Eric Flint's Blog, page 159

Chain of Command – Snippet 34

Chain of Command – Snippet 34

“Damned if I know,” she said. “I really had better find out, hadn’t I?”

“Let me just make sure I got all of this squared away,” Rivera said. “The uBakai are cranking up the heat in the war, from everything I read in the intel brief they can double or triple their available ships here, our cruisers blow up when they look cross-eyed at them, and the missiles on our destroyer don’t work.”

“Yes, that last bit’s something of a challenge. I’d get on fixing those missiles right away,” Atwater-Jones said.

“We’re screwed,” Rivera said, barely containing her anger, or was it fear?

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” the intelligence officer replied.

“No? Why not?”

“Because I am paid not to. Come to think of it, so are you. I believe what you are paid for is producing good results under trying conditions. I doubt you will ever in your career get a better opportunity to demonstrate that aptitude than you have right now.”

For a moment all Sam heard was the faint whisper of the air circulation system in his cabin.

“Easy for you to say, sitting on the command ship,” Rivera answered. Sam looked over at her holo-image. She gripped the arms of her acceleration rig hard enough to make her knuckles white, and her eyes had narrowed to slits. Sam didn’t like the situation much either, but he didn’t see how insulting the task force N-2 was going to improve things.

“Not altogether easy,” Atwater-Jones replied carefully. “Of course the real trick is to make difficult jobs look easy. You might work on that, Captain Rivera.”

And then she cut her transmission.

“Nice one, boss,” Sam said to Rivera. She looked at him for a moment, eyes cold, and then cut her own feed. Sam looked over at Captain Wu on Petersburg, who gave an elaborate shrug and then cut his transmission.

Well, the situation may be hopeless, but at least we’ll die among friends.

Sam kept his faceplate down so his next conversation would be private. He squinted up the commlink code for Marina Filipenko. She should hear the news of this attack on her home directly from him.

*****

Vice-Captain Takaar Nuvaash, Speaker for the Enemy, made way as a damage abatement party glided past in the weightless operations core of KBk Five One Seven, then continued to grip the handhold as two other crewmen passed, guiding three long bundles–bodies of crewmen wrapped in white death shrouds. The composite liner of one must have been torn because Nuvaash saw a red stain spreading along the side of the bundle. He closed his eyes and tried to master his growing anger and confusion.

A hand touched his arm. His eyes jerked open and he saw Senior Lieutenant e-Toveri, one of the few officers on the cruiser whose company he enjoyed.

“I am sorry, my friend, if I startled you,” e-Toveri said. He tethered himself to a wall stanchion, then dug a short length of crushed Taba root from a plastic pouch and slipped it into his mouth between this gum and lip. He shook his head and nodded toward the two crewmen and their somber cargo.

“A difficult business, this is turning out to be. Two more dead forward who we could not get to without hard suits and cutting torches, these three here, and I hear three more in engineering. Koomik’koh is one of them.”

Nuvaash felt the news course through him like a wave of electricity, searing the nerves it surged through.

“Koomik’koh. I knew him,” Nuvaash said, the traditional acknowledgement of the passing of a friend–the only other officer on the cruiser Nuvaash could honestly say that of.

“As did I,” e-Toveri responded. “He inspired me to rise above the commonplace. He drove me to become better than I am.”

“He made me laugh,” Nuvaash answered honestly. Koomik’koh was the only officer on the cruiser who had.

e-Toveri touched his arm again and then pushed off to glide down the corridor, and soon Nuvaash was alone.

None of this made any sense!

Why would the home government support a war of aggression against the Humans when that war would bring glory to the Navy, the main agents of the failed military coup a year ago? Why? There must be a hidden reason.

Then he remembered–a report had arrived shortly after the battle describing the course of ground combat on K’tok. Something about it had struck him as odd, but his attention was absorbed in helping stem the loss of atmosphere and directing damage abatement parties, and in the chaos and urgency of saving the ship the message had slipped his mind. Now it was back with its annoying itch of vague wrongness. He rested the back of his head in one of the wireless datalink alcoves spaced along the corridor. Not all of them were still live, after the damage they had sustained, but this one was. He activated his surgically embedded commlink and contacted the ship’s e-synaptic memory core.

Load ground status report received Day Seven, Tenmonth Waxing.

Loaded

Access visual.

Nuvaash donned his viewer glasses and scanned the virtual image of the report which appeared in his optic centers. What had caught his attention? Then he saw it, at the bottom, the signature: Villi Murhaach, Governor Plenipotentiary of K’tok. That wasn’t the name of the governor he remembered.

When had they arrived in-system? About two and a half months ago.

Identity of Governor Plenipotentiary of K’tok, Day Seven, Sevenmonth Waning.

Tinjeet e-Rauhaan

Yes, his memory was not betraying him. When had that changed?

Circumstances of replacement of e-Rauhaan by Murhaach as governor.

Tinjeet e-Rauhaan killed in groundcar accident on Nine of Ninemonth Waxing. Replaced same day as governor plenipotentiary of K’tok, in accordance with statute, by deputy governor Villi Murhaach.

Killed in a groundcar accident? e-Rauhaan must have been the unluckiest governor in history. Nuvaash could not remember the last time he had heard of an autocar malfunctioning dramatically enough to result in a fatality.

Day Nine of Ninemonth waxing. Now why did that date stick in his mind? Oh, of course.

List date KBk Five One Seven fired first multiple target ordnance in K’tok system.

Ten of Ninemonth Waxing.

Yes, they had fired the first shot of the war the day after e-Rauhaan had died and was replaced by Murhaach.

Nuvaash accessed background files on both the former and current governor. Tinjeet e-Rauhaan, a politician widely known for his moderate views, had worked to reduce violence with Human colonists along the frontier zone. Not the sort of politician who would have approved of this war at all. News feeds described Murhaach, on the other hand, as a firebrand, an extreme anti-Humanist, who had been appointed to the largely ceremonial position of deputy governor only as a political concession to the opposition. But then, suddenly and unexpectedly, he had become governor, and heir to the governor’s plenipotentiary power.

Nuvaash broke the link to the ship’s memory core and floated in the corridor, thinking the puzzle through, arranging the pieces.

Plenipotentiary powers: plenipotentiary meant the governor spoke with the full force of the home government and could act locally in its stead. Technically it meant the governor could launch the nation upon a war, but Nuvaash had never heard of that power being used–at least before now. The preemptive attack was not the sort of thing e-Rauhaan would ever have countenanced, while Murhaach would have embraced it immediately, used his extraordinary powers to authorize it, all of which was unprecedented and irregular, yet entirely legal. But …

But Nuvaash had been briefed on the attack plan four days before e-Rauhaan’s death, and at that time KBk Five One Seven had already been on its firing course for two days. The plan must have been made even earlier.

Why would anyone make a plan which relied upon the complicity of a planetary governor who would never agree to it–a plan which could be carried through only by virtue of the convenient, but presumably unforeseeable, death of that governor, and his replacement by the fanatical Murhaach?

Nuvaash knew the answer to that question, and the answer froze him in place in the corridor, momentarily paralyzing his muscles and emptying his mind.

Nothing had made sense since this operation began, but now Nuvaash saw clearly it was because of their habitual Varoki willing embrace of secrecy in every aspect of their lives. The shadow brotherhoods which formed a hidden layer of cross-cutting ambitions and allegiances below the surface of Varoki society, the complex jostling of wealth and ideology, privilege and pride in successive layers of political and corporate governance, had rendered the true motivations for public acts seemingly unknowable. The Varoki were used to things not appearing to make sense, used to the idea that the real reasons for actions were complex and concealed–so used to it that it no longer occurred to them that someone might simply be lying.  Their suspicious nature did not protect them from deceit; on the contrary, it made them defenseless against it.

We are dupes, Nuvaash thought, a race of dupes.

 

The Spark – Snippet 21

The Spark – Snippet 21

As a choice between the converter’s output and whatever dry food I’d have brought otherwise, I gave it high marks. Also the disk ran out clear water which we cleaned our bowls with as well as drinking. It tasted better than many springs and just about all the standing water I’d found along the Road to and from Dun Add.

Back home I placed my weapon on the table and hung the belt and my shield on the peg by the door. The new weapon didn’t have a mounting hook like my old one, but despite its high output, the electrode cooled off almost instantly after use. I’d touched it to the inside of my arm to be sure. I might make a proper holster for it, but for the time being I just carried it in the right pocket of my tunic.

Guntram brought something else out of his satchel: a bundle of rods six to eight inches long, extending from a round black base. I expected him to set it on the table, but he continued to hold it.

“This,” he said, “is a practice machine. We discussed them in Dun Add.”

“I remember you talking about them, sir,” I said, amazed. “Sir, should you have taken this from Dun Add?”

“And who is there, do you think, who has the right to give me orders, Master Pal?” said Guntram. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was as sharp as the crack of thunder before an autumn cloudburst.

I stiffened, remembering what May had said about this man. I said, “Sir. Not I, sir.”

“Forgive me,” said Guntram, softening back into the kindly man I’d been getting to know. “Jon and Louis are sure of their course and concentrate everything within close boundaries to get where they intend to go. I am less sure, and I think it worthwhile to cast my net rather wider.”

“Sir, Dun Add is none of my business,” I said, wishing that I’d kept that in mind earlier. “You know what you’re doing.”

“Yes,” said Guntram with a slight smile. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m correct.”

He cleared his throat and added, “Let’s go outside so that you can put this device through its paces, shall we?”

And me through mine, I thought. Well, that was what I needed–or would’ve needed if I’d been going to become a Champion.

“How badly were you injured when you fought Easton, Pal?” Guntram asked as we walked into the farmyard.

I finished buckling on the belt with my shield. “He didn’t break anything,” I said, “but that was mostly luck. I had the shield on low so I could move, but it must’ve helped some. The main thing is he cut behind because I was moving faster than he figured. I still feel it when I swing my left arm around, though.”

Guntram set the unit on the ground ten feet from where I’d stopped. He looked at me. “I suppose you realize that if Easton had been even slightly more skilled,” he said, “he would have killed you?”

“Do you think I cared!” I shouted, surprising myself. I hadn’t known that I was still so angry about what had happened in Dun Add. “Sure, I thought he might kill me. All I wanted was to get in one stroke, that was all. Being dead just meant I wasn’t humiliated any more!”

“Personally…,” said Guntram, stepping away from the device. “I would have regretted that result. But someone of my age is well aware that men die.”

I was suddenly facing a warrior with a nondescript dog, something with more terrier than Buck, who favored a hound/setter mix though there was a lot of breeds in him besides those. He was at my side.

I switched my shield on at low level and brought my weapon sizzling live. I went in.

My opponent swung overhand at my head. Almost before he moved, I saw the blow coming through Buck’s eyes: the whole track of the weapon was a shimmering fan in Buck’s prediction. I caught it in the air with my weapon and guided it down to my right without thinking: it was all part of Buck’s world for this moment.

My thrust back toward the top of the image’s breastbone was a reflex. The dummy figure vanished with a pop and a crackle.

I backed away and switched off my equipment. “Guntram?” I said. “Did I break it?”

“No,” he said, smiling. “The target shuts off when you achieve a kill. Which you did very neatly. Let me adjust this a little….”

Guntram’s right index finger wobbled in the air. I didn’t see anything there except a shimmer like heat rising from a black rock in sunlight.

“Now try it,” he said. “I want to see how good your weapon is, so I’ve run up the target’s shield.”

I was facing another armed figure. This one had blue clothing and a modular unit, with a booster collar around his neck that turned his head into a featureless ball.

I switched on again and advanced. To tell the truth, I was feeling cocky. I thrust straight for the base of the image’s throat.

He–it–met my stroke with his weapon. He didn’t push it aside as easy as I’d done the first dummy’s, but I felt the shock right up to my shoulder and my thrust missed the center of his chest.

When my weapon hit his shield the bang! was like a wall falling over and a blinding flash. His counterstroke slashed me at the base of the neck. It felt like a bucket of boiling water.

I must’ve blanked out, because I found myself on my back. The dummy stood, glowering facelessly down at me for a moment; then it vanished.

Buck whined and licked my cheek.

I switched off my shield and weapon; I’d been real lucky not to have cut my foot off when I went flying base over teacup. The burned feeling was fading.

I reached up and felt the place where the stroke had seemed to land. It didn’t hurt to rub.

“I think the rotor of your weapon was intended for a slightly smaller stator,” Guntram said, “so the maximum intensity of your stroke isn’t as high as it could be. Still, it’s very high, as you saw. I believe you could hold that output all day.”

I got up and nudged Buck. “What happened?” I asked, putting the weapon in my pocket.

“The device is intended to improve your skill as a warrior,” Guntram said. “Not to provide you with a straw man to knock down. If you behave like a fool, it will punish your foolishness.”

That hurt worse than the slap the machine had given me. I ducked my head and said, “Sir, I’m sorry.”

The old man smiled at me. “The device doesn’t do permanent injury,” he said. “You should be able to resume practice by now.”

So I did.

***

The next month went about the way the first day had. Guntram watched me practice on his device early morning and in the afternoon. After I’d worked up a sweat, we generally took a trip out on the Road to one or another of the nodes where I’d found objects in the past.

Twice we even prospected new sites according to a notion that Guntram had about currents in the Waste. We didn’t find anything there.

And we didn’t find much in the spots I’d flagged either, but mostly you don’t. One short tube, more of a ring really, that Guntram thought might’ve been part of a weapon; and another thing the size of my clenched fist that had to be something, but hanged if we knew what. We spent a lot of time getting inside it in the evenings after supper.

There were about a dozen families feeding us, at their houses or more often sending hampers along for us to eat on our own. Guntram charmed them. Folk who’d always been a little doubtful about the things I did as a Maker were next thing to bowing to Guntram–who was a thousand times more of a Maker that I could ever hope to be.

Guntram gave little things to the families who helped us, some that he’d brought–like the light he’d given Phoebe–but many things he made out of my scraps, glowing balls that hung in the air or a little disk that played tunes. I never heard it play the same music twice and I didn’t much like any of its choices, but it put Sandoz of Lakeshore and the three generations that lived on his big holding over the moon with happiness.

I didn’t think much about what was going to happen next. I was learning from a Maker who had taught the best even though he claimed he wasn’t the best himself’; I was learning how to use the wonderful weapon that I’d helped make; and for maybe the first time in my life, surely the first time since mom died, I wasn’t alone.

And then everything changed.

 

Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 11

Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 11

Chapter 11.

Holly dove reflexively to the side, rolling and pushing herself up against the wall, and saw Silvertail — Mr. Owen — already in the corner.

The black mass flowed, an avalanche of night, and abruptly red and blue and yellow eyes appeared along the shapeless flanks, uncountable mouths opened, and a gibbering laughter echoed from them all, in voices from ear-piercingly high to basso profundo growls that shuddered through the air. The tide of obscene black slime split around tables and patrons frozen in midflight, rose up around them, staring with mocking, chilling hunger at each person caught in this flash-flood abomination.

What the hell is that?

The thing continued to run, a river of living tar, glistening and with a foul, sulfurous odor, out the doorway. This has got to be one of our enemies! I have to —

Even as she started to rise, she felt Silvertail’s hand on her shoulder. “Not yet,” he said, and she could hear the leashed fury and tension, the desire to say instead Yes, now.

But she understood, now that he’d stopped her from just acting on impulse. We have to be able to hide from our enemies. If I change here, in front of both human and monstrous witnesses, they’ll know who I am in both guises. They’ll be able to trace us. And we can’t keep making new identities.

The wave of leering, mad-eyed corruption passed out the doorway, leaving the floor blackened and warped by its passage. Screams and curses echoed back from the rest of the mall, but the remaining patrons in Hearty’s first cautiously, then with terrified speed, began to flee. Judging by the direction they’re all turning, the thing flowed off to the left; everyone’s running to the right. That direction will take it straight to the center of the mall.

“Why isn’t it killing anyone?” she murmured, hearing her voice shaking. I’m terrified, she realized with a strange, breathless abstraction. Absolutely sweaty-palmed shaking terrified. I know that thing’s evil. I know it wants to kill. Why isn’t it?

Silvertail’s answer held no comfort. “Oh, it shall,” he said grimly. “But first it will sow panic and terror. And it has in all likelihood already sealed the doors of the mall; there is no escape from it, so it can kill at leisure.”

The last of the mob disappeared out the door; Silvertail glanced around, then made a subtle gesture and whispered words that Holly couldn’t quit catch. The security cameras suddenly sparked and smoked. “Now,” he said.

Holly took a breath. “To avert the Apocalypse, and shield the innocent from evil, and stand against the powers of destruction, I offer myself as wielder and weapon, as symbol and sword!” The words came easily, naturally, and despite her fear her voice had steadied, rang out with an echoing power beyond that of mere speech. “Mistress of the spirit, ruler of the stars beyond, Mystic Galaxy Defender, Princess Holy Aura!”

The silver light exploded about her again, renewing and rebuilding, summoning forth the armor and weapon that were hers, funneling into her a nigh-limitless strength and certainty that helped drive back the fear of that immense amorphous thing that waited outside. “What is that creature, Silvertail?” she asked as she sprinted through the doorway.

His answer — as before — reached her easily, even though the screams were louder and incoherent, panicked announcements were now booming from the speakers above, accompanied by the many-voiced chorus of mad laughter. “A shoggoth, Princess.”

A shoggoth? Holy shit. “That’s a lot scarier than I thought they’d be.”

“Alas, most of these beings shall be; Lovecraft and his peers, for all their mastery of language, were limited by their perceptions and their own beliefs. You do not face a mindless mass of protoplasm, but a hostile and malign intellect with vast control over a body made to consume and destroy.”

The shoggoth’s black mass glinted with a gelid, wintry sheen, as though it were both molten and frozen; the surface heaved and flexed and pulsed, and the huge, glowingly inhuman eyes flickered with malice. It nearly filled the three-story rotunda at the center of the mall, flowing around the escalators and elevator, a whirlpool that rose rather than fell; dozens of people were trapped on both levels, surrounded by walls of oozing, malodorous chaos. Holy Aura could see men and women, teenagers backed against a wall, a family with a baby stroller in the center of a slowly shrinking circle of vileness.

“Iiii fffeeeel yyoooouuu, chchchaaaaammmpiiiiooon,” it said, a hundred voices speaking in a terrifying chorus, just enough out of synch to be eerie and repellent. “Ssshooowwww yyourssellff . . . oorrrr Iiii wwiiill FFEEED!”

The flowing ebony about the family heaved up, transformed to a mouth filled with fangs of polished night, a mouth that lunged and cut the stroller in half; Holly was struck speechless for a moment with horror, until she saw the mother, holding her child in a deathgrip; somehow she had snatched her baby literally from the jaws of death.

With a burst of silver speed, Holy Aura leapt to the top of the second-floor railing. “Then here I am, monster!” she shouted, trying not to show any sign of the panic that was beginning to rise within her; the template of her predecessors helped, encouraging her, supporting her actions and words, and for the first time she was grateful for that wordless yet powerful semipresence. “Mystic Galaxy Defender, Apocalypse Maiden the First, Princess Holy Aura, reborn as sword and shield, weapon and wielder, mistress of souls and stars! You have threatened innocents and brought fear to this world, and for that, this Apocalypse Maiden says that you are going down!”

Hey, it even let me get through that whole speech, she thought, Steve’s analytical attitude also helping to distance herself from the terror the shoggoth’s nearness brought forth. If they’re influenced by memes, I guess they have to take the whole package, not just the parts they want.

The mouths coalesced into a single gigantic maw, and the thing’s voice was thunder. “And now I will feed!”

Princess Holy Aura leapt backward, a spurt of pure fright powering that jump as a fanged night-dark mouth the size of a garage door squirted forward on a column of ebony hatred. But the fanged lunge missed, carving a fifteen-foot chunk of floor out instead, and with her mouth dry but her grip firm, Holy Aura spun the Silverlight Bisento around and sliced completely through the column of blackness.

Smoke burst from the cut and the thing hissed from a dozen new mouths. But the hisses were also laughs, as the severed part was swallowed by and rejoined the main body. “Dammit, Silvertail, what do I do now?”

“I told you that such a simple approach would not work on many of your enemies. To kill a shoggoth even with that weapon? If it could be done, it would be a work of hours, carving it apart again and again until finally even its reformed parts were all sufficiently injured by your holy power. You must channel your power, find its expression within you and unleash it. Unfortunately this was not something we could practice before.”

She bounded from point to point, evading the thing’s increasingly vicious jabs and slashes and grabs as Silvertail spoke. “Yeah. If I have a power that could wipe out something that powerful, I’d probably have taken our house down.”

“That is not the issue; the issue is that only adversaries of true corruption will allow you to call the power forth, recognize how it works. The power is vastly less effective against ordinary beings and structures of mere matter — which is a good thing in such a crowded building as this.”

“What?” She parried two more lightning-fast jabs and skidded around the corner of the second wing of the mall, still running. “So I have to call it up only in battle and ‘recognize how it works’ while something tries to kill me for real? Your training plan sucks!”

She heard a distant, rueful chuckle. “I cannot entirely disagree. But that is what you must do.”

“How?”

“The coronet is your Apocalypse Seal — the channel and control for the power that is Holy Aura’s, and that will connect you to the others. You felt it seal to you, in pain and power, in your first transformation. Now reach out to it, call to it.”

“That’s hard to do when something’s trying to kill me!” she retorted. She whirled the bisento like a propeller, and three writhing segments of tarry hunger fell just short of her and wriggled, smoking, away to rejoin the pursuing red-eyed ebony tsunami.

“I know, but you must. Holly — Holy Aura — if you do not begin to battle in earnest, and soon, it will turn its attention back to the people trapped here!”

She bit back another protest. He’s right. This monster can do more than one thing at a time, and if I don’t keep it focused on me, it’ll be more than happy to keep chasing me around the mall while it eats everyone I’m supposed to protect!

She flipped around, bounced off the thick glass of the local Apple store, and caromed between support pillars, leaping straight past the thing as it tried to adjust its flow. “Ginhikari no Bisento!”

The silver-shining blade laid the shoggoth open, a cut sixty feet long, and Princess Holy Aura felt a grim smile on her own face at the multivoiced howl of pain and rage. Maybe that doesn’t really hurt it, but that stung enough that it’ll stay with me for a little longer.

If I can only figure this out . . .

She remembered that first transformation, twin crescents of light that burned themselves with pure-ice chill across her brows, and felt that pain and comfort echo as she thought of it. Please, Apocalypse Seal, open, unseal, whatever, at least show me what I can do —

There was a flash of light within her head, and for an instant she leapt, not above a crowd of terrified people, but into the limitless depths of space. She soared through a void dusted with numberless points and smudges of light; below her, a mighty whirlpool of stars and dust, turning with a motion so ponderously grandiose that even the rise and fall of the dinosaurs took less than a single turn to complete, and yet she could see it turning, could sense the majesty and power of that cosmic pinwheel, of the hundred billion stars encompassed in its light, see how it and its surrounding brethren dwarfed her world and all its people to utter insignificance, of less import than the loss or gain of a single grain of sand in the Sahara.

Yet . . .

Yet . . .

We are not insignificant, she thought to herself. We can’t be.

The vision flickered, and she cannonballed into the railing, slipped, plummeted to the ground floor. Before she could rise, ebony hunger swirled around her, caught at her legs, fought to prevent her from rising. She felt the nauseating pressure combined with a vicious, gnawing pain rising up her calves. Desperately, she tore away, whirled the bisento‘s blade and crushing ball around and over and through, leapt away, not even a tenth of a second separating her from onyx, burning hunger. Her legs screamed silently, the flesh red and raw, and though she sensed her silver power trying to counter it, that dark malevolence clung to the wounds, contesting bitterly with any cleansing or healing power that dared try to reclaim what it had touched.

The Apocalypse Seal is still the key! But how is insignificance the point?

The monster was barely a breath behind. She knew if she entered that vision again, the shoggoth would have her.

But if I don’t . . . For a moment she wasn’t Holy Aura; she was Stephen Russ, someone older, someone used to accepting bitter, mundane truths, and yet, somehow, refusing to let it take him down, make him bitter and angry. . . . if I don’t understand what my power means, what it can do, if I can’t figure out how to tap it — I’ll fail anyway. It’ll catch me sooner or later, and everyone here will die, and that will be the end.

If I’m insignificant, fine. Just show me what the answer is for this insignificant mote.

The vision returned, redoubled in force; almost instantly, Princess Holy Aura felt her body — seeming so distant it lay beyond the horizon of the universe — stumble, be caught up.

But now she saw beyond the galaxies, beyond the void itself, and her universe itself was puny, less than the merest atom adrift between the stars, and things waited there, in the spaces beyond and between universes, things that hungered for form and power, for the chance to reshape a reality to their incomprehensible and malevolent desires. The places between pushed and probed at the boundaries of all universes, seeking an entrance, a foothold, a beachhead, and all too often found it, encircling and crushing what lay within.

Far, far away she thought she heard a shout of fear, of her name cried by Silvertail, a cry cut off as even her head was enveloped and distant burning hunger began to crush in on her.

She was alone, and both of her were enveloped in alien hunger and malice. There was no light, there was no hope, there was no escape for her or the world, for they meant nothing, and never had. That which waited beyond the paper-thin veil of their puny reality was infinitely more vast than all the dust-mote worlds that deluded themselves into thinking they were anything other than just that, dust beneath the feet of beings more ancient than their universe.

No.

It was a simple, visceral, primal thought, a denial.

But what point the denial? She had seen how microscopically trivial, how utterly insignificant not only she, but her entire world, her galaxy, her universe was. What was this but a refusal to accept truth, a comforting and threadbare lie?

No. We are not insignificant.

A glint of light. A sense of presence.

She seized upon that tiny dot of luminance, even as she felt in the far remoteness of reality her breath cut off, an acid flame scorching away her breath.

Light.

And now she saw herself, a single point of thought, of consciousness on that puny speck, that drifting dot of nothingness, but she was not alone. There were billions of other points, each one almost imperceptible, but together a brilliant luminance that shone through the boundaries of reality — calling the darkness to it, yes, but also resonating, not with the spaces beyond, but with something above and below and around all of it.

We are not insignificant. Those things sought our world, and were cast out, and have been cast out before. They have been defeated again and again by this microscopic dot within the cosmos.

The cold-metal crescents were warm now, warm and comforting, and she understood. Matter has resisted them here, and elsewhere, and it does so because it also has spirit, has will, to resist. The limitless universe was the power of spirit, the magic she was bound to — as were, in their own way, her adversaries — was the foundation of all reality, and she was the first, the living representative of that spark: the power of the spirit that underlay the existence of the cosmic all, of the other mythic elements that made up the world, earth, air, fire, and water. They all were part of, and partook of, the spirit, the will of humanity — in both creation and destruction.

And now Holy Aura — and Stephen Russ — understood what it meant to be an Apocalypse Maiden.

A detonation of pure argent light burst from her body as Princess Holy Aura’s consciousness returned. The shoggoth’s viscous form was blown away from her, water before a depth charge, and scattered, smoking, reforming but painfully, as her acid-burned, eaten flesh renewed itself; she felt the pain ebbing away, driven away by her understanding of what the power of the Apocalypse Maiden meant.

“Almost you caught me,” she said, standing unmoved in midair atop nothing but an aura of light. “Almost.”

Spirit. That’s why I’m the first, why he said I had to be the first. “Your shape, your terror, you touch both mind and soul. It was you guiding me to my insignificance. But that was a lie, all a lie.”

“A lie?” it echoed in a voice that made the mall shudder. “Truth, truth, truth,” it said, now with a dozen voices, laughing, mocking. “Ph’iagnik, insignificant, a speck of refuse within a –”

“Bullshit!” she said, feeling that she was both Holly Owen and Stephen Russ. “Why keep coming here, then? We kicked your asses off our planet, and we’ve done it again and again, and that’s why you’re afraid of us, that’s why you can’t ignore us, can’t leave us to grow again. Because we have the power to beat you.”

With the certainty came the thrill of the power, the light, gathering into her hands, charging the Silverlight Bisento so it glowed, casting shadows away from her, eradicating any sign of darkness about her. She remembered the vision of the galaxy, of the numberless stars, and the one Sun that was theirs, out of all in the universe. “I am the Apocalypse Maiden, cataclysm and creation in one, and you — you’re getting the cataclysm right now!”

The shoggoth gave an inarticulate scream and lunged for her, an attack from all directions, a thousand needles of lethal darkness.

She reached out, yet in, within and behind and above herself, to the symbol of the spirit — the stars themselves — and chose destruction.

Warm, exhilarating fire burned through her veins. gold-white starflame coalesced upon the blade of the Silverlight Bisento, and the living tar of the shoggoth shrank back, the red and green and yellow points of eyes wide and afraid, but it was too late. “Light of Apocalypse — Solar FLARE!”

The auric-argent luminance blasted from her, driven by her will and certainty, and fountained on and across the shoggoth. The hard-driven ebony needles of the thing’s substance dissipated, some mere inches from her skin. Its mouths froze in motion and crumbled before the intolerable light, its eyes were blinded and then blown away, dust in a star-wind. The light expanded outward, mercilessly seeking out the dark-flowing thing as it tried to flee, to escape the burning, destroying light, but it had sealed the mall itself. There was no place to run to, and the light pierced wall and door and floor like glass. There was a thin, horrified scream, a shriek of disbelieving agony that echoed from the entirety of the world about . . . and then silence.

The light faded, and only a trace of coal-black dust sifted down, to fall on the faces of the people throughout the building, whose expressions were slowly changing from terror to hope and relief.

Thank God. I thought that the light wouldn’t touch other human beings . . . but I couldn’t be sure.

Suddenly realizing that all were staring at her, she recovered herself and bowed.

Can’t show how scared I was. How scared I still am, even after winning. My knees want to give way, but I’ve got to get out of sight!

She leapt through the air, forcing her shaking legs to obey, and ducked through the doors which were now open. Three more gigantic steps and a bound and she was in the narrow belt of forest preserve that surrounded the mall on two sides.

Now I can be Holly again.

Even as she changed back, the shock, fear, agony, and elation caught up with her in a startlingly nauseating fashion.

And so she found herself, in the middle of her triumph, on her knees in the forest, wondering if she was about to lose both of those triple cheeseburgers.

Not exactly what I expected after the heroine’s victory!

 

The Spark – Snippet 20

The Spark – Snippet 20

“I’ve done this sort of thing more often than you have,” he said, His lips quirked. “More often than anybody has, it may be. And old men don’t need much sleep.”

Buck had lifted his nose to table height, but I didn’t worry about what he was going to do. He never bothers animals that’re with a human being. I suspected he’d take a worm if Guntram gave him one, but the most he’d do with the hedgehog was sniff.

The weapon lay on the tray where we’d worked on it. I’d been unwilling to touch it last night when I was so tired, but I picked it up now and dusted away the powdered silicon on my shirt sleeve.

Guntram’s button was pitted all over, though it kept its shape. I put it on the table beside him. “Thank you, sir,” I said.

“Go test it,” he said, nodding to the weapon. “I’ll watch from here.”

I walked outside, leaving the door open. The weapon was light, much lighter than the mining tool I’d modified on my own. The delicacy made me doubt that it’d really work, though I didn’t say that aloud.

The tube vibrated like the burr of a fly’s wings within my closed hand. Its controls were internal, the structure of a small patch of the tube’s wall. I pointed the output end and concentrated while I pressed my thumb on the trigger; the switch was mental as well as physical. A vivid blue line extended the length of my forearm from the electrode, hissing and crackling.

I shut it off and turned. My mouth was open. I closed it, then squeaked, “Sir, it really works!”

“Indeed it does,” Guntram said. “If you’d care to bring it along, it can protect us on the Road while we look for artifacts. Are you up for that this morning?”

“Ah, sure,” I said. “But wouldn’t you like some breakfast first? I’ve got porridge we can warm, and buttermilk in the spring house.”

“I have a converter,” Guntram said, holding up an iridescent loop. “Bring a bowl for yourself and we can eat on the Road.”

He smiled. “Prospecting for artifacts is completely new to me, and I’m rather excited.”

***

I didn’t argue with Guntram, not with what I owed him in all sorts of ways, but there isn’t anything exciting about looking for Ancient hardware. Sometimes the currents of the Waste throw pieces right up at the edge of the Road. Anybody can see it there.

Mostly, though, it’s more like picking your way through a swamp and wriggling your bare feet for the stones that you want. Instead of a swamp, it was the Waste.

I took Guntram up the Road to the first node in the direction of Leamington. Leamington was a good three days away–more like four at the speed Guntram travelled–but we weren’t trying to get there. If anything, there was less in Leamington than there was on Beune, and there wasn’t even a decent inn on the way.

The node was just a dollop of Here, less than an acre. The trees were sumac and winged elm, mostly; useless for timber. They’d make a fire or poles to tie a windbreak to if you needed it, but Beune was only a couple hours away so nobody needed to camp here if they knew the region.

I pointed to a couple lichen-fuzzed outcrops near the edge of the Waste. “If you line those rocks up,” I said, “and walk out about what feels like ten feet into the Waste, you’re in a spot where I find stuff pretty much every time I go out. Now, is your guide, your hedgehog, all right in the Waste?”

“I believe so,” Guntram said, “and I’ve stepped into the Waste also; but not often, and not going so far as you’re describing. It was more for the experience, you see.”

He coughed into his free hand; the hedgehog was in the crook of his left arm. “Will I be going alone, Pal?” he said. I won’t say he sounded afraid, but there was a degree of care in his tone.

“Not if things work out,” I said, grinning. “But if something happens and we get separated, I want you to be able to get back on the Road and home. All right?”

Guntram smiled. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. The tone of his voice now made me think that that maybe I could’ve said that he’d sounded afraid.

“Now just stick close,” I said. “All we’re doing is showing you what it’s like, then we’ll go back to Beune.”

I slipped into Buck’s viewpoint; we walked into the Waste. Guntram was right behind me when I stepped off the Road.

The Waste doesn’t have a feel, except that your body starts getting warm as soon as you’re in it and the more you do, the warmer you get. I’ve seen people who were lucky to get back to the Road–or to Here. It stands to reason that there’s some who weren’t so lucky and their bodies are still in the Waste.

I wonder if they rot or they just hang there, like in a block of ice? I wonder if Guntram knows? I couldn’t ask till we were back on the Road.

I was using Buck’s eyes. We were following a crack in the streaky gray, not a thing really but… well, sort of like a fold that caught light a little different on one side than the other. Except there was no light either, just shades that Buck’s mind painted onto nothingness.

I couldn’t see Buck this way, but on my third step the outside of my left leg brushed his fur and I stopped. He knew where we were going.

I squatted down and swept my hands out slowly to my sides. I didn’t really expect to find something on the first try and maybe nothing in the whole trip, but hanged if I didn’t: my left hand brushed a piece the size of my fist.

Guntram touched my shoulder from behind.

This was the first time I’d taken somebody else into the Waste; I’ll tell you, I jumped. There’s bad things here, and the first thing I thought was that the mate of the Shade I’d killed had tracked me down.

Which made me feel like a dummy, though nobody but me knew what’d gone through my mind. Oh, well.

I turned Guntram’s palm up with my right hand, then brought the piece around in my other and put it into his hand. I touched Buck’s shoulder. He turned, giving me a look at Guntram for the first time: a man-high pillar of gray like a slumping snowman. We padded together back onto the node.

“That was easier than I’d feared it would be,” Guntram said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve before taking a closer look at the object we’d found. He looked at me sharply and added, “Pal, it wouldn’t have been easy without your presence. Thank you.”

I thought about Guntram quickly repairing the weapon he’d found in my collection of odds and ends. “I’ve done more of this sort of thing than you have,” I said with a grin. “Also, we were lucky. Pieces crop up here pretty regularly, but that doesn’t mean I find something right off the bat. And a good-sized one, too.”

“Indeed it is,” Guntram said. He slipped his hedgehog into a breast pocket–more of a sling, really–to free both hands for the object we’d found. He knelt, then looked up at me and said, “He’s used to sleeping like this.”

“He seems very comfortable,” I said. I didn’t think it was any of my business.

The find was three inches long and shaped like a fat spindle. A layer of crystalline matrix ran through it the long way. Guntram slipped into the piece, then came back out only a few seconds later.

“I think it’s a refrigeration device,” Guntram told me, “but I’d have to do considerable work before I could be sure.”

He coughed, then looked at me and said, “Do we go back into the Waste now, Pal?”

“We can if you like,” I said, “but I really came here just to show you what it was like. I’d as soon have something to eat and head on back. I’ve never eaten food from a converter.”

“Yes,” said Guntram. “There’s something back at the house that you’ll want to see.”

As I gathered twigs and leaves to feed into the converter, I thought about what Guntram had just said. He’d already shown me more than I’d learned in twenty years on my own.

***

The meal which flowed from the converter had the taste and texture of porridge with spices. It was filling and I’m sure was nourishing, but I won’t pretend that it was a patch on Phoebe’s cooking. Though it was better than mom’s.

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 33

Chain of Command – Snippet 33

Chapter Seventeen

26 December 2133 (two days later) (fifth day in K’tok orbit)

The four holo-conference attendees seemed to float in space, each one surrounded by a small sphere of imagery–a cabin, a wardroom, a work station, an empty conference room–the spheres forming the four corners of a small square surrounded by dimensionless gray. Atwater-Jones was holo-conferencing from the unarmed command ship, USS Pensacola, but from a conference room somewhere other than its habitat wheel, so she was in zero gee. Her long red hair was tied back into a ponytail, but a very loose one, so her hair floated around her head in a soft cloud, as if she were under water. It was a little distracting. The three destroyer captains, of course, floated in zero gee as well–they had no other option.

Sam had balked at another holo-conference–he had too much to do as it was without another meeting to attend–but he found himself looking forward to seeing Cassandra Atwater-Jones again. He liked her sense of humor. After five minutes, though, he wasn’t laughing; he found himself staring at the image of the British officer in disbelief.

“They hit Bronstein’s World? But the BW’s neutral, isn’t it? They don’t even have a military, just a police force.”

“That is quite correct, Captain Bitka,” Atwater-Jones said. “However, the US Eleventh Fleet Headquarters is located on land leased from the planetary authorities, close by the needle down station and in the administrative capital. There are also several orbital facilities owned by the United States Navy, as well as one owned jointly by India and Brazil. All of the orbital installations were destroyed and the Eleventh Fleet ground facilities were attacked from orbit, with considerable loss of life both in the facility and the surrounding civilian community.”

Sam shook his head and for a moment thought about Filipenko–she hit her hard.

“Beyond that,” she went on, “the coalition task force assembling near the system gas giant was taken under attack as well and has suffered casualties similar to ours, both in scope and apparent cause.”

“What does that mean for us getting reinforcements?” Juanita Rivera on Champion Hill asked.

Rivera was the acting commander of the destroyer division, and Sam had spoken to her several times about readiness and repair progress. She hadn’t been able to tell him what the long-term plan was, because task force hadn’t told her yet. They’d both hoped this briefing might answer that question.

In sharp contrast to Atwater-Jones, Rivera’s raven-black hair was cut to a uniform length of five centimeters and in zero gee stuck out like a porcupine’s quills. She was big, with big hands and a strong, squared-off jaw. She looked as if she lifted weights normally, but the extended zero-gee was getting to her, rounding her face and body. She probably wasn’t getting as much exercise as she should, but she still looked as if she could kick down doors that got in her way. So far her command style was just about as subtle as that, which was fine with Sam. The time for subtlety had passed, in his opinion.

Atwater-Jones said nothing for a moment.

“Our two detached cruisers–Exeter and Aradu–are en route to join us, as are the three destroyers under Commander Bonaventure escorting USS Hornet. They will be here in three days.  The admiral has also ordered your four remaining destroyers to leave orbit around the gas giant Mogo and join us. But as to reinforcements from Earth …well, that’s off, at least for the immediate future.”

“Mierda,” Rivera said. “Any more bad news?”

The British intelligence officer shifted uncomfortably–the first time Sam had seen any hint that anything might put her off balance.

“I am afraid so. It seems our initial assessment that we destroyed an uBakai cruiser in the battle was incorrect.”

Sam sat back in his chair.

“But I’ve seen the wreckage imagery,” he said. “We all have. Now you’re telling us we didn’t kill a single uBakai ship? How is that possible?”

The other two destroyer captains in the holo-conference made noises of agreement, and Atwater-Jones’s expression didn’t change as she listened. Her briefing had already made clear that the task force still had no idea how the uBakai had turned their jump drives on remotely. Now this.

“Yes, I know it’s a bitter pill to swallow,” she said. “Believe me, the cruiser captains were even more distressed. They had thought to have been responsible for the one uBakai ship destroyed. But careful study of the sensor records indicates that the single enemy craft lost was destroyed well before any ordnance was launched by any of our vessels.”

“You mean the uBakai blew up one of their own ships?” Rivera said. “Bullshit! They aren’t that loco.”

“Blew up their own ship? Not deliberately,” Atwater-Jones answered, ignoring the implied challenge. “It appears to have been an accident. They were able to arrive seemingly out of nowhere because that is in fact precisely what they did. You see, they exited jump space well within the plane of the ecliptic, under ten thousand kilometers from K’tok. Our sensor records clearly show the energy signature of a jump emergence at the point we first detected them.”

“And no one in the task force saw it coming?” Rivera said, her voice taking on more of an angry edge.

“Sane people like us never do that sort of thing,” Atwater-Jones said quietly, “because the plane of the ecliptic is full of debris, dust, asteroids–widely spaced to be sure, but chance emergence in the same space as even a fairly modest-sized piece of rock can be catastrophic, as you all know very well. That appears to have been what happened: one of their ships exploded immediately upon exiting jump space.” She glanced briefly at Sam and raised one eyebrow.

“Sane people like us listen carefully to what our astrogators say, and follow all the rules, even after the rules cease making sense.”

“So their admirals are smarter than ours, is what you’re telling us,” Rivera said.

“I’d say they gambled and won,” Atwater-Jones replied.

“I’d say they just revolutionized interplanetary warfare,” Sam said. The others turned to look at him. “Think about it. All of our tactics are built around the assumption jump drives get us from star system to star system but Newton thrusters move us around in the system. It makes perfect sense in peacetime, but these in-system jumps are the way tactical surprise returns to the battlescape. Sure, there’s a risk, but there’s a hell of a payoff if it works.”

Sam did not add that in a single stroke the uBakai had also rendered the destroyer rider concept obsolete, or at least a great deal less useful. The others sat silently for several long seconds.

“So we didn’t even get a piece of them?” Captain Mike Wu of Petersburg, finally said. Wu looked as if he was well over the fleet mass limit for his height. He frowned and rubbed the top of his shaved head with his small but fat-fingered hand–or at least seemed to, but the hand moved back and forth several centimeters above his head, rubbing the top of his invisible helmet.

“I’ve looked through the data dump on the attack. There are heat spikes, additional debris, even some outgassing.”

“Yeah, how do you explain that?” Rivera demanded.

“Oh, they did not escape entirely unscathed. One of USS Theodore Roosevelt’s missiles certainly hit an uBakai cruiser. We cannot tell how serious the damage was–not enough to disable it–but a fire lance hit can cause quite a lot of mischief short of that. And Captain Rivera, you may find this particularly heartening. USS Shiloh, one of your destroyers, was effectively overrun by the uBakai squadron as it passed behind K’tok, and as you know was destroyed with considerable loss of life. But in recovering survivors we also recovered its intact bridge data log.

“The late Captain Rothstein of Shiloh fired six missiles at the oncoming uBakai, and although they caused no hits their close-in detonation provided her with an interference barrier against the uBakai sensors. That kept them from hitting her boat until they were quite close. Rothstein redirected her point defense lasers to engage ship-sized targets instead of missiles, and appears to have done considerable damage to several of the four remaining uBakai cruisers.”

“Someone better put Miriam in for a decoration,” Rivera said. “It’s not much, but it might mean something to her husband and kids.”

“I quite agree,” Atwater-Jones replied.

Sam cleared this throat.

“I’ve got one more question. Why is this war so important?”

Atwater-Jones shifted in her chair and gave him a look partly quizzical, partly mocking.

“Important? I thought the admiral’s address made that clear. The salient point is the bio-compatibility of–”

“No,” Sam said, cutting her off. “I understand why it’s important to us. But we didn’t start the war, they did. And now they’ve escalated it by hitting Bronstein’s World. K’tok is just one of more than a dozen Varoki colony worlds, and some of them are Varoki bio-compatible. So why is this one so important to them?”

“Well …” Atwater-Jones began but then stopped. She frowned for a moment and looked away, perhaps to gather her thoughts, and then her face cleared.

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 32

Chain of Command – Snippet 32

“Two hundred and forty, sir,” he answered.

“Right, two forty. The thing is, it’s transferred so quickly–a lot quicker than a conventional explosion–it converts a section of the hull to plasma which is trying to expand, but it can’t expand fast enough to just drift away. Instead it whacks the boat about as hard as a quarter-ton explosive shaped charge attached to the hull: same concussion, same shear effects. We’re lucky we only caught a glancing blow.”

He looked around and saw men and women exchange frightened looks. Somebody should have told them this sooner. Somebody should at least have explained how their damned weapons worked, even if they didn’t need to know it to do their jobs.

“Any other questions? Okay. Chief Navarro, I want you to keep on top of progress, see where we need some extra help.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Navarro answered, her face expressionless.

“Well,” Sam said, and thought for a moment about how to send them on their way. “Merry Christmas, or it will be tomorrow. Kwanza starts in two more days, Chanukah in three. The winter solstice was two days ago, Mawlid a month back. Bodhi Day was … what? … two weeks ago? The day some of you celebrate the enlightenment of the Buddha. Not much enlightenment to celebrate this year. Maybe it seems like there’s not much to celebrate at all, but we’re still alive, and that’s something.

“We got punched pretty hard today. Next time it’s going to be different. So let’s turn to.”

As the officers and chiefs cleared out past him, Sam noticed Del Huhn floating at the rear of wardroom, his tether clipped to a wall stanchion. He looked a lot better. He was wearing a standard shipsuit and his face appeared rested, more relaxed. He held a drink bulb in his hand and looked at Sam, an odd knowing smile on his lips as if he and Sam shared a secret no one else knew. As the last of the chiefs left, Huhn cocked his head to the side. Sam kicked off and drifted over to him.

“So, how do you like being captain so far?” Huhn asked, and the smile became something closer to a smirk.

“Enjoy your coffee, Lieutenant Commander Huhn, but in the future I want you to clear the wardroom when I’m having a meeting with my officers and chiefs.”

“I’m still an officer on this boat,” Huhn said.

“With respect, sir, you are a passenger on this boat. And by the way, since you were already packed for the transfer to Pensacola, we’ll swap cabins in two hours.”

Sam turned and glided through the wardroom hatch only to find chief Navarro waiting on the other side.

“Satisfied?” he asked, but from her grim expression he didn’t think so.

“I got a little girl seven years old, a little boy five,” she said. “I don’t want them growing up sin madre. What do we do when El Almirante pulls everyone out of orbit except our three destroyers?”

Sam had suspected Admiral Kayumati might do that–pull all the jump drive-equipped ships out of harm’s way–but he wasn’t as certain as Navarro seemed to be.

“I don’t know yet, but I’m working on it.”‘

Her face remained rigid for several seconds, and then she nodded.

“With the captain’s permission, I think it’s time we had a talk.”

*****

Ten minutes later they tethered themselves to restraint rings in Sam’s stateroom. It didn’t feel like his anymore, now that he’d made the decision to move, and he was glad he had. He was probably going to have a lot of private conferences like this and the captain’s cabin had more room. This had been Del Huhn’s cabin before Sam moved up to XO and he remembered how crowded that first officers’ meeting had felt.

Sam offered Navarro something to drink and for a change she took him up on it.

“Orange juice if you’ve got it, sir.”

After they took a moment to sip from their drink bulbs, Navarro cleared her throat and started.

“Near as I can tell, you did real good today, sir. With respect, how much of that do you figure was luck?”

It wasn’t the question Sam was expecting, although he couldn’t have said which one was expected.

“I’m not sure. Maybe most of it.”

She shook her head, her mouth a hard line.

“Captain, if you follow my advice, you will never say anything like that to another living soul on this boat. You can be all modest and stuff for the brass and for the folks back home, but for this crew, since you aren’t a career officer and you aren’t an operations officer, you better be a goddamned tactical genius. Everyone had lots of questions about whether you were up to this job. If we had a nice long peacetime cruise, you’d have time to work into this gradually, but that’s not our situation.”

“Not being from operations, not being a regular–does the crew really care that much about it?” Sam asked. He’d thought that pecking order was important only to the officers.

“Sure they care. I care, sir. I came up through maneuvering, promoted from quartermaster first to chief, operations all the way. All my career, most tac-heads I ever saw were just ballast, and some of them weren’t even very good at that. And as for being a reservist, the things you have to figure out, think through, the regular men and women know by instinct. They’ve been doing it every day for years.”

“That didn’t seem to be a problem for you when I got the XO job,” he said.

“XO ain’t captain, sir. But you may have noticed I said everyone had questions about you. All those drills everyone thought were a waste of time–seeing how fast we can get to general quarters, how fast we can get missiles out the tube–everyone knew speed and quick reaction time wasn’t important, right?

“But earlier today when our task force got hammered, we survived, and we were one of the only boats to get missiles fired. Even if the missiles ended up being broke-dick-no-workee, we looked pretty good. Now, the fact everyone but you thought those drills were stupid, makes you look like some kind of mastermind. And that’s good, because over a thousand men and women died in orbit earlier today, and as bad as everyone feels about it, they’d feel a lot worse if they were dead too.

“Why are those other people dead and we’re alive? The crew thinks it’s because of you. Whether you’re smart or lucky, they don’t much care. In their minds whatever mojo you have going is keeping them alive, and that’s good enough for them.

“I’m not saying to swagger around this boat as if you were Bull Halsey. I’m just asking you, please, to never let on to anyone that you don’t think you’ve got what it takes. The belief that you’re on top of this–even if it’s a lie–is all that’s holding these kids together.

“Oh, and by the way, pitching in to help with the repairs was good. Most of the time I wouldn’t encourage a captain to do that, but you’ve got a kind of eccentric genius thing going with the crew that makes it work.”

She stopped and took a long drink of orange juice. When she finished Sam expected her to resume speaking, but instead she just looked at him and he realized it was his turn to talk.

“Eccentric genius, huh? Not at all the way I think of myself, but I can live with it.”

“Don’t get me wrong, sir. I’m not telling you to try to be something you’re not, even though it may sound like it. But that won’t work either. You can’t act like the captain. You’ve got to be the captain.”

 

Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 10

Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 10

Chapter 10.

“Nice to get out of the house!” Holly said, probably for the fourth time in the last hour now that she thought of it.

But it was true. The last few weeks had been spent mostly indoors, practicing the many different aspects of just being a teenage girl . . . and learning the pitfalls. These included mundane annoyances like finding that a five-foot-seven-inch teenage girl couldn’t reach shelves that Stephen Russ at over six feet had no trouble getting to, and more involved and disturbing problems like dealing with menstruation.

At least I don’t have crippling cramps most of the time. It hurts sort of like having eaten a really gas-producing burrito — though not exactly like that — but it doesn’t put me down for days.

Silvertail hadn’t replied, probably figuring that there was no reply he hadn’t already made. “Are you ready to look for new outfits?” he asked, looking around the bustling mall with its dozens or hundreds of shops, and the constant flow and curl of people eddying through the broad walkways in front of the stores.

“Sure am!” Holly felt a touch of anticipation at the idea, and while a part of her was thinking Well, that’s stereotypical, isn’t it? the other part knew that much of the reason was perfectly obvious: as Stephen Russ, he’d been stuck very, very rarely buying clothes, and almost always the cheapest, most straightforward clothing he could get — jeans, T-shirts or an occasional inexpensive polo shirt, simple white or black socks, sneakers.

Now, with Silvertail’s resources, Holly could buy pretty much anything she wanted to wear . . . and while the thought still sometimes gave her a bit of a jolt, she actually looked good enough to make buying the right clothes really worthwhile!

But, fortunately, not too good. “Oh, and Dad? Thanks for, um, toning down my looks a little.”

“You’re welcome, Holly,” he said with a flash of a smile. “That must be a unique event — being thanked for making someone less attractive.”

“Still a good thing,” she said, glancing in the window of Current Memes and seeing her reflection. The black-haired girl with wide eyes was still going to always attract attention — Holly Owen remained beautiful, no doubt about it — but not the incomparably mesmerizing, Photoshop-shaming perfection that had been. Princess Holy Aura might — probably would — always look like that, but that just made it more important to have a little mundanity in Holly Owen’s appearance.

“Yes, I concur,” Silvertail said. “And I should thank you for your insistence. You were right in more ways than one.”

It belatedly occurred to Holly that they maybe shouldn’t be talking about these things in public, but then she realized that in some ways, this was the most secure place to talk outside of the house; a thousand conversations rose and rustled about them, murmuring a thousand concerns mundane and vital, and no one was likely to ever overhear more than a word or two of anyone else’s without being obvious in their eavesdropping. “Right? About what?” she asked, trying to decide where she wanted to shop first. Current Memes was actually a good candidate for later, but right now she wanted more straightforward clothes.

“For insisting that I was viewing the past — and especially my daughter — through a filter of guilt and nostalgia, elevating her to perfection. You were entirely right; she and her friends were not the vision that Holy Aura is; they became that vision, and symbolized the ideals represented, by their transformations, but in life they were no more perfection than anyone.” He looked at her again and smiled with a fondness that looked beyond the present. “Indeed, in this form you truly look very, very much like her, now that I have cleared the haze from memory. And that will certainly make it easier to play the part of a proper father.”

She smiled back. “Well, I’m glad. You’re welcome!”

Suddenly Holly spotted another clothing store — Youth At Heart — and she loved the look of the deep electric-blue top in the window. “Oh, over here!” she said, and turned, striding quickly toward the entrance, which was across the hall and down.

Wham!

Holly found herself on the ground, having cannonballed off a big man with a bushy red beard streaked with gray. The man looked at her with a combination of concern and annoyance. “You okay?”

She felt Silvertail’s hand helping her up. “Um, yeah — ”

“Good. But watch where you’re going.” He looked at Silvertail. “She ran right into me!”

Mr. Owen nodded. “A bit too focused on her destination. Watch yourself, Holly.”

“But — ” she saw a warning glint in Silvertail’s glance, dropped her own gaze. “Okay. Sorry,” she said to the man.

“No problem. Glad you’re okay.” He continued on his way.

Dammit, what the hell’s going on? I know I was perfectly clear to head where I was going!

It wasn’t worth arguing with Silvertail about, especially not at this point, and the two of them entered the store and browsed without further incident. Besides the electric-blue top, there were two others, one black with a deep-violet lace front and another a brilliant red, that really appealed to her.

I think I’m seeing colors differently. More intense, and more differentiated. “Hey, Dad, is there really a difference between male and female color vision?”

“There is, in fact. It appears to be at least partially mediated by hormonal development and related changes; even here, those who change their physical sex from male to female have often reported a clear increase in their color perceptions, and in Lemuria it was well-demonstrated. It is not quite so . . . drastic as your culture’s stereotypes might make it, but it is a very real effect.”

“Wow. Learn something new every day.”

She continued looking around. Some new jeans were definitely indicated, as well as some other pants. Holly wasn’t sure she was quite ready to try skirts, outside of the mahou shoujo outfit, but shorts, definitely. Another store caught her eye and she immediately headed for that one.

She found herself brought up short when a path she thought was clear enough . . . suddenly wasn’t. Second time. Which means it’s me, not them.

Okay, what the hell is going on? “Silver . . . Dad, am I nuts, or did those people all just ignore where I was going?”

He sighed. “Not precisely. Observe, Holly. You must observe the world around you, through eyes not blinded by what you were used to.”

It suddenly dawned on her what Silvertail meant. She remembered how he — Stephen Russ — walked. Just the way she was trying to, confident, focused, and certain.

But the people around here towered above her for the most part. It was like walking through a mall mostly populated by members of championship basketball teams. “Oh. It really is me.”

“I am afraid so,” Silvertail answered. “You are used to being a very large man, and — entirely without your conscious intent — you know that people tend to give you a fairly wide berth. You are now far less visible, and thus far less subconsciously intimidating, than Stephen Russ.”

Holly didn’t like that thought, but it made sense. “So I’ve been an asshole all my life?”

“Knowing your personality, Stephen, I am quite sure you never consciously thought about it — and neither did most people you have encountered. They simply saw a tall, very wide man approaching and gave said man, who looked like he knew exactly where he was going, the space he needed. Admittedly, I think it will do you no harm to learn to watch where you are going more carefully and observe others around you with greater consideration.”

“So it’s not because I’m a girl now.”

“No. Oh, there will be difficulties you will encounter from that change, especially in the way individuals interact with you, but at this level your perceived sex, as such, is not truly relevant. Your size and your age and perceived position is much more on-point.”

Still sounds like I was being a self-absorbed dick before. But I’ll let Silvertail be the judge on that. “But if I’m walking right next to a six-foot-something dude who’s clearly my dad, instead of running on ahead without looking, I won’t have that problem.”

“True enough.”

As they continued shopping, she paid more attention to the people around them, and the way salespeople behaved. They always talk to Mr. Owen first, and Holly second. Which makes sense with what Silvertail said, because Mr. Owen is the adult, and presumably the guy who will be deciding if Holly can actually get the shoes, dress, whatever. I’m not an adult any more. I’m a teenager, a young teenager, and that means I’m still mostly a kid.

The obvious exception to that attitude was boys Holly’s age, or a bit older, who often stared at her. And sometimes guys a lot older, which is getting into creep territory. But that change she’d already expected. Even with the changes Silvertail made, Holly Owen’s going to turn a lot of heads. The more direct stares were pretty annoying, though.

Still, after another hour or so she’d found a lot of clothes of all types that she needed, and she took some slight pleasure out of having the taller, stronger Silvertail/Mr. Owen carry most of it. “Can we get lunch?”

“Is it really that time?” He glanced at the watch on his wrist. “I suppose it is. Yes, let’s get something.”

The nearest decent location was Hearty’s, a sort of upscale burger place with other family-type meal selections. The place was crowded, and the two of them found themselves seated in the back, not far from the restrooms, at the only remaining two-seat table. Despite the busyness of the hour, the wait staff were prompt, and Holly ordered two triple-decker Chipotle Challenge burgers with a large order of Hearty’s steak fries. “Plus I want one of your honey-barbeque wing appetizers, and a salad with ranch!” she finished.

The young man taking their order failed to restrain a raising eyebrow, and he glanced at Mr. Owen. Silvertail smiled and nodded. “And I will have the Classic Combo, I think.”

The Classic Combo was a single-patty regular burger with a medium fry and drink. Holly grinned at the server as he walked off still looking confused. “I guess a lot of people are going to look at my appetite funny.”

“That they will. Not only are you eating to sustain a body they cannot see, one that has an adult man’s metabolism, but also you will be expending more energy in transformations and battles — whenever we have them.”

“It’s been quite a while. When — ”

He shrugged. “Soon, probably. But until you start to seek out the other Apocalypse Maidens in earnest, there will be little to draw them out. They will be active, and there will be incidents in the next month or two before you enter school, but where and when? That I cannot predict.” He looked at her with a faint smile. “Still, I am not sure that you need that much food.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. And am I just playing the part, being immature naturally, or changing? This whole thing is still bizarre and scary, even when it’s getting to be almost mundane.

As Holly was plowing through her second burger, a customer came out of the bathroom and went to the front desk. A moment later Holly caught a fragment from one of the other people going by: “. . . clogged, so Brent, go clear it out. And mop up after.”

Ugh, thought Holly. Sure hope that doesn’t mean we’re going to get the stink of a clogged toilet here while we’re eating.

Even as she thought that, Brent went by them and into the bathroom; she could distantly hear the sound of someone getting out a plunger and starting work.

There was a wet SPLOOSH! noise, and suddenly Brent came tumbling out into view, eyes wide. He skidded to a stop on his rear, staring back the way he’d come.

Laughter rippled around the restaurant, which intensified as the plunger then followed, describing a lazy circle in the air before landing with a hollow thonk in front of Brent, and finally a blue-and-white scrub brush flipped through the air and bounced ineffectually off Brent’s forehead.

Holly was not laughing. She saw goosebumps rising on her arms as though the air had turned to ice, and Silvertail was slowly easing out of his seat.

Then, as Brent scrambled to his feet, there was a deep, sucking, muttering noise, as of a set of air-filled sewage pipes the size of the New York City sewers, and the laughter cut off . . .

And turned to screams as something black as night thundered from the bathroom corridor.

 

The Spark – Snippet 19

The Spark – Snippet 19

“Gervaise and Phoebe are about as nice as you could find,” I said. “On Beune or anywhere else. And I’m glad you thought ahead to what we were going to be doing for food, because I sure didn’t.”

I got up and offered Guntram a hand to help. My stomach growled.

“Let’s go take them up on the offer before it gets dark,” I said.

***

“Here they come!” three of Gervaise’ children shouted together as me and Guntram came into sight along the path. They were waiting by the oak that’d been the boundary between Gervaise’ tract and my own. Now it was all his, but he–or Phoebe–must’ve told the kids to stay clear of what’d been my house now that I’d come back. “They’re coming! They’re coming!”

“Do you get this whenever you go outside Dun Add?” I said quietly to Guntram.

“I rarely leave Dun Add,” said Guntram. “Indeed, most of my time is spent in my quarters there.”

He looked at me. “Besides, people don’t pay attention to an old man in a gray robe in most places,” he said. “Nor should they.”

Gervaise and his wife stood to either side of their door. The three boys were beside him, the two girls beside Phoebe, who was holding their infant.

We don’t get many visitors on Beune; Gervaise and Phoebe were making the most of Guntram. And of me, I suppose. I think of myself as just a farmer, but I’ve always been different from my neighbors. I was even different from dad and mom.

I grinned. Guntram’s visit might do nothing else, but it was going to convince my neighbors that I was different in a good way.

“Mistress Phoebe,” said Guntram, bowing slightly and holding out a package in both hands. He’d remembered the name of Gervaise’ wife. “Thank you for your hospitality. Please accept this token of appreciation from an old man.”

“Oh, what wonderful cloth,” said Phoebe. She handed the baby to her ten-year-old and unfolded the cloth wrapper carefully. “Do you want it back, sir?”

“It’s yours,” said Guntram. “Now, hold it firmly.”

The object was a colorless ball an inch in diameter, resting on a square base with one white side and three black. Guntram touched the white rectangle; the ball glowed, casting a clear light in all directions.

The girls screamed; Gervaise spread his arms and backed away, shoving the boys back also. “The Adversary!” he said.

Phoebe closed her hands over the object; light streamed through the loose net of her fingers. “Gervaise!” she shouted in a fury I’d never heard from her. “Don’t be a bigger fool than God made you! You know Pal would never bring any evil here!”

Gervaise’ face blanked. He lowered his arms but he didn’t speak further.

Phoebe curtseyed to Guntram. “Thank you, sir,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything so wonderful. Please forgive my husband’s surprise; he’s really not a bad man.”

Guntram looked uncomfortable. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “I should have warned you. I assure you it’s just a bauble, nothing to do with the Adversary.”

Guntram hadn’t told me what he planned to give her or I would’ve suggested he do it a little different. Come to think, I’d have suggested he let me handle it, probably after dinner when it was getting dark. Thanks to Phoebe, it’d worked out all right.

“It’s wonderful,” she said firmly, opening her fingers. “How long will it burn, sir?”

“Forever, if you want it to,” said Guntram. “Or you can turn it off by–”

He extended his finger, catching Phoebe’s eyes; she nodded. He touched the white portion of the base again and the light went out.

“–doing that. I thought it might be useful to you on short winter days.”

“It’s wonderful,” Phoebe repeated. “Now, let’s all go in and eat. Gervaise, you have something to say.”

Gervaise nodded, then bowed. “Master Guntram,” he said, “I hope you’ll honor me by sitting at my right hand. Pal, will you please face me at the foot of the table?”

The table was stretched full length, even though the eleven and ten year olds were serving it instead of eating. Gervaise carved the pork roast and loosened up considerably in the course of the evening. He even asked for the new light to be turned on at twilight; Phoebe did so with considerable ceremony, placing it on a wall shelf in place of the miniature portraits of her mother and father.

We talked while we ate. They all wanted to hear about Dun Add, what sort of crops the folk there grew and what the women wore. Guntram knew as little about the one as the other, it seemed to me, but he was polite and sometimes I could add a little from what I’d seen.

Then Phoebe said, “Master Guntram? Wouldn’t you say our Pal here is a fine young man?”

Guntram looked at me in surprise. “Why, certainly,” he said.

“Phoebe,” I said. “You shouldn’t–”

“Then why hasn’t he found a girl, do you suppose?” Phoebe plowed on. “Oh, not here I mean, but in Dun Add? There must be ever so many fine ladies in Dun Add, aren’t there?”

“This really isn’t something I know enough about to discuss,” Guntram said. I won’t say he was more embarrassed than I was–he couldn’t be–but he was sure embarrassed.

“Phoebe–” Gervaise said, a bit of roast lifted halfway to his mouth on knife point and his eyes bulging like a startled rabbit’s.

“I blame Ariel’s notions,” said Phoebe, paying no more attention to her husband than she had to me. “She taught the poor boy that women were as bad as poison snakes.”

“Mistress Phoebe,” I said, “stop that!”

I guess I’d raised my voice some, because everybody did stop. I said, “My mom was a good woman, and if she didn’t want me to grow up another Jacques the Peddler, well, that’s to the good, I think.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sure, Master Guntram,” Phoebe said, looking down at her plate.

“Ariel’s sister was a wild one,” Gervaise muttered. “It may be that Ariel got a bit carried away about wild women.”

He looked around and put on a big, false smile. “I’m thinking we could all do with a little more ale, right? I surely could!”

We stayed longer into the night than I’d hoped to, but politeness aside I wanted to make sure the whole family was comfortable with Guntram and me before we left. Gervaise embraced me when we left, saying how lucky they were to have me for a neighbor. He’d put down quite a lot of his own ale, more than I’d ever seen him drink before. That was between him and Phoebe, but I noticed she kept refilling his wooden cup every time it got low. I guess she was of the same mind as I was.

When we were well away from the house, Guntram said, “I apologize for not being more careful with the light, Pal.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, sir,” I said. “We’re just not used to the same things they are in Dun Add, is all.”

I cleared my throat and went on, “Guntram? You said the light was just a bauble. I didn’t see very many of them in the castle when I was there, though.”

“It’s not a big thing,” Guntram said. “But–no, they aren’t very common. Even in Dun Add. It just seemed something that would be particularly useful in, well, in Beune.”

In the sticks, he meant. Well, he didn’t have to apologize for thinking the truth.

“Ah, sir?” I said as we reached my house. “I suppose you’re tired and want to go to bed right away?”

“I don’t need to,” Guntram said. As we entered, he lighted the room with another lamp like the one he’d given to Phoebe. “Did you want to get to work on the weapon immediately?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “That is, I’d like to, but if you were tired…?”

“I think we can finish the work before I need sleep,” he said. He was smiling broadly.

We did finish it, with luck and the help of God, though I figured from the stars that it was within an hour of false dawn before we were done. I slept with a mind full of dancing hopes.

***

It was mid-morning before I awakened. Guntram was sitting on the stool, feeding worms to his hedgehog.

I got up and said, “I’m wrung out. You look chipper, though.” The gossamer golden web he’d woven to fill the tube was miles more difficult than the simple crystalline repair that I’d done.

The hedgehog, sitting on the table, wriggled his–her?–nose at me. Guntram lifted another earthworm from the basket of damp dirt which Gervaise’ boys had provided.

 

The Spark – Snippet 18

The Spark – Snippet 18

“You sit right down,” I said, pointing to the closest thing I had to a chair: the round of tree bole I was using as a stool. “I’ll be back with a load from the barn as quick as it takes me to walk twenty feet!”

***

We wound up sitting cross-legged on the floor with the table and stool pushed back against the north wall. We were working on the third load of pieces that I’d stored in the barn because I didn’t know what else to do with them. To me they were just so much ballast, but to the Ancients they’d been–I couldn’t even guess with most of them. But they’d been wonders, that I knew.

I was using the linen tote that I hauled split wood to the fireplace in colder weather. I’d picked up more artifacts than I’d realized over the years, and some of them I hadn’t looked at in, well, years.

“Do you gather these pieces personally?” Guntram said as he set down what might as well have been an acorn for any use I could figure out for it. “Or do most of them come from specialist searchers? Almost all of what we see in Dun Add is brought by people who make their living searching for artifacts instead of farming.”

I laughed. “This is Beune, Guntram,” I said. “Nobody’s a one-trick pony here. There’s people who’re blacksmiths and weavers–and there’s me, who’s a Maker. But we’re that and farmers. Come harvest, you’ll find everybody pitching in, and if somebody decides to raise a new barn it’ll be him and all his neighbors.”

I gestured to the spread of items Guntram had been sorting. “Three quarters of this I found myself. A few pieces travelers brought in, things they’d noticed as they were walking along and they were close enough that they brought it here. I trade them a meal for what they found, and maybe once or twice I’d go beyond that if something looked like it might count for something. I gave a fellow a brand new tunic once, for….”

I fished around and found the piece I’d been working on when Guntram woke me out of my trance.

“For this. Which seeing that piece in your room at Dun Add, I thought might be a color projector too.”

“Did you?” said Guntram, turning the piece around in his hands. It was a round rod about the thickness of my index finger. “Did you indeed!”

He set the piece back on the pewter tray I’d taken it from. “You identified this from a glance at the piece in my collection?” he said.

I stiffened at his look. Well, I stiffened the best I could sitting crossways on the floor in a litter of things that I’d brought from the barn; I couldn’t even straighten my legs.

“Sir,” I said. “I thought I saw similarities, yes. It gave me a direction to go with my repair. Though I haven’t gotten very far.”

“You have a good eye,” Guntram said, “but this is a far more complicated piece. The projector in my collection puts a hue on a wall. I can set it not to color other objects on the basic surface, but nothing more difficult than that.”

He touched the piece again but continued looking at me. “This creates images,” he said. “It would take me months to determine even the sort of images, but I suspect it has many options. Many, many options.”

“That’s wonderful!” I said. After I found I couldn’t make head nor tail of the piece, I’d felt a bit of a fool to have given the peddler a new tunic. It seemed I’d made a good bargain after all. “Sir–Guntram? Will you accept it as a gift from me? I’d like to watch you work on it to learn, but I sure would never be able to do it justice without help.”

Guntram cocked his head at me. “We’ll discuss that later,” he said. “For now, though….”

As I brought odds and ends out of the barn, Guntram had been separating them into two groups. There was sort of a third group: an arc which I suspected was a continuum. Sometimes he’d commented on what he was doing, more often he didn’t.

Now Guntram chose a hollow tube about four inches long–broken on only one end, but I still hadn’t been able to figure it out despite the relatively good condition–and with his other hand pulled a short spindle from the items in the tote which we hadn’t gone through yet. “Have you considered these pieces together?” Guntram said.

“I picked up the little one ten years ago,” I said. “I haven’t thought about it since.’

I grimaced, embarrassed at the situation. “I need to go over everything,” I said, aloud but really speaking to myself. “I keep learning things, but I need to go back over all the stuff I got earlier when maybe I didn’t understand what I do now.”

“We’re looking at them now,” Guntram said mildly.

I placed the spindle close alongside the tube and in a trance entered both at the same time. I had a hazy view of the tube’s structure extending, though probably not very far. I was sure that it didn’t connect with the spindle.

I’d been planning to work on the tube, though I didn’t know what the device’s purpose might be. I hoped that if I completed the gross structure–silicon with a dusting of metals that I mostly had available–I’d get a notion of the purpose so that I could approach that afterwards.

The spindle seemed complete: there was no suggestion of missing knobs or bits at the crystalline level, but neither was there any hint of life, of function, in the piece. I saw no connection between the two pieces, though Guntram obviously did.

The pieces blurred. I’d never seen that happen. It brought me out of my trance as suddenly as if somebody’d poured the water bucket over me. Gasping, I jerked upright.

“Oh!” I said. Guntram was holding the spindle within the hollow tube.

“Pal, I apologize,” Guntram said. His hands didn’t move from the two pieces. “I shouldn’t have done that without warning you first. I’m truly sorry.”

“Sir, it’s my fault,” I said, though I guess it really wasn’t. It was how I felt, though. “I’ve never had the workpiece move while I was in it, that’s all. There’s never anybody around when I’m working, you see.”

I raised my hand. “Now, keep holding them like that,” I said. “I’ll go back in.”

Guntram nodded and I did that, just dipping in lightly. I hadn’t been sure that’d be easy after the surprise, but it was.

The connection was obvious when I saw the spindle nested within the tube. The pieces were throbbing with power now, but the interior of the tube was a featureless blur. I couldn’t see the structure which had kept the spindle in place when the object was complete. Was it a fluid? Even a gas, I suppose, if the pressure was high enough.

I came out and grinned ruefully at Guntram. “It’s pretty obvious,” I said. “Now that you’ve shown me. But what’s the missing element?”

“Any of the noble metals would do,” Guntram said. “Gold is probably the simplest. Can your neighbor’s wife replace a button for me?”

“Phoebe?” I said, pulling out the coin I’d kept for luck. Having gold–or anyway, a mix of gold and silver–was about the best luck I could imagine right now. “Sure. Are you missing one?”

Guntram clipped off the top button of his tunic, then used the same small knife to peel away the leather covering. The gold core gleamed in the late afternoon light.

“I brought a variety of trace elements with me,” he said, handing me the bare metal core. “Things that I wasn’t sure you’d have access to on Beune. Gold was an obvious one, of course.”

“Ah, we could use my coin?” I said, but Guntram shook his head. I was just as glad, frankly; though like Gervaise getting the table, I’d have given up the coin if I needed to. “I don’t know what pattern to use, though.”

“I’ve seen these before,” said Guntram. “Do you think you can you complete the exterior structure if I build the interior matrix?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, sure. I’ve got everything I need for that. It’ll take me several hours, though. Do you want to start now?”

The two artifacts made a weapon. I was eager to get at it, but I also knew I was already peckish and that wouldn’t help my concentration when I worked on the piece. I wondered what I had to eat in the house.

“What I would like to do now,” Guntram said, “is to have a real dinner. I took the liberty of asking your neighbors if they would feed us both tonight about this time. I said I would compensate them, though they seemed more excited just to have a visitor from Dun Add.”

 

Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 09

Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 09

Chapter 9.

Steve looked around the huge furnished basement again, trying to distract himself from what he was about to do. “Dang, I still can’t believe we’re living in this place. Thousands of square feet, including this, what, cut-price Danger Room?”

“Call it a practice room or perhaps dojo,” Silvertail, who was now in the shape of ‘Trayne Owen’ — a tall, slender, distinguished looking gentleman with black hair touched with pure silver at the temples, lightly tanned. His eyes were brilliant blue, a startling contrast to the hair, and his voice was not the tenor that Steve generally associated with the mahou shoujo spirit advisors but a deep, warm bass. “Neither your technology nor my limited magic is up to creating a ‘danger room’ as you envision it. But making a room that is secure and reinforced enough to survive some abuse, that can be done.” He raised one dark eyebrow. “You seem particularly nervous, Steve. What is it today?”

“Kinda silly, I guess,” Steve answered, feeling embarrassment trying to well up. “I mean, I know I’m committed to the course, but what I’m about to do . . . it’s really sort of sealing it.”

“I admit to not seeing it that way, but your perceptions are your own. However, is there any point in delaying?”

“No . . . guess not.” He swallowed, grasped the Star Nebula Brooch, and focused on the need to protect people — his friends, family, those who could not defend themselves. “To avert the Apocalypse, and shield the innocent from evil, and stand against the powers of destruction, I offer myself as wielder and weapon, as symbol and sword! Mistress of the spirit, ruler of the stars beyond, Mystic Galaxy Defender, Princess Holy Aura!”

Once more the echoing words called forth argent luminance that erased him in a chime of victory and renewal, rebuilt that which had been and would ever be in tingling silver sunshine, formed into a girl slender and strong as steel. She opened her eyes, already in the battle pose that she knew was the ending of the transformation. “Wow,” she said. “I mean . . . I did this before, but I was so scared, angry, confused . . . I couldn’t see it, feel it like that. Was it so . . . beautiful before?”

“It is always beautiful, more beautiful each time than the last,” Silvertail — Trayne — said, his voice rough with emotion. “I am glad you can see it that way . . . Holly?”

“Holy Aura right now . . . but yes, I guess you’d better just call me Holly.” She stared in wonder at her arms and hands. “Well, that’s one way to lose weight.”

“Technically, of course, it is not lost, merely . . . displaced, turned to potential rather than actuality. Was your trepidation due to the simple fact of the transformation?”

She laughed, hearing the sound echo back like a golden bell. “No, that wasn’t it. It’s that I’m not changing back for a long time. Maybe not for a year.”

Trayne Owen — since that’s how I’d better think of him when he’s human — frowned. “That is not at all necessary, Ste . . . Holly. I had assumed that you would spend a great deal of time as Stephen Russ, whenever possible.”

“That was my first thought,” she said, walking, feeling the shift in weight and motion that was at once completely wrong and . . . somehow . . . exactly right, and that was scary enough that she stopped and focused only on talking. “Umm . . . yeah. I thought that at first, but then I realized I’d be setting myself up for total disaster.

“I need to get used to being Holly Owen/Holy Aura, being her for a long time, because I’m going to be spending hours around teenagers every day when school starts, and if I’m going to have any chance of making contact with the right people, and making friends? I can’t be clueless about how to live like this.”

“Hm. You have a point. But I am still not clear as to why you would have to — as you implied — never turn back until the task is done.”

“I might change back once in a while, for various reasons . . .” she conceded, and swallowed hard again, “. . . if for no other reason than to remind me who I really am, because you know, I still find the fact that I’m a girl and absolutely accepting that to be really creepy. Because the other part of me isn’t accepting it at all, you know.”

Holly could see real concern on Trayne’s face. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m not! This is completely freaky! But I have to be all right with it by the time I actually meet the other Apocalypse Maidens. And I absolutely am not going to be that cliché, where the guy who gets his sex changed doesn’t even learn the basics about being a girl, gets surprised by having her first period, walks into the boys’ room without thinking about it, all those low-comedy tropes. Thanks, I’m going to be the lead in a serious Magical Girl show, not a joke.”

Trayne rubbed his chin. “This could take considerable time, Holy Aura. We do not — ”

“We are not going to rush this and screw it up,” Holly said with as much finality as her soprano voice could manage. “School won’t be in session for a couple months. If I practice living like . . . being Holly Owen for that long, I won’t blow my role the first time someone startles me. I have enough female relatives and friends to know that I’d damn well better know if having my period’s going to — do you know how weird it sounds to say that phrase? — having it’s going to just annoy me, or lay me up for a day or three. I’m assuming that this is a real honest-to-God fourteen-year-old girl’s body and that means it will have a monthly cycle, yes?”

“I am afraid so, yes. You are as real as any other young woman, including the annoyances that may incur.”

“Right. So I have to learn how to deal with that. Have to figure out how to dress — I assume I can’t just summon regular clothes out of nowhere to replace this useless-looking sparkly magical girl armor?”

“No. We can . . . tweak the transformation so that you switch between Holly Owen and Holy Aura rather than between Stephen and Holy Aura, and in that case changing back to Holly would also put her in whatever clothes Holly was wearing at the time, but Holly would still have had to dress herself beforehand.”

“Man, I’ll have to learn so much. How to dress right and wear the stuff right.” Holly shook her head. “Freaks me out, really.” She tried to make it come out light, but the trembling in her voice gave her away. Not nearly as relaxed about this as I want to make myself think.

She was seized by an almost irresistible urge to change back, become Stephen again. No, she told herself, this will not get any easier if I put it off. If I do . . . I might even hesitate the next time a monster comes calling, and that could get me — and a lot of other people — killed. I made this decision, I have to stick with it!

“It strikes me,” Trayne said slowly, apparently unaware of the conflict within her, “that you are . . . oddly nonchalant about the whole idea of dressing in girls’ clothing. Or is that an act?”

She seized the question like a lifeline, a focus of something to think about. “No, no, not really. I mean, my being all calm is sort of an act . . . actually, totally an act, I want to run around screaming or just change back right now . . . but the wearing girls’ clothing? Well, I will be a girl, so it’s not like Stephen-me walking around in women’s clothing. And I’ve been in plays — tried out for Dr. Frank N. Furter in Rocky Horror one year, in fact . . . anyway, I can play the role. But I do have to get used to it, or I’ll blow the role at the worst possible time.”

“Well, I do have the simple outfits you asked me to pick up. Having seen many young women of your age, I believe I was able to do reasonably well in terms of size.”

“Guess I’d better go change. How’s this going to work with the armor outfit?”

“Let me think a moment.” Trayne suddenly shrank back to the white rat. “I cannot perform much magic unless I am in this form; most of it is being used to hold the human shape otherwise,” said Silvertail Heartseeker. “Now let me see . . .”

The little animal scurried around Holly’s feet three times clockwise, three times counterclockwise, and then stopped before her, intoning something in what she had to assume was ancient Lemurian. “Aiylen ta vrayna, hai embreisan!” he finished, and a brilliant fountain of rainbow light enveloped her, sent a tingling electric shock through her body. “There. I believe that if you now simply will yourself to become Holly Owen the accoutrements of Holy Aura will vanish.”

“Okay, I’ll try it when I go to change.” She picked up the bags Trayne had indicated. “Be right back.”

Steve made it into the bathroom and collapsed to the floor, shaking. Part of me really thinks of itself as Holy Aura. I hear “Holy Aura” or even “Holly” and part of me’s already saying “Oh, that’s me.” Jesus. Am I going to lose myself? She visualized herself as a man, and shuddered at the realization that it was almost as hard to do that as it had been before to visualize himself as a woman.

It really was too much. She knew she had to accept this, could not yield to the temptation to change back, not now, not so soon, but she . . . Steve . . . also felt she couldn’t bear another second of this alien-yet-absolutely-right body. Tears began to stream down her face and she gave a scream of fear and frustration and slammed her arm against the tub.

The porcelain-coated cast iron shattered like candy glass, the impact a cannon shot that shook the house, showering her with debris, cracking the ceiling above. The shock snapped her out of her panic. “Holy moley, as the Captain used to say,” she murmured, staring in disbelief at the slender arm and delicate, long-fingered hand which were not damaged — not even scraped — by that titanic impact.

“Holy Aura! Are you all right?” Silvertail’s worried voice came through the door.

“Okay. Yeah, okay for now. Sorry about that. We’ll have to replace the tub and get the room fixed.”

“Are you certain you are all right?” Silvertail asked again. His concern was unmistakable. “I am not worried about repairs. I am worried about you. I have placed a nearly intolerable burden on you, Stephen, and — ”

“It’s done, Silvertail,” she said, not without a touch of anger, but controlled this time, controlled, not running away. “I have to deal with it. I was freaking out, yes, but my superhuman tantrum snapped me out of it. I’ll finish changing and then get out of here.”

She brushed away the debris and opened up the bags carefully. Panties — nice simple ones, thank God . . . jeans . . . T-shirt . . . bra? Jesus, yes, I’m going to have to wear one. Don’t want to think about that. But no avoiding it. Even without looking down, she could feel that she was . . . well developed for a fourteen-year-old girl. Not ridiculously so (thank GOD that part of the meme isn’t applying) but more than enough to make a brassiere a normal part of her clothing in this here and now.

She concentrated on reversing the change, and in a flash of light the crystal boots, sparkling skirt, and other elements of Princess Holy Aura’s mahou shoujo existence disappeared. Aaaaand now I’m naked. Does that make me automatically now a peeping tom? It’s my body, but it’s not. She tried to avoid looking down too much as she dressed, but the contours that were, once more, alien yet familiar tried to draw the eye . . . and the panic.

Finally she was dressed and stood, shakily, to leave. A movement caught her attention and for the first time she looked at the mirror . . . and froze.

A waterfall of shining deep purple, eyes that shimmered with the depths of the twilight sky, a face drawn from legends and a form from the dreams of angels, wearing a simple black T-shirt and jeans. Holly Owen stared back at her, eyes haunted with unnamed fears, yet with a face filled with utter determination and a strength Steve had not imagined.

Her mouth was dry and her eyes stung, and she realized she had been staring in utter disbelief for . . . minutes? “That’s . . . me?” she whispered. “Oh, crap.”

“What is it, Steve? You sound . . . worse.”

“Just realizing that this is worse,” she said, finally tearing her gaze from the impossibility in the mirror and yanking the door open.

Silvertail blinked in surprise. “I see nothing wrong.”

“I don’t look like ‘a teenage girl,’ Silvertail! I look like . . . like . . . like some idealized image of a teenage girl! I haven’t TOUCHED a makeup case and I look like someone took four hours and Photoshop to make me look perfect! Half the girls are going to hate me just on looks alone, and the boys are all going to act like complete idiots around me, when they’re not following me around!”

Silvertail sighed. “The meme of the magical girl — and for that matter, the superheroine — makes much of that rather inescapable. Your appearance is something of a trial for me as well, I must confess.”

“Why? Do I look like some fantasy of yours?” As he said that, Steve-Holly knew that had gone too far. “Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“I should hope not. Holly . . . you look almost identical to my daughter, as I have remembered her throughout the centuries. Holy Aura always echoed Aureline, of course . . . but only you have ever duplicated her.” The pain in the tiny voice was all too real, and it reached Holly through her self-absorbed conflict. “Now she stands before me again, reborn in you . . . and once more, I must send her — you — into the dangers that I cannot face.”

“Oh. Jesus, I’m sorry, Silvertail.” She felt the pain of the older man acutely, remembering her losses as Steve. Imagine seeing someone that looked like Mom, exactly like her, and knowing I had to send her into, well, what I am going into. “I . . . well, I guess there’s not much I can do about that, but . . .”

“No, there is not,” he said. “But perhaps . . . perhaps it is right that it be so. I must act like your father; seeing you like this, I realize that will be far easier than I had thought.” A wan, tiny smile crossed the furry face. “And I do not think you will do less than honor to her memory.”

“Thanks, Silvertail.” As the other shimmered and turned back to the tall human form, she corrected herself: “. . . Dad.”

He chuckled, though there was still a note of tears in his voice before he cleared his throat. “You are welcome, of course.”

There was a pause of uncomfortable silence. Holly looked back, seeing the wreckage of the tub. “Ugh. That has to get cleaned up. I guess we could at least put all the pieces into what’s left of the tub.” She stepped back into the bathroom and reached down to pick up the largest chunk of cast iron — and nearly fell over. “What the heck . . . ?”

“Ah. Yes, that is an obvious consequence.”

“What? I just broke this thing like it was made of saltine crackers a second ago –”

“Princess Holy Aura broke it. Holly Owen, like Stephen Russ, is a normal human being,” Trayne Owen said. “I transposed, or rather added, the transformation to a female form, as you indicated, but the conversion to, well, mortality remains an integral part of the enchantment. And as a fourteen-year-old girl, even one in excellent physical condition, you have nothing even close to the physical strength that Stephen Russ possessed.”

“Oh, I get it. Makes sense, I guess. And that does keep me from accidentally doing something that blows my cover. I won’t have Clark Kent’s problems.”

“No. But I see now that your determination to take significant time to accustom yourself to this life was even wiser than I had thought; you have many assumptions in the way you conduct yourself that are predicated on your size and strength, as well as your sex. You will need to recognize and address all of them.”

It was a little disconcerting to realize that she couldn’t even lift things she-as-Stephen would have moved easily, but Silvertail was right. And the fact was that their conversation had stilled — at least for the moment — her panic and confusion. She straightened. “Fine, I’ll leave it to you to clean up. For now, I guess I’d better get started on that practice!”