learning that secret –"

"--was if they noticed the statue disappearing," Virginia finished. "Sorry, s-, um, Legend. But no one seemed to."

America nodded. "As you've seen, my powers . . . guide people away from seeing what they don't need to see. Problem is, there's always things that can see through that kind of trick. Far as I know, ain't been any of them what's noticed this yet, but it's a sure bet one of 'em would, sooner or later, and most likely sooner."

"So we did some consulting with our other friends. This," Legend patted the shining aluminum arm of the statue, "is the result. It will replace America's real, um, body whenever he goes off on patrol, and disappear whenever he's back in place."

"Oh, wow! So no one will be able to track him down!"

"Well, now, I wouldn't say never," America cautioned. "But it'll be a darned sight harder for 'em to do now, that's for certain."

"And that was the reason America brought you here," Legend said. "To make sure you knew that problem was taken care of. He knows you worry about him."

Virginia felt a touch of heat on her cheeks. "Well, I know it's silly, but . . . but I do."

"Not silly at all," both Heroes said in chorus, and then grinned at each other. "No, not at all," America repeated. "You and me, we've been together from the start. I know how your dream is part of me. Stands to reason you'd be worried 'bout some villain finding out my center and my weakness. So it was definitely my job to put your mind easy on that question."

She guessed that made sense. She touched the duplicate statue, then smiled up at the original. "Thanks."

"You are always welcome, Virginia."

*****

The memory had replayed in that single instant. America was still smiling at her. "True enough; don't expect you'll ever forget that day, not even if you get to be old and gray like me."

She laughed. "You're not old, you just look old."

He smiled. "More true than you think, Virgina. But I brought you here because it's time. You're old enough that you have to know," he smiled, remembering, "know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth . . . about me. And you."

"What?"

He knelt down in front of her; she once more noticed that everyone else in the little park didn't seem to see them at all. "You, Virginia Dare," he said. "You were the one who made me, you see. When I said you protected yourself, I wasn't joking, wasn't trying to make you feel different or special. You're one of them, is what I'm trying to say. One of the new Heroes, the Supers. Just a very different one."

She realized she was staring at him with her mouth open. "M . . . me? No, you are! I'm just . . . just me! Virginia Dare Jefferson! No one special."

He laughed – not unkindly. "Every single person is special, Virginia Dare Jefferson. And you – you are very, very special indeed. You remember the day we met, I know. And if you remember that day, I know that you were feeling a tension, somethin' building in you like a gusher fit to blow, like that heavy feelin' just before the storm breaks. And when it did break, that was when we met, wasn't it?"

Yes. She nodded wordlessly, still unable to believe what he was saying. I . . . don't have any special powers . . .

"That's because you made me, doing something the others didn't. Most of them, they had their own visions and it was focused on them – their dreams, their fears, their desires to be something greater, better . . . or," a shadow passed over his face, "or worse, sometimes, than human beings usually are.

 

"But you . . . Virginia, you put your belief in America. You thought you were saved by something else – something you believed in, something bigger and brighter and just by-golly more than any one person could ever be. And you had a vision of just what that should be . . . you were standing right next to it, believing it could protect you, would protect you, even though that was impossible."

"And so I heard you, and I awakened, and I did exactly what you believed I would do. Did exactly and just precisely what you made me to do."

"That . . . I can't believe it!" she burst out. "I . . . you're . . . how could I have done that?"

He shook his head. "How? That's way beyond either of us, right now, Virginia. But you did it. And a part of you knows. A part of you is always with me, and that's how your dreams show you what I'm doing, where I am. Because . . . you made me from your very soul."

She tried to argue again, but her words caught in her throat. It . . . is it true? "From my soul?"

"From your soul, your imagination, and your innocence, Virginia Dare – and because of that, I am better than I might have been. I'm what I should be, because of you. Because you really believe in the best of what I should be, without complexities or compromises that an adult, no matter how well-meaning, might have. You know what it means to be the tired, the poor, yearning to be free, you believe in exactly the most ideal and perfect interpretation of the words that founded my country, and you gave me the heart of the young, the wisdom of the old, and the strength to use them both."

"But . . ." Virginia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. I'm . . . I'm old enough, he said. For what? "Why are you telling me now?"

He smiled, a flash of white teeth and a twinkle in the eye, before his expression turned grave again. "That's the Virginia Dare I know. Straight to the point, now. The reason is this, Virginia. Because of this, we're connected. My power . . . comes from you. And you're hooked into me. You needed to know the truth, because some day, that's going to matter. And you need to know what you need to hide, need to forget, need to pretend."

Oh. "I can't insist on how true my dreams are. Or how I know other things, guess them, about you."

"Not if we both want you safe. Honestly, I do not know how much you can protect yourself, beyond that of any ten-year-old girl. Could be that if you were in terrible danger, I'd know and come in time to save you. Or not. Could be that you, yourself, would find you have more of America in you than you know . . . or not. And what would happen to me, if something happened to you . . . ? I don't know for sure, but I don't think it'd be good. Sure don't want to find out."

"Neither do I!" she said emphatically. I'm not sure . . . part of me's afraid to believe him, but I know he wouldn't ever ever lie. Especially not to me. "I'll remember. I won't tell anyone. I'll stop talking about my dreams that way." She looked at him as he was about to speak. "That way, I said! I'll still talk about them or Mom and Dad would wonder why I stopped."

He stood and bowed again. "You've got it down perfectly then, Virginia. It'll be our secret. Plus one other."

She realized she didn't need to ask. "Legend," she said slowly. "He . . . he knew, even back on that day. You told him, just in case. And . . . and he told you. Who he is."

"Just exactly right. So if something ever happens . . . something that you can't even ask your mom and dad to handle . . . you call him. Call Legend, because he'll know who you are, and why you need him."

As he stood and began to walk away, she ran next to him. "Wait! How can I call him when I don't know –"

"But you will know, Virginia Dare," he said, and he was fading away with a smile, an all-American Cheshire Cat. "You'll know it when you need it . . . in your heart."

And somehow she knew . . . he was right.

 

 

The post LEGEND, Chapter 5 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.