Eric Flint's Blog, page 162

Iron Angels – Snippet 35

Iron Angels – Snippet 35

They crawled past the first building, all brick, but with thick, smoked-glass windows and unlike some of the other businesses nearby, still in business. A fence surrounded the property so one couldn’t drive on to the complex, but the front of the building remained accessible by walking right up and ringing the front bell.

A row of vehicles populated a parking lot behind the building.

“Holy shit,” Jasper said.

Temple glared at him.

“Fine, why I’ll be a monkey’s uncle, that better?” He pumped his eyebrows up and down.

“A little.”

“And besides, you made a hump joke!”

Temple’s mouth twitched, an almost smile.

“Anyway,” Jasper said, “I can’t believe we found him — the Toyota parked in back is Carlos’s. “Keep rolling up this road and we’ll pause before turning around — looks like Hump Road dead ends anyway.”

Temple swung the car around at the end of the road. Buildings resembling hangars lined the road. Some appeared empty and dilapidated, while others were simply dilapidated, but still in use. This would make a great area for a cult to hide as well.

“What should we do?” Temple asked.

“I don’t know, what do you think?” She’d been allowing him to make a lot of decisions today, and he wondered if this was her way of apologizing or making him feel like he was part of the Scientific Anomalies Group.

“All right.” Temple drummed the steering wheel. “What are the odds he’s part of a cult whose members commit suicide at the first sign of cops?”

“I’d say low.”

“And what are the odds he’d phone in the tip on the kidnapped girl if he were part of this cult — which, by the way, we haven’t proven exists yet?”

“Pretty low.” Jasper chuckled. “Thank you for the bit about the phantom cult. I thought you made up your mind on the cult’s existence.”

“I think the cult’s real. It fits. Demons, cults, ritual suicide. We even have a name for them now, the Phantom Cult — I like it.”

“All right.” Jasper suppressed a laugh. “I’m not sold, but I suppose one of us should be a skeptic, right? Isn’t that how these things work?”

“How do you mean?” Temple asked.

“Like partners in any movie or TV show — one’s always a skeptic, right?”

“True.”

“So if this goes sideways on us, I’m not wearing any body armor, my Kevlar’s baking in the trunk of my bucar, and I doubt you’re wearing any.”

“Let’s hope this doesn’t get ugly on us and let’s hope Carlos isn’t a bad guy.” Temple smiled. “We’ve all done stupid things over the course of our careers, what’s one more thing?”

“Yeah, unless this time is the last stupid thing we do. You know what? I’m gonna call us in with the Merrillville office’s switchboard, so they know where we’re at.”

Jasper would have called in on his bu-radio, but again, it was installed in his bucar, so he used the smartphone. Boy, he wished he’d talked Temple into taking his car rather than the rental, but he’d been so out of it this morning.

“All right, we’re set.”

****

A metal sign attached to two metal poles jammed into the ground identified the business as Wayland Precision. No witty tag line, only the name of the business with a blacksmith’s hammer beneath. Spartan, but word of mouth and reputation rather than advertising likely brought them business. Also, there’d no doubt be no receptionist eagerly awaiting new clients inside the front door — especially on a weekend, but the nature of Wayland’s business probably didn’t require the services of a person out front.

Crab grass littered the patchy strip in front of the red brick building. A cracked sidewalk and brick steps led to an imposing metal door, which wouldn’t be out of place in Fort Knox.

“The door must weigh a ton.” Jasper pointed. “They expecting to repel an assault or outlast a siege?”

“Maybe they’re a bunch of doomsday types — ”

“Oh, you mean like those people out in Wyoming? What are they called? Survivalists?”

“Something like that.”

They ascended the steps and the tiny porch provided a respite from the pummeling waves of heat.

“Oh, there’s a doorbell and intercom, exciting.” Jasper jammed the button; a buzzer inside the building was loud enough to elicit a wince from both him and Temple.

“Makes sense for a machine shop, eh?”

They stood for a few minutes and still no one answered the door.

“All right, I’ll give the intercom a whirl.”

He reached for the button, but the speaker rattled: “Yes?”

Jasper pressed the button: “I’m Special Agent Jasper Wilde with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m here with my partner, Temple Black. We’d like to speak with someone.”

A long pause.

“What is this about?”

“Carlos Ochoa, He works for you. His Toyota is parked out back. No one is in trouble.”

Longer pause.

“Yes, Carlos is an employee of Wayland Precision. What is this about?”

Jasper pinched the bridge of his nose. “A few questions regarding some kidnappings, is all. We need to speak with him.” Jasper hoped for Carlos’s sake his employer was not part of some criminal enterprise — which was why he didn’t reveal Carlos was an informant for the FBI. The Bureau protected the identities of informants, but in this case, they needed to get to the bottom of Carlos’s activities and motivations. Jasper would only reveal Carlos’s role if necessary.

“Give us a minute. We’re in the shop, someone will be up to greet you.”

Jasper took a step to one side of the door and Temple did the same on the other side. Standing in front of the door was not tactically sound, even with a door capable of repelling a medieval battering ram. He cursed himself for wearing the baby Glock on his ankle today, or his hand would have been at his hip poised to draw.

Temple’s hand retreated to her hip.

At least one of them was in a better position, more tactically prepared.

Latches and locks clunked and turned from the other side before the door creaked open.

“Hello?” A female voice asked.

Jasper leaned to the left and Temple took a step to her right.

He waved his credentials and displayed his badge. Temple did the same.

“We’re with the FBI — ”

“So you said.” A solidly built blonde woman stepped into the light. She wore not a hint of makeup on her strong Nordic features. The only fitting description of her was as if Freyja herself came to life — if his memory of Norse mythology was still any good.

Jasper’s tongue was suddenly incapable of producing words.

Temple shook her head ever so slightly, and stepped forward. “I’m Agent Black, and this is Agent Wilde.”

“What can I help you with?” The woman who answered the door didn’t offer her hand.

“We need to speak with Carlos Ochoa,” Temple said.

 

The Spark – Snippet 13

The Spark – Snippet 13

“More fools them,” I said. I took a deep breath and rolled onto my back. No jolt of pain grabbed me. When I rubbed my ribs where Easton had jabbed I could feel a bit of discomfort, but nothing more than I’d have gotten if I’d walked into the corner of a bench in my workshop.

“I tried it myself, of course,” Guntram said. “It doesn’t seem to have any effect on old age.”

I looked at him hard because of what I heard in his voice, but his face was in shadow from the windows. I wondered how old he really was.

“Shall I get up now, sir?” I said. “I mean, is it all right if I look around at your things now?”

“I have no more information than you do, Pal,” Guntram said, “but I can’t see that it would harm you.”

He cleared his throat and added, “Speaking personally, I’m pleased to have someone to show my collection to. My gleanings, rather. I’m glad to be alone most of the time, but I occasionally find myself regretting that I’m alone all the time.”

I rose and looked at what appeared to be a stuffed lizard some three feet long, which hung nearby by wires from the ceiling. It seemed out of place among the shelves of Ancient technology.

I probed it with my mind and found nothing. Not corn husks, not cotton batting, not dried peas: nothing. I looked at Guntram.

“It’s a machine, as you suppose,” he said. “It snaps at flies. I suppose I should have warned you not to wave your finger in its face.”

“People who do that deserve to lose their fingers,” I said. “But I don’t see the mechanism. Or anything.”

“The mechanism is in Not-Here,” Guntram said. “I don’t know how or why the Ancients created a perfect linkage between Here and Not-Here. I don’t even know if the Ancients were from Here or were not. It seems rather a pointless toy, though an amazing one.”

I looked at Guntram. “There’s other Makers in Dun Add,” I said. “The clerk at the enlistment counter said there were. Why are you alone?”

“There are at least twenty Makers working in Dun Add,” Guntram said, nodding. “They’re under Louis, who is by far the best Maker I’ve ever met. The best I can imagine ever being born. I trained him, so I should know.”

“But if there’s so many,” I said, “then–did you fight with Louis?”

“Nothing so dire,” said Guntram. He picked up a small cylinder from a shelf, then put it back.

“A communicator,” he said idly. “If I could find another one, I believe we could accomplish amazing things. Speak all the way across the universe, even.”

I didn’t speak. Whatever had cut Guntram off from the general society of Dun Add was none of my business. I was sorry I’d asked.

He looked at me. “Jon believes in unifying Mankind in order and justice,” he said. “Louis believes in that goal as strongly as Jon does, perhaps more so. They met when they were quite young and rose together to where they are now. They believe.”

“Yes sir,” I said. I was standing straighter without being aware of it. “I  believe that too. That’s why I came to Dun Add.”

“Yes, I recall you saying that,” Guntram said. He looked to the side. There was a sort of smile on his face, but it seemed sad.

“Guntram?” I said. “Don’t you believe that?”

He met my eyes. “What I believe, Pal,” he said, “is that things were and things are and things will be. That’s all that I feel sure of.”

I nodded to show that I’d heard him. There wasn’t anything I was willing to say.

“Pal?” Guntram said. “Do you ever wonder who built the Road?”

“Built the Road?” I said. That was like asking me who built dirt. “Sir, I don’t–I didn’t, think anyone built it. God built it. Didn’t he?”

Who could build the Road? Who…?

“Have you ever examined the structure of the Road as you would–”

Guntram picked up a device from the table beside him. It was a block the size of a walnut in its husk. Tubes came out in three directions.

“–this color projector, for example?”

“I tried,” I said. Of course I had. When I first realized I was a Maker, before I even knew the word Maker, I’d looked at the structure of everything around me. The Waste had a grain, so to speak, a direction; but the Road had nothing at all. The Road just was. “I wasn’t able to.”

“And yet the Road exists,” Guntram said. “It joins all the portions of the universe, Here and I believe Not-Here.”

“Sure the Road is Not-Here,” I said. “Beune used to be Not-Here a long time ago. There’s a layer deep down in mines where I can feel rock that had been Not-Here once. And I think that in the Waste, there are places that used to be Here but aren’t any more.”

“I’ve never travelled to the Marches,” Guntram said. “Perhaps I should, but there’s so much here to occupy me.”

His fingers drifted idly across the shelves before him. “People bring me artifacts,” he said. “Bring them to Jon or Louis and they pass them on to me if they don’t see any use or aren’t interested in the use. They keep the weapons, of course. But there may be things out there which wouldn’t interest anyone but me.”

I sniffed in self-disgust. “I was a fool to think that my weapons would be of any use in Dun Add,” I said. “I see why everybody thought I was crazy.”

“Umm…,” Guntram said. “No, not crazy, but certainly ignorant. You’d never fought anyone before?”

“Not really,” I said.

“And you didn’t have a practice machine which would have allowed you to practice without a human partner,” Guntram went on. “They’re fairly common. There’s over a hundred in Dun Add, and there are others elsewhere. But not on Beune, I gather.”

“No,” I said. “I’ve heard of them, but I don’t know where the nearest to Beune would be.”

“If you’d had any practice,” Guntram said, “you’d have realized that with your shield at full power, it was unable to protect you at an opponent who was able to move. In a line of men at arms, you might have been all right. If you wanted to join the regular army…?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t,” I said firmly. “I want to go home.”

“As you wish, of course,” said Guntram, nodding. “In single combat, though, your only chance would be to land a blow. That would mean with your shield off or at very low level. Even in a sparring match, that would mean taking a bad drubbing before you were able to strike.”

I snorted. “I got the drubbing anyway, didn’t I?” I said. “And didn’t land a blow.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Guntram said. He walked over to my shield and touched it with his fingertips. “This is a wonderful piece of work, though. And even more wonderful as a work of imagination.”

“It’s crap for fighting, though, which is what I needed it for,” I said. I was shocked at how angry I sounded. For as far back as I could remember–for as long as I’d been aware of more of the world than the sides of my cradle–I’d dreamed of being a Champion. Of being a Hero of Mankind.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “I’m a bigger fool than anybody I met realized. Even bigger.”

“Can I offer you something to eat, Pal?” Guntram said, obviously embarrassed. He took his hands away from my shield.

“No sir,” I said. “But if you could give me a place to sleep for the night, I’ll get out of your life the first thing in the morning. A patch of floor is good enough.”

“I can do better than that,” Guntram said, leading me to the opposite end of the room. “Though you’ll have to help me clear away the things lying on top of the bedding.”

We cleared a proper bed. Guntram’s couch had healed my aches and pains, but it had left me feeling as tired as if I’d spent all day climbing a mountain. I was asleep almost the instant my head hit the rolled pack I was using as a pillow.

 

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 26

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 26

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Stall

After a stroll with Abendar, Ahorn retired to the stall he’d demanded of his cousin to find his lover waiting. The stall was four sided, but open to the half-moon shining above. Puidenlehdet was sitting calmly in a corner playing a flute made from a buffalo leg bone. It sent a soft and eerie melody up to the Moon.

She finished the tune, then looked up at Ahorn with her gorgeous brown eyes.

“Done all I could for the Lady Saeunn tonight,” she said.

“How is she?”

“The star-stone sparked up, maybe for the last time,” Puidenlehdet replied. “For the time being, she is much better. Won’t last long, I fear.”

Ahorn went to stand beside her. He gazed up at the stars. Something was . . . off . . . in the heavens. He couldn’t quite say what. The stars were in their usual positions, but the brightness and flickering were varying.

“My dear, the stars are unsettled tonight. I can feel . . . something,” Ahorn said.

Puidenlehdet put down her flute and took a curry comb from a leather packet she’d stowed nearby.

“Can you say what?”

“The dragons sleep fitfully,” Ahorn said. “The stars sing to calm them.”

“Sounds like centaur affectedness when you speak in such a manner, my lover,” Puidenlehdet replied. “Now kneel down and let me take a brush to those brambles in your tail.

He did. The buffalo woman pulled the curry brush down his tail hair.

“Ouch!”

“We have to get them out, you old fool,” Puidenlehdet said evenly. “Else your tail will cut stripes across your hindquarters every time you flick a fly.”

She pulled the curry brush further through the hair of Ahorn’s tail. After it had collected a handful of brambles, she took it out, cleaned the bristles, then started again at the top.

“Blood and bones! That hurts, woman!”

“For the best,” the buffalo wise woman said in a low voice, as calm as a slow river at night.

“I suppose.”

“You stick to your high centaur matters and let me deal with the real problems of life,” Puidenlehdet murmured.

“I’m happy to let you deal with anything you want to, my dear,” Ahorn said. He closed his eyes and a resigned look came over his face. “Go on. Finish it, woman.”

Puidenlehdet didn’t waste any time. She yanked the brush the rest of the way through Ahorn’s tail hair, collecting brambles and stickle balls along the way.

Ahorn clenched his teeth and held in another yelp.

Five more passes and Puidenlehdet was done.

“There you go, brave one,” she said. “You clean up nice.”

“So do you.”

“That hot bath did these old bones wonders,” Puidenlehdet said. “Would have been better if all your relatives weren’t standing around giving me the Evil Eye when I got out.”

“They’re jealous of you.”

“I’m sure they are.”

“You know why.”

“I’d rather strangle myself than try to figure out centaur family goings-on,” Puidenlehdet answered.

“None of it matters,” Ahorn said. “I’m yours.”

“Tell that to your cousins.”

“Oh, I have,” Ahorn said. “Repeatedly.”

“I say we forget about that tonight,” Puidenlehdet. “We both have worries enough as it is. My boys are holding the eastern passes. The Lady Saeunn is fading, and I don’t have the art to save her.”

“Nobody does,” Ahorn replied. “It’s a metaphysical problem.”

“Regen’s tears, that’s the most foolish thing I’ve heard come out of you,” Puidenlehdet said. “And I’ve heard some dillies.”

“Then what?”

“Her blood is thinning out. It’s not feeding the muscles. Her lungs don’t work, her heart don’t pump right–though Regen knows what is the right beat for an elf heart. I’m just guessing at that. Still, the problem is exactly not metaphysical. She’s physically breaking down like an old wagon. Only she’s young and shouldn’t be.”

“She has the star-stone.”

“She’s about drained that thing of whatever glamor it had. It’s growing cold. I’m afraid of what that means.”

“Then we have to hurry and get her to Eounnbard.”

“No assurances there,” Puidenlehdet said darkly. “I’m frightened that the only thing we’ll find when we get there is an end to Lord Wulf’s hopes.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I learned a long time ago not to make pronouncements unless I’m sure as rain and night.”

“I’m sure about us.”

“As am I.”

“Do you want to . . . it’s been days since we’ve been alone.”

“You sure your relatives ain’t got looky holes punched in this stall?”

“Let them look,” Ahorn said.

“Why, Ahorn Krisselwisser,” Puidenlehdet said. “I never knowed you were an exhibitionist.”

“I am not. I do enjoy a dramatic gesture now and again, however.”

“That you do.”

“So, want to make some drama?”

“That ain’t all we’re going to make, lover,” Puidenlehdet replied. She pointed to the other side of the stall. “Let’s go over yonder to the fresh straw.”

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Spring

Come to the springhouse.

The dragon-call had hit him while he was walking toward Saeunn’s sick room.

Come.

Wulf had a room and bed ready to fall into. In fact, he had thought about it for days while sleeping on a blanket roll in the Greensmoke forest. He should go there, if not to Saeunn.

But now here he was in the middle of the night trembling and feeling feverish, with flashes of alternating hot and cold.

Come to the springhouse.

Many times before he’d tried to resist the call and gotten sick. Nauseous. Light headed. Completely out of it.

That was the thing about the dragon-call he’d felt recently back at Raukenrose. It hadn’t been urgent. Nauseating and disorienting.

He’d tried to explain this to Ulla, but she hadn’t really understood. After all, a dragon-call was a dragon-call. If you were a von Dunstig, you dropped everything. You answered.

But it hadn’t seemed like the dragon had wanted to communicate. Not then. It seemed more like it was having a trouble sleep, and this was spilling over.

So he had decided to ignore it and take Saeunn to Eounnbard.

But tonight was like old times. The dragon-call was intense. It surged through him. It would not, could not, be ignored.

Before, the call had grown stronger and stronger and at times he had found himself crawling through castle corpse doors and coal chutes to answer it. Of course he’d been trying to hide that he heard it back then.

With the dragon-call came the ability to commune with the huge beast curled below the Shenandoah Valley–the beast whose backbone made up one mountain chain, and its front leg another.

It had been an ability passed down in the von Dunstig family for six hundred years, since old Duke Tjark had joined with the good Tier to fight and defeat the dark coalition of were-creatures and marauding Wutenluty Skraelings and bring peace to the valley.

As third in line, Wulf was not supposed to have it, or to only have a touch of it. But even before his brothers had been killed, Wulf had felt the call.

Back then, there was no way to fight it, and in the end no way to deny it. It had prepared him to use the Dragon Hammer, an artifact from the depths of time that had finally unmade a terrible enemy that no other weapon could touch.

What was he supposed to do about the dragon-call now? He was going to get Saeunn to Eounnbard. He was going to find a way to save her. He was very near the border of his own land, and so near the edge of the dragon’s influence. Or at least that was the belief.

He’d taken a few trips partly down the Potomak River, and had seen the sea–or at least the Chesapeake Bay–on a visit to see Adelbert when his brother was studying sailing at Krehennest. So he had been out of the mark before. But that had been before the dragon-call had gotten so strong inside him. It had nearly taken over his life and blasted his sanity in Raukenrose last year.

He didn’t need to hide it now. He was the heir to the mark, whether he wanted to be or not. His sister Ulla was older, but she didn’t hear the dragon. He had tried his best to get her to take the role from him, but she’d refused.

He stood up, half thinking he might continue down the hall, go check on Saeunn before answering the call. That was foolish, of course.

Come to the spring.

The call was not really words so much as an image, and an overriding urge. But even if that hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out which spring he was supposed to go to.

The Therme of the Apfelwein. It was why the inn was originally built here.

The spring was a pool about three paces across. It was covered by an open-air shelter with living wood for posts. These were planted and tended by the family of tree people who lived in the nearby woods. A huge muscadine vine grew up one post and its leaves, now browning in autumn, covered the upper timbers and roof of the shed.

 

Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 04

Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 04

Chapter 4.

The white rat’s warning hadn’t faded from Steve’s mind in the last few days. Though Silvertail hadn’t said anything about it since, Steve knew that the one-week deadline was already pushing what Silvertail thought was safe.

But there were still questions . . . over and above the ones he’d already been wrestling with. With a sigh, Steve dumped his laundry basket out on the bed before speaking. “Silvertail, I’ve got another question — one that’s been nagging at me a while.”

The wizard-turned-rodent glanced up at Steve from Silvertail’s perch on the end of the bed. “Go on, Stephen Russ,” Silvertail said, as Steve sorted through his unfolded but clean laundry for a shirt to wear.

“I get why you didn’t want to choose a young girl for this gig — and I agree with your reasons, believe me. And most of those reasons apply to choosing a boy of that age. But why didn’t you choose an adult woman? Or maybe look for someone who was, well, already going the transgendered route?” He found a T-shirt featuring the entire collection of trolls from Homestuck and pulled it on over his head, covering the Star Nebula Brooch which hung from a leather cord around his neck.

“There are several reasons,” Silvertail answered after a pause. “Though I certainly did think of simply looking for a woman of the appropriate type and of roughly your age. Certainly they would not have the . . . issues that you may encounter simply from the transformation, although a great many adults — I suspect including yourself — would not look forward greatly to becoming a young high-school student again.”

“God, no. My experiences in school sucked until I hit my full growth spurt, which was, like, the end of my junior year. Until then I was pretty short, a little too fat, and a loudmouthed geek, which made me a perfect bullying target. Kinda like Dex is now; he’s a little taller than I was, and skinny as a sheet of paper, but even though he’s better looking than I was, he’s got that unconscious arrogance that sets bullies off. So no way would I want to go back.”

“But to answer your question . . . I did keep that as a possibility,” Silvertail continued. “In truth, I was only a few days from giving up on searching for a man of your qualities. But I chose that direction first because of the potential advantages. If I could find a man with the requisite character — courage, willingness to risk himself for others, clear empathy for the plight of those less fortunate, and so on — ”

“Okay, you’re starting to embarrass the hell out of me,” Steve said, and ducked into the bathroom so the potential blush wouldn’t be visible. And I need to go anyway. “I’m no paladin.”

A sniff of amusement was audible through the thin door. “Indeed? Perhaps not, but you certainly have many of the qualities. In any event, if I could find such a man, and one who had a firm self-identity — who was, nonetheless, willing to give up that self-identity for the sake of the world — then I would have found a Princess Holy Aura who would be far, far stronger than any since the very first time the enchantment took hold and made my daughter Aureline and her friends into the Apocalypse Maidens.

“This I explained to you earlier. The important point for the purpose of your question, of course, is that this level of self-sacrifice — and thus potential power for Holy Aura — did not apply to the other categories you mention, other than the possibility of finding a woman who hated her own identity as a woman; such a person would, undoubtedly, have at least as many potential issues to deal with as would you.”

Steve nodded, then realized that Silvertail couldn’t see him. “Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.” Another thought occurred to him. “Hey — that doesn’t mean you set up poor Emmanuel, did you?”

There was an injured tone in the white rat’s reply. “Certainly not!” Then Silvertail’s voice took on a more apologetic note. “Though . . . not deliberately, but in a sense . . . yes, I suppose. Not that I directed the events, but the magic that aids me in finding the Heart that was Sought also will tend to draw the opposition to my area. It was, in that way, inevitable that some sort of conflict would emerge, and those conflicts are what bring the destined Holy Aura to the fore.”

That made sense. Steve stood up and pushed the handle on the toilet; he was rewarded with the sound of something snapping, a jingle of a chain, and almost no sign of anything flushing. “Dammit!”

Opening the tank showed that a key piece of plastic had given way; the entire float and flush assembly would have to be replaced. “Wonderful. Hey, Silvertail, I don’t suppose you could give me a sort of down-payment on that ‘everything coming up roses’ reward? Because this is going to really hit my nonexistent budget.”

“What happened?”

After a quick explanation, the white rat shook his head. “No, I have no immediate remedy for this situation. What little magic I still wield is not terribly useful for fixing damaged objects. Although getting more resources . . .” He paused for a moment. “Not yet, no. Unless you commit — unless Princess Holy Aura is manifest — my powers remain extremely limited, circumscribed by my mission.”

“Then we’ve got to go shopping, much as it pains me. I really, really hate digging into my savings.”

“You do have savings, however?”

Steve grimaced as he dug out his backpack. “Such as they are. Three hundred and seventeen dollars. That’s five years of savings, and it would barely cover one month’s rent.”

“I see.” Silvertail watched Steve as he strapped the pack on. “Shall I stay here?”

“From what you just told me, that would be stupid, wouldn’t it?”

The white whiskers twitched in an unmistakable smile. “I would not consider it wise to be far separated from you, no. That is why I have gone with you to your place of work and hidden nearby during your workdays.”

“Okay, hop in; you can ride in the pack.”

It was a three-mile walk from the apartment, and Steve mopped sweat from his face with one arm of his T-shirt; the early summer day was already promising to be scorchingly hot. Finally, the broad storefront of DIY Home, the building supply chain, loomed up in front of him. DIY Home sat at one end of the Twin Pines strip mall, the anchor store for a long stretch of shops that ranged from restaurants to office supply outlets, shoe stores, and others.

Silvertail himself probably wasn’t having a great time of it either; that backpack, even with the upper zipper open, was going to be awfully hot. Silvertail hadn’t said a word of complaint, though. And pretty soon I have to give him an answer. It’s been four days, I’m past the midpoint of my week.

On the positive side, Steve knew exactly what he was looking for; he’d fixed more than one cranky toilet in the past, and DIY Home had everything set up to make it easy to find. Fifteen minutes later, he handed over almost all the money in his wallet and left the building supply giant with a gray and orange bag swinging from his hand.

I really need to keep some money on hand. With a reluctant sigh, he turned toward the bank sitting isolated in the middle of the mall, separate from everything else to allow space for its drive-through service. The ATM, at least, was free. It only took a few moments, and another wince at the reduction of his savings, to withdraw thirty dollars. Gotta make that last a week. More, actually. If nothing else breaks, anyway.

Steve headed for the path that led out of the mall — across the surrounding verge of grass to the main road — but stopped by the far side of the pet supply house, which was a blind wall and out of sight of everything else. “Here, Silvertail, get out a sec; I want to put this stuff in the pack.”

“I appreciate the chance to get out of that stifling thing,” Silvertail said primly. His bedraggled look emphasized his discomfort.

“Sorry about that. Here.” He took the water bottle from the side of the backpack and opened it, letting Silvertail drink. “Better?”

“Much, thank you.”

The ground quivered.

“Whoa!” Steve steadied himself against the wall as the vibration peaked, then faded away. “Wow. Haven’t felt an earthquake around here since I was a little kid.”

Silvertail was stiff, nose twitching; he said nothing.

Then the ground shook again, more strongly. Shouts of surprise and concern echoed around the mall parking lot, and there were faint creaks and jingles from the buildings. As Steve stepped out to look around the mall, a lone shopping cart suddenly turned and rattled downhill, jarred loose from its prior perch. Everyone else stood frozen, waiting for the earth to resume its normal immobility.

Steve felt a creeping chill working its way up his spine; he looked down at Silvertail, whose red eyes met his levelly. “That . . . wasn’t an earthquake, was it?”

“I suspect not,” the white rat said grimly. “It –”

The ground rocked under Steve, accompanied by a shuddering, crunching sound that transmitted itself violently through his boots; Steve barely managed to keep his footing.

The blacktop in the center of the parking lot heaved skyward, sending an SUV and two compact cars flipping end over end like discarded toys. A second tremendous impact, and the dark asphalt gave way, opened up like a malignant flower, and something reared up from beneath the earth.

Steve swore, unable to think of anything coherent to say. The thing was huge, fifteen, maybe twenty feet across, an eyeless, gray-stone monstrosity that rose up higher and higher into the air, a worm the size of a freight train with a mouth of whirring, crushing assemblages that had no business being in anything living. It brought with it a hideous stench, a smell of brimstone and decay, and even the brilliant sunlight was suddenly cold and distant, an alien and sharp light revealing an abomination from an ancient and inimical realm. “What the hell . . . ?”

“A dhole, sometimes called a chthonian,” Silvertail answered, his calm, controlled voice somehow audible even over the screams, the rending of stone, the rumbling snarl of the creature as it turned down, seeking, questing for something. “A creature of the deep earth, but a mystical one, a species allied closely with our enemies.”

Steve felt himself shaking. The nightgaunts had been terrifying, but still on a human scale. They were things he could fight, that he could imagine himself fighting, creatures that a good hard swing with a crowbar could break.

But this? His brain couldn’t even grasp how huge the thing was, and the idea of fighting it wasn’t even laughable.

The dhole turned toward the screaming, running people, and slid forward, crushing cars and the pavement itself with a casual and horrific force. Steve saw distant terrified faces and realized that even though the creature was clumsy and slow to turn, it was only a matter of minutes before it crushed and devoured something much more vulnerable than empty vehicles.

The Star Nebula Brooch pressed coolly against his skin, beneath the T-shirt, and Steve could not ignore it. Swallowing hard, he reached down and pulled the glittering piece of jewelry out. “Okay, Silvertail . . . how do I turn this thing on?”

“Are you sure, Steve? Once done, it cannot be undone.”

He risked another glance, saw the dhole crash headlong into the main storefront, punching a hole in the wall, accompanied by a shrieking, grinding noise as the thing’s mouth pulverized whatever it had consumed. “Dammit, yes, I’m sure! I can’t stand here and let people get killed! I’d never be able to live with myself! Now, Silvertail! I accept this mission, this calling, whatever it is, I’ll be this, this . . . Princess Holy Aura! Tell me what to DO!“

The white rat bowed his head, then raised it. The golden crown suddenly shimmered, and an argent glow flickered around him. “Then repeat after me, Stephen Russ. To avert the Apocalypse . . .”

He took a deep breath. “To avert the Apocalypse . . .”

“. . . and shield the innocent from evil . . .”

“. . . and shield the innocent from evil . . .” he repeated. The Brooch hummed abruptly in his hand, a warm vibration utterly different from the monstrous shaking and impact of the dhole.

“. . . and stand against the powers of destruction . . . I offer myself as wielder and weapon, as symbol and sword . . .”

The monster froze suddenly, then pivoted. Steve was barely conscious of the motion, as a warm, tingling sensation began to spread outward from the Star Nebula Brooch, and he found himself completing the oath in chorus with Silvertail, now taller, brighter, no longer a tiny creature but a shimmering figure of a man, indistinct and luminous. “. . . mistress of the spirit, ruler of the stars beyond, Mystic Galaxy Defender, Princess Holy Aura!”

The Star Nebula Brooch burned like the sun, and everything — the mall, the charging rock-worm, Silvertail, and even Stephen Russ himself — dissolved into a pure silver luminance and an echoing note of music that shook the stars in their courses.

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 34

Iron Angels – Snippet 34

Chapter 20

They rolled up on the traffic light across from the Euclid Hotel around three in the afternoon, and got a fresh red ball at Euclid and East Chicago Avenue. The intersection, teeming with police, firefighters, and EMTs the night before, stood eerily quiet for a weekend day. The mayhem and destruction and death were thoroughly erased, as if the kidnapping, accident, and pointless deaths never occurred.

Jasper shivered despite the heat of the day — and the hotbox Temple created out of the rental vehicle.

“Hard to believe.”

“Yeah, not so much as a piece of glass out here. Hey, you think your Evidence Response Team descended on the old man’s residence this morning?”

“They’re probably at the scene now. But they’ll be by the numbers and not extrapolate, I’m sure.” Bile crept into the back of Jasper’s mouth just thinking about the Senior Team Leader of the ERT program for the Indianapolis Field Office, Special Agent Morris Chan. Jasper swallowed, but the sour taste lingered. “Got any breath mints on you?”

“No, but I bet the woman in the hospital, Hazel, had Certs or LifeSavers.”

“Wow, your grandmother did that too?” Jasper grinned.

“Didn’t they all?” She laughed. “I have some gum if you’re so inclined.” She rustled in her bag with one hand, but kept her eyes on the road. “Here.”

The light turned green after what had seemed an interminable amount of time.

“Once you’re through the intersection,” Jasper stifled a shudder as they crossed over the spot of the accident, “flip a U-turn and pull up to the side of the hotel.”

“Ten-four.”

Temple swung around and Jasper peered at the alleyway behind the hotel as she drove past — the same alley he’d seen the haze resembling an Asian-style dragon.

“Hey, I think Carlos’s truck is parked behind the Euclid — an off-white Toyota pickup. Pull up a little more and park.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, pretty sure.” Jasper frowned and propped his chin up with his fist as he rested his elbow on the armrest. “I wonder what he’s doing here?”

“I think learning more about Carlos should be on our list,” Temple said. “The same goes for that Eulalia chick from the diner.”

“Agreed.” Jasper rubbed his chin. “I remember saying the same thing to Pete during the first meeting with Carlos.”

“What should we do? Go in? See what he’s after? Confront him?”

“I was hoping to get out of this hot box and walk around the perimeter of the hotel, but now I don’t — ”

The nose of Carlos’s truck poked from the alleyway.

“Get down,” Jasper said. “Let’s hope this rentacar is generic enough that he didn’t notice it at the diner. I bet he expected us to show up at the diner in my bucar and won’t even be bothered by a car of this type parked here.”

They both ducked. Temple had pulled almost to the intersection — not far from the alleyway, but far enough that Carlos might not think anything of the vehicle.

“I wonder what he was doing here, anyway?” Temple asked. “You think the hotel’s still buttoned up, crime scene tape, and so forth?”

“Beats me.”

The sound and smell of ragged exhaust poured into the rental car. Carlos had pulled up next to them — hopefully waiting for the light at the intersection. Neither of them dared poke their heads up. For a moment, Jasper wondered why they cared so much, but if Carlos had anything to do with the mysterious cult, it’d be better to not alert him to their presence.

“We can come back to the hotel later,” Jasper said softly. “We need to follow Carlos.”

“But what if he left a signal or a mark or something?”

“Sounds like spy craft to me, and we’re not after spies, are we?” Jasper raised an eyebrow.

“It’s called tradecraft — but why can’t anyone use signals? Gangs do, right? And you work gangs, how is graffiti any different than a spy leaving a chalk mark on a telephone pole?”

“I see your point.”

The truck’s rumble deepened and for a moment grew louder, but trailed off.

They both sat up.

“He’s westbound on East Chicago Avenue, I bet, uh, turned right — ”

“I’m aware of which way west is.” Temple frowned and started the engine.

“You never know,” Jasper said, “so many people have no idea about the points of a compass. Anyway, we can come back here, let’s see what he’s up to.”

“All right.”

They followed Carlos, which would prove simple if he stayed on majors and other vehicles provided cover between his pickup and them. But little traffic got in the way and after a quarter mile or so he made a southbound turn on Huish Drive.

“Interesting,” Jasper said. “He isn’t heading home. Staying on East Chicago Avenue for a while would have been a safe bet. Okay, this road turns into Kennedy Avenue down here.”

“Maybe he’s going to his place of employment.” Temple glanced at Jasper.

“Maybe. It’s a weekend, but… maybe his shop if working overtime. If he gets on the interstate following will be easy.”

But Carlos didn’t. Instead he went under the interstate and looped around to head west on Michigan Street and then south on Indianapolis.

“There are quite a few shops — not department stores — ”

“Yeah, I understand — I didn’t think we’d find a Nordstrom’s over here.” Temple rolled her eyes.

“Sorry. Don’t have to bite my head off.”

“I won’t, if you stop acting like I’m some dizzy broad,” Temple said.

“Fine. I’ll try. I’ll try to try.”

Temple grinned.

“You may be right, his employment might be over here. It’s kind of a mini industrial area.”

They had taken a few turns with Carlos where no other vehicles offered cover, and now approached a wide band of railroad tracks with an approaching train.

Carlos’s Toyota pickup belched a black glob of smoke and he accelerated over the tracks before the arms came down.

“Damn. He must have spotted us.”

“Or he rushed to beat the train?” A bit of hope crept into the sentence as Temple finished.

“I hope you’re good at re-acquiring after losing the eye,” Jasper said.

“Maybe you worked some spy stuff in the past after all.” Temple turned and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Once or twice. Interesting stuff, but slow.”

“Counterintelligence isn’t for everyone.”

“Well, I say we head down to Summer Street. We can roll through the parking lots of a few businesses over there. With luck, we’ll spot him.”

“If not,” Temple said, “we can always head back to the Euclid.”

“Roger that.”

Mercifully, the train passed in short order. They hit Summer Street and Jasper directed her westbound.

“Up here, turn right at the next street, I’m not sure of the name.”

Temple laughed as they approached. “Hump Road.”

“And people say men are crude.” Jasper grinned. “Stop thinking about Ed.” He leaned away, expecting a poke, but received her disapproving stare.

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 26

Chain of Command – Snippet 26

“He didn’t give us a lot of options. As long as he was in command, we had no choice but to obey his orders, and his last order was, ‘Take command.’ ”

“It sounds pretty fishy to me. I just spoke to him on commlink but he won’t holo-conference so I can’t tell if someone’s holding a gauss pistol to his head. If you’re pulling some kind of fast one over there, you will spend the rest of your natural life in a Navy brig. Do you read me?”

“Ma’am, you can commlink anybody you want to on this boat. If you think there’s some kind of conspiracy and everyone’s in on it …well, then I don’t know what to tell you. We don’t have a holo-conference suite over here, just our helmet optics. Lieutenant Commander Huhn won’t holo-conference because he’s in his dress whites and won’t change out of them for a shipsuit, so he’s got no helmet mount.”

“No shipsuit? Is he crazy?”

Sam didn’t answer. Kleindienst studied him for a moment.

“Has he been acting …odd?”

Sam paused to think about his answer, to choose his words carefully.

“Nothing he did was outside the behavioral latitude enjoyed by a commanding officer on his own vessel, ma’am.”

Kleindienst’s scowl deepened. “Meaning all captains get to act a little nuts? Alright, maybe you got a point. If you’d come running to the squadron medical officer with a list of peculiar behaviors, I’d have slapped you down as a disloyal bellyacher. And I’d have been right.”

Sam said nothing.

“Atwater-Jones thinks you’re smart, Bitka. Maybe so. But I never thought ‘smart’ was the most important attribute of a successful ship captain. What do you think?”

“I think I’m smart enough to know I’m in over my head.”

She nodded.

“I agree. You’re short line officers, too, aren’t you? I’ve got someone in mind to send over to take command: Lieutenant Commander Barger, in the operations shop of the task force staff. Good man: Annapolis, class of ’17. The shuttle can take Huhn off at the same time, bring him over here and we’ll see if he can handle some light staff duty. But Barger’s coordinating the orbital bombardment plan and I’d rather not bring someone else up to speed between now and the landing. Can you keep things together over there for, oh, let’s say five days?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Kleindienst cut the link without saying anything more.

The uBakai Star Navy had left K’tok orbit, so the task force shouldn’t encounter any resistance when they made their strike, and Puebla would be with the auxiliaries anyway. Five days–the duration of the short and hopefully uneventful career of Captain Sam Bitka, USNR. Chief Navarro should be able to keep him from screwing up too badly for that long. Then he would help Barger however he could, get through this war, and get back to his job on Earth.

He remembered joking with Jules that this was like Space Camp with better food, but that was before people started dying.

He triggered his commlink, squinted up the link for Ensign Lee–officer of the deck–pinged her, and had her patch him through the boat-wide announcement channel.

“All hands, this is Lieutenant Bitka speaking. At 1421 hours today Captain Huhn relieved himself of duty on medical grounds and turned over command of USS Puebla to me. I’ve just spoken to the task force chief of staff and we can expect a replacement captain once the initial operations in K’tok orbit are completed. Until then I will serve as acting captain.

“Lieutenant Commander Huhn will remain onboard until my relief arrives. He will be treated with the utmost respect and rendered every military courtesy by the crew at all times.

“Carry on.”

Sam cut the channel and went back to clearing the last of the paperwork on the replacement parts received from the other boats in the division, the repairs undertaken onboard, and the work that a proper shipyard needed to address the next time they saw one. He had already decided to continue with the XO job as well as command until his relief showed up. He saw no need to further disrupt the schedules and responsibilities of his fellow officers, short-handed as they already were. Everyone had to carry more water, and that included him.

He finished the report and moved on to an intel bulletin from the task force. Sensors had picked up a strong energy glow consistent with star ships running their fusion plants to recharge their power ring, probably after emerging from jump space. The contact was over eighty million kilometers galactic south of the planetary plane and whoever it was they weren’t making a secret of their presence. If they were coming to K’Tok from there, the task force would have plenty of time to get ready. He made sure the Tac department was on the distribution list.

A half-hour later his commlink vibrated and then he heard a feminine voice in his head.

Sir, this is Signaler Second Lincoln, duty comm. I have another incoming tight beam for you from USS Pensacola, a Lieutenant Commander Barger.

“Right, patch him through.” Sam heard the click of the circuit changing. “Bitka here.”

Lieutenant Bitka, this is Lieutenant Commander Lemuel Barger. Captain Kleindienst has just told me what’s going on and that I am to take command and straighten things up over there as soon as the landing force is down and has secured the objective.

“Yes, sir, I–”

Do not interrupt me, Bitka.

“No, sir.”

I know Delmar Huhn. I cannot say we are close friends, but I believe he was capable of handling command of a vessel in combat, especially as part of a larger task force, provided he received the support of his subordinates. Given his emotional collapse, I can only assume he did not receive that needed support. I am made of sterner stuff than Delmar Huhn, Mister Bitka. I will not tolerate disloyalty among my officers, and I will get to the bottom of what went on over there once I take command. Is that understood?

“Yes, sir.”

A reckoning is coming, Mister Bitka. I hope you will share this information with your fellow-officers and the senior chiefs.

“Understood, sir.”

The connection broke and Sam sat there for a while, staring at the open report on remaining food consumables without really seeing it.

Well, Barger hadn’t actually ordered him to poison the morale of his officers and chiefs, he had just “hoped” he would do so. Barger outranked Sam, but he had no authority to dictate what Sam did as captain of his own boat. And Sam had not promised to do so; he had only said he understood what Barger hoped for.

So at least for the next five days the officers and crew would go about their duties as if their loyalty were not under suspicion. They would go into battle with pride, believing they were appreciated and that their sacrifices so far, and their efforts to overcome battle damage and crew casualties, were valued by their superiors. Sam could at least see to that.

And for those next five days, until Lieutenant Commander Lemuel Barger was actually captain of USS Puebla, he could hope in one hand and piss in the other, and see which one filled up quicker.

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 25

Chain of Command – Snippet 25

Everyone’s eyes turned to him as he entered. Huhn’s visage was unreadable, but from the expressions on everyone else’s faces Sam had the feeling he was in trouble–a lot of trouble. Maybe those mass-approved damage survey reports were coming back to haunt him. Or maybe one of the two enlisted crew were the ones in trouble. Somebody sure was.

“Sam, come over here,” Huhn said. Sam kicked lightly off the door and floated over to the table. Goldjune moved down the table, making room for Sam next to the captain. Sam clipped his tether lanyard to the table and held a bracket, mostly to keep his hand from trembling.

Huhn fingered his decorations, particularly an odd one, a large silver, gold, and red multi-pointed star or flower–Sam wasn’t sure which–that looked foreign and out of place below the orderly ranks of colored rectangular ribbons that represented his US Navy awards. Huhn’s index finger traced the edge of the star, lingered on one of the points.

“Sharp. Could hurt someone with this if you weren’t careful,” Huhn said. “Order of the State of the Republic of Turkey. Got it back in ’29. I saved the daughter of the Turkish ambassador to Bronstein’s World. Just a teenager, got caught in an airlock without a vacuum suit, but I kicked a circuit box open and shorted it out, so we could pop the hatch manually. Just used my head is all, but everybody else panicked. Saved that girl’s life and got this for it. Proudest day of my life.”

Sam wondered if he meant the day he saved the girl’s life or the day he received the medal.

“It’s very impressive, sir. What was it you wanted?”

“Sam, some of us are cut out for certain things, but not others. You know what I mean?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Sometimes we have to face hard truths about ourselves, look in the mirror and see things we don’t want to see, would rather look away from. But we’ve got to look, Sam. We’ve got to look hard.”

Huhn stared at him as if he expected a reply but Sam said nothing.

“We’re about to go into battle, Sam, and we all need to ask ourselves, ‘Am I cut out for this?’ It’s hard, but a lot of lives depend on us answering that question as truthfully as we know how. Do you agree with that?”

“Yes, sir,” Sam answered and licked his dry lips.

He had wondered this, many times, and also wondered if seeing ghosts might be a disqualification for duty. But he had no idea how to answer those questions except to see it through, do his duty as well as he could, and on the other side of it find out if that was good enough. He’d done okay in the first battle, but it had caught him by surprise. This coming fight filled him with a growing dread. He’d looked forward to their arrival, going to general quarters, facing whatever stood before them, but not because he longed for danger. It was only because he wanted this awful uncertainty, this dark foreboding, to end.

“Well, I’ve been looking in my mirror,” Huhn said. “I’ve spent a lot of the last week looking in it, and I know now: I’m not cut out to command this boat in battle. I’m cut out for a lot of things in the Navy, but not that. I think…I think I need a rest is all. That’s why I asked Medtech Tamblinson here, to certify me medically unfit for command.”

Sam looked at Tamblinson, whose eyes were larger than Robinette’s had been earlier when Sam turned the watch over to him for the first time. He looked at Goldjune and faced cold hostility, at Hennessey and faced anxiety bordering on panic, and he realized the trouble he was in was real, but was entirely different than he had originally thought, had in fact never imagined, and he felt this heart rate climb and chest constrict with the beginning of panic.

“Captain, I…I wouldn’t do anything too hasty. You need to be–”

“What? Certain? You think I’m doing this on the spur of the moment? Haven’t thought it through?”

Sam licked his suddenly dry lips again, and swallowed to loosen his tight throat. “Nothing like that, sir. It’s just…if you do this, it’s going to change your life, and there’s no changing it back.”

That was dishonest. Sam didn’t give a damn about Huhn’s future. He simply wanted no part of being captain. This was a job on which the lives of nearly a hundred people depended, and a job which he was so totally unprepared for he could not imagine any outcome but disastrous failure.

Huhn looked down at the table for a moment and then looked back up into Sam’s eyes.

“At least my conscience will be clear.”

Sam wanted to scream at him, wanted to slap sense into him, wanted to get up and leave the wardroom, come back in and try again from the beginning. Instead he floated by the table and stared dumbly at Captain Huhn…no, not captain anymore…at Lieutenant Commander Huhn.

*****

Sam noticed that, while the grim-faced image of Captain Marietta Kleindienst, the task force chief of staff, remained fixed in his view, the ghosted image of the work area behind her floated gently, so she was holo-conferencing by helmet from the flag bridge of Pensacola, not from the conference room up in the rotating habitat wheel where there was spin-induced gravity and a full holo-suite. Sam couldn’t see her helmet, any more than she could see his, one of the odd effects of the helmet optics. The internal optics looked in and recorded the speaker’s face and head while the external optics looked out and recorded the nearby environment, but neither of them recorded the helmet itself.

“Mister Bitka, exactly what in the Sam Hell is going on over there?” Kleindienst demanded. “Lieutenant Colonel Okonkwo just got off the link and sounded like he was going to have a stroke.”

No one on Puebla had been sure who to notify about Huhn’s action, but Moe Rice had recommended the task force personnel department. Okonkwo was the task force N1–personnel chief–and Sam’s own conversation with him a quarter of an hour earlier had been difficult, eventually becoming heated.

“Yes, ma’am. When I spoke with him the situation seemed …beyond his personal experience. I don’t know that any ship captain in the Nigerian Navy has ever requested relief from command and duty on medical grounds–at least for this reason. But that’s the situation with Lieutenant Commander Huhn.”

It sounded strange not to call Huhn “captain.”

Sam didn’t know much about the Nigerian Navy, but Okonkwo’s rank was lieutenant colonel, not commander. The fact they used the same rank titles as the army instead of most other nations’ navies was a small thing, but it still seemed like a strike against them.

“And do I understand that those medical grounds are ‘psychological exhaustion?'” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you actually went along with this?”

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 33

Iron Angels – Snippet 33

Chapter 19

Temple stopped, placed her hands on her hips, and stared. “This diner’s gonna be outstanding.”

“Don’t let the charming facade fool you, this place has great diner food. Just don’t expect any frou-frou coffee type drinks here.”

“Wouldn’t dream of fancy here,” Temple said. “This is a diner. Plain old coffee, or milk shakes, or soda.” She licked her lips. “I love diners.”

“You’re a soda person, then. I’ve always kind of been on the fence,” Jasper said, “but pop always sounded silly to me.”

Jasper held the door for Temple and followed after her. A hostess walked up — no, she was the waitress from his previous time here, he’d recognize her piercings and tattoos anywhere.

“Hello again,” Jasper said.

“You’re with Carlos,” she said. “Right?”

Temple glanced at Jasper in disbelief. Bad tradecraft for sure — but how many Agents changed venues for every single meeting? This wasn’t an espionage investigation.

“This way. He’s already here.”

The waitress seated them — Temple slid in, Jasper sat next to her and made the introductions.

“Where is Pedro?”

“Pete isn’t coming, so Special Agent Black will be sitting in on these for the time being.”

“You some kind of replacement?”

“Something like that, but I’m pretty sure Pete can’t be replaced so easily.”

“Eh,” Carlos said, playing with the fork in front of him on the table. “He’s kind of a sell-out.”

“Watch it,” Jasper said. “What’s wrong with you today, anyway? You seemed friendlier during our last meet.”

“Trouble at work.”

“Oh?”

“I’m not trusted with stuff as much as I should be.”

“What do you do?” Temple asked.

“Machine shop. Cutting metal, that sort of thing. Handy man on the side.”

“Carlos called in the tips on the first kidnapping,” Jasper said to Temple, “which was why we met and why we’re talking now.”

The waitress came up and spread her hands, a pencil in one hand and a small notepad in the other. “Well?”

Temple snorted.

“All right then, one sedative so far,” the waitress said.

“Trying to be a standup comic all the sudden?” Carlos asked. “Quit with the wise remarks for once, Lali.”

“You two know each other?” Temple asked.

“Yeah, Carlos here is a real treat. A stand-up guy,” the waitress said.

“All right,” Jasper said, attempting to interrupt the mutual love festival, “I’ll have a cheeseburger and fries.”

“What to drink?”

“Just water.”

The waitress didn’t bother writing down the order. She looked at Temple. “You?”

“Water, please.”

“That all?”

“Give me a second.” Temple flipped the menu over. “Chicken Caesar salad, light on the dressing.”

“Nope.”

“Excuse me?”

“Dressing’s already mixed in. So — nope.”

“Whatever.” Temple handed back to menu. “I can live with it.”

The waitress stomped off.

“What in the Lord’s name is her attitude all about?” Temple asked.

“She’s loco. Messed up in the head.” Carlos pointed at his head and twirled his finger. “Bad upbringing, bad relationships, whatever. If I cared enough, I’d attempt to figure her out, but she falls in the I-don’t-give-a-damn category.”

“You seem to be in a less than chipper mood today, so we’ll make this quick,” Jasper said.

“Sure. What do you need from me?” Carlos raised his eyebrows.

“I didn’t have anything to ask you, not until last night. You heard what happened?”

“The accident? Yeah, how could I not hear about it? Some serious twisted metal.”

“And twisted up people,” Temple said. “You hear anything about the kidnapping last night?”

“Why would I?”

“Cut the crap,” Jasper said. “There’s no need to play coy like this. I’m not — we’re not — accusing you of anything. Did you hear anything? Do you think last night’s kidnapping relates in any way to the kidnapping of the little girl — ”

“Teresa, remember?” Carlos filled in the blank, an empowering ploy by Jasper, making Carlos feel like he’d done something good, which he had.

“Yeah, the little girl you had a hand in saving, Carlos.”

A glass of water clunked down in front of Jasper. “Yeah, he’s a real American hero, this one,” the waitress said.

Jasper glanced up at her. She’d worn makeup the last time he’d seen her, but now she’d applied thick layers. Not thick enough, though, to cover a few marks on her face, as if someone hit her recently.

“You okay?” Jasper asked the waitress, who clunked down two more glasses of water, and stared at him.

“All the sudden you care about some waitress at a greasy spoon?”

Jasper shrugged. “Have it your way.”

“I will,” she said, “and that’s the way I like, uh huh, I like it. Uh huh, uh huh.” She sashayed off.

“That girl is a certified fuh-reak,” Temple said.

Jasper couldn’t take the mystery any longer. “Seriously, Carlos, do you have a history with the waitress? What’s her name? Where does she live?”

“Who cares? I thought you wanted information about the accident and the driver of the van. The kidnapping.”

“So, you’re holding back information on the driver of the van?” Jasper had snagged him, not in a lie, but withholding.

“The crazy girl’s name is Eulalia, but she goes by Lali.”

“Okay, Lali, wonderful, but what can you tell me about the driver of the van?” Jasper sipped his water.

“The rumor going around says a chupacabra ate him, drank his blood.”

Jasper felt one corner of his mouth creep upward, but Carlos wasn’t laughing and no hint of a joke rested in his eyes.

“A chupacabra,” Temple said. “Up here in Indiana? Doesn’t seem likely.”

“Who would have thought those Chinese fish would be loose in our waterways destroying the native species here in the United States?” Carlos smirked.

“Touché,” said Temple, nodding in acknowledgement of his point.

“So, chupacabra ate the driver,” Jasper said. “Why?”

“Wrong place, wrong time I suppose.”

“Come on. A chupacabra, a blood drinking cryptid. But I thought the blood came from livestock?” Temple leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table.

“A what? A crypt?” Carlos’s eyes and mouth crinkled, confused. “Word gets out. The old man who lives in the house, the one where the chupacabra did its thing, came out after you left and told the group all about the mess in his backyard, and how a mangled body lay back there drained of all its blood.”

The old man shouldn’t have been talking to anyone, but stopping people from flapping their gums always proved difficult. What were they going to do to him anyway? He wasn’t impeding the investigation. The concern here was if Carlos was hiding something else — he didn’t seem to want to provide any details about the driver.

“You think your best friend forever, what’s her name, Lali, would know anything about the driver?”

“She probably hooked up with that freak, you know, they’re pretty much cut from the same freaky cloth,” Carlos said.

A plate slid in front of Jasper. The heat of the cheeseburger and fries up, as did the very pleasant scent. The diner had a limited menu, but what they did, they did well.

“So I’m a bit freaky,” the waitress said, “who isn’t?”

“How do you keep appearing out of nowhere?” Jasper asked. “Delivering food and joining the conversation — a private conversation.”

“Secret talent.”

“You know the driver of the van that crashed last night? Or anything about the kidnapping?” Temple asked.

“Or anything about a chupacabra?” Jasper added and took a sip of his water.

“A what? Chupacabra?” The waitresses’ eyebrows knit together. “What the hell are you talking about? Something that steals all the tortilla chips?”

Jasper nearly spit the water out of his mouth. Temple’s smile expanded beyond the boundaries of the hand covering her mouth.

“Ay.” Carlos covered his face and shook his head.

Jasper wiped the corner of his eye and took another bite of the cheeseburger.

“Anything else?” the waitress asked.

Temple eyed her Caesar salad and held up a hand.

“Something wrong?” The waitress put a hand on her hip.

Temple’s smile vanished. “You didn’t answer my questions. The driver? Kidnapping?”

“Ran into the driver once, if it’s the guy everyone’s talking about.” She put the pencil eraser first between her red lips, thick and a little pouty, holding it for a minute as her gaze roamed. She shook the pencil at them like a wand. “Can’t say I know who was kidnapped, but I ran into the driver at a party once. Can’t remember his name, though, if I ever knew it at all.” She shrugged.

“If you think of the name, let us know,” Jasper said.

“Sure thing.” She walked off and attended another table.

“Anything you care to add?” Temple asked.

“That’s probably where I know the driver from — ”

“Where from?”

“Like Lali said, probably some party.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes and Jasper made quick work of his cheeseburger and French fries. Temple picked at her Caesar salad. Carlos sucked down his water and jammed a toothpick between his teeth.

“I gotta get going. Sorry I couldn’t be much of a help today.” Carlos slid from the booth, half-saluted them and exited the building.

“Odd,” Temple said, “but then, the entire meeting was not how I remembered source meetings.”

Lali appeared out of nowhere with an expectant look on her face.

“We’re fine,” Jasper said, “oh, you want to take your salad to go, Temple?”

“No, I’m good.”

“So sorry to see little Carlos go so soon.” Lali dropped the check on the table.

“You know him? Date him? Anything him?” Jasper asked.

“Hate him?” Lali turned her head and cocked an eyebrow. “Hate’s much more accurate.”

“You a jilted lover maybe?”

“Heh. I’m the jilter, not the jiltee.” She bumped Jasper’s shoulder with her hip and strolled off.

Temple rolled her eyes and reached for the check.

“Somehow I can see that,” Jasper said, watching the waitress and her swaying hips, “despite the bruise and marks she’s covering with the shit ton of makeup.”

“Ah, you noticed,” Temple said.

“You’re paying? But Carlos is a local informant.”

“You’re temporarily assigned to SAG, remember? This meal will come out of our budget, and we’ve managed to secure quite a nice little war chest for this fiscal year.” Temple paid with cash and took the second copy of the check.

“Care to head back to the Euclid? Have a look around?”

“Sure, let me pick at the salad for another minute,” Temple said.

Jasper polished off his water.

“Ready?”

They both slid from the booth and exited the diner. Lali leaned on the counter, and each time Jasper stole a peek, she was still watching them, all the way to their vehicles.

 

The Spark – Snippet 12

The Spark – Snippet 12

I laughed. I half wished I hadn’t, then, because of the jab in my ribs, but talking to Guntram was relaxing me.

“Well, really a lot of things,” I said, gesturing with my left hand in a broad arc. “But what I was going to say was the windows.”

I pointed. “I thought they might be paintings, but then I saw a bird fly across.”

“They’re windows onto nodes where the sun is up when it’s night here,” Guntram said. “There are eleven of them in the castle, and I don’t know of any that exist elsewhere.”

He smiled. “I suspect that if there were more of them known, Jon would have brought them here. They show different locations at different times of day, but I’ve never heard anyone identify the image as something he saw in real life along the Road.”

“They’re bigger than any Ancient pieces in Beune,” I said. “A lot bigger.”

Guntram smiled. “That one,” he said, pointing to the window on the left, “was the size of my palm when it was brought to Dun Add. The other one–”

He pointed again.

“–was about half that size. I spent months in growing them, months. But a lot of that was in coming to understand the structure.”

“Sir!” I said. Then I said, “Guntram, can you teach me to do that?”

“Yes, I could,” he said. He wasn’t a boastful man, but I could tell it pleased him that I understood just how amazing the thing was that he’d told me. “But we’d have to find the seed piece first. If you find one, bring it here and we’ll explore it together.”

For a moment my mind was lost in thinking about the many bits and pieces of Ancient artifacts that I’d amassed over the years but hadn’t repaired. Mostly I’d decided they were too fragmentary to be worth the effort, but with a few I just hadn’t been able to figure out the purpose. Would I have been able to recognize a chip from a window like those above me?

Guntram was looking at me, waiting for me to speak. I blushed. “I’ll do that,” I said. “I surely will.”

To the right of the door was a piece that looked like a shiny blue mirror. It vanished, then reappeared, time after time. It seemed to cycle about every five seconds.

I stepped closer and entered it with my mind. It was slipping between Here and Not-Here. I couldn’t tell where it had been manufactured, and I didn’t have any notion what it was really meant to do.

I guess it was discourteous to slip into a trance that way, but come to think–that was what Guntram had done when we first met, checking out my shield. At any rate, he was still smiling when I looked up.

“You have a lot of things from Not-Here,” I said, looking at the egg-crate shelves on that wall. I was pretty sure that most of the artifacts there were partial, but it’s hard to be sure of that–especially when they’re from Not-Here–without actually going into them. Even if I’d been willing to do that, there were just too many things to get into in less than a week.

“You recognize them,” Guntram said. He sounded approving. “Do you find them in Beune?”

“In the neighborhood,” I said. “Not very much shows up in Beune itself, but there’s places not very far out in the Waste where I prospect for things. A couple places throw up mostly Not-Here artifacts. I usually can’t do anything with them, but I found a ball that I could make come back to my hand after I threw it.”

“Really?” said Guntram. “You didn’t chance to bring it with you, did you, Pal?”

“I’m sorry, Guntram, that was three years ago. I traded it to a peddler who had a bolt of blue cloth that I gave to mom for a dress. She made a really nice dress out of it.”

We’d buried her in that dress. I sucked my lips in, thinking how much I missed her.

Turning my head a little, I said, “Trade is what I do mostly with stuff from Not-Here. There’s a place not far up the Road toward Gunnison. I lay pieces out there and come back in a week or two. Sometimes they’ll be gone and there’s artifacts from Here instead. And once–”

I fished out the coin I wore around my neck on a thong and handed it to Guntram.

“–there were three of these where I’d left a plate that didn’t seem to do anything. They were gold and silver mixed. I kept the one for a lucky piece.”

Guntram handled it and looked up at me. “Do you have any idea what the markings are?” he said.

“No,” I said. “It seems to be a cross on one side and a star with a lot of points on the other, but it’s so worn that’s just a guess.”

Guntram carried the coin over to a littered table, then squatted to look for something on a shelf. He came up with a round, flat object and wiped the dust off on the sleeve of his robe.

When he set the coin on top of the flat thing, an image in bright green light appeared above the metal. It was not only bigger than the coin, the image was as sharp as if it had just been struck. It was a woman’s face, straight on. She was sticking her tongue out, and instead of hair she had snakes writhing from her head.

“I don’t recognize it either,” said Guntram. He looked up toward one of the windows he’d created, but it seemed to me he was thinking about things more distant than the rolling waves of treetops.

Guntram cleared his throat and said, “I offered to help with your injuries, Pal. If you’ll come here, please, and lie down?”

He walked to the end of the big room and moved a pile of fabric off what turned out to be a broad couch and set it on the floor. I’d thought the fabric was bedding, but it shimmered when it moved and I wasn’t sure that all of it was Here.

“Am I taking your bed?” I said. “Because I slept worse places on the Road than your floor here. I don’t mind doing it again.”

“No, no, you’re helping me test this,” Guntram said. “Just lie down and I’ll move the cover piece over you. I won’t put it over your head, though I think that would be all right.”

I leaned my pack against the side of the couch and lay down on my stomach. The surface had a little give, like a pile of fresh hides.

“Now just hold where you are…,” Guntram said and did something at the end of the couch. He brought a clear sheet out of the mechanism and drew it up till it covered my shoulders. I expected it to snap back when he let go, but it just lay over me. My skin felt a little warm, like I’d been in the sun too long.

“How does this feel?” he asked.

“Well, not bad,” I said. The muscles in my back stopped aching, and my forearms were relaxing too. I moved my arms slightly; the pain was a lot less.

“It’s good,” I said. “This really does help.”

“I assembled this couch from three partial units,” Guntram said. “Joining the parts took me as many hours as I spent on both those windows together, so I’m very pleased to have finally be able to test it. Thank you, Pal.”

I stretched my legs and feet out as straight as they’d go. That meant scooting up the couch a little or my toes would’ve pushed the cover sheet down.

“Guntram?” I said, wriggling my torso a little in pleasure at not being in pain. “Granted my shield didn’t work and I got banged up a lot worse than most warriors would, if they’re really sparring out there they’re going to get bruised. Even at 20%. Why didn’t you ask one of Jon’s warriors to test your bed?”

“I don’t know whether they don’t trust me…,” Guntram said. “Or if they don’t trust the Ancients. I offered the use of the couch as soon as I’d completed it, but nobody was willing to try. Eventually I almost forgot I had it.”

 

Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 03

Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 03

Chapter 3.

“Hey, he’s kawaii, Steve!”

Silvertail held himself still as Richard Dexter Armitage reached out a finger to gently stroke his white fur. Kawaii? Japanese quoted in reference to anime, obviously. Not surprising that Mr. Russ’ friends have similar tastes. He had already noted the multiple posters of science fiction and fantasy shows of all types, reinforcing his impression of Stephen Russ — along with a wall case filled with weapons ranging from the mundane to models of science-fiction devices. But that is all to the good. At least Stephen understands the essential nature of the mission, and I need not waste time explaining the basic role of the Apocalypse Maidens, even if there are details he does not understand.

“Gentle, Dex,” Steve said; Silvertail saw a quick sideways glance at him, obviously worried about how well the “rat” would handle being treated as a pet.

“Steve, I know how to handle white rats,” Dex said, rolling his eyes as he picked up Silvertail and brought him nose-to-nose, grinning and making sniffing noises; Silvertail recognized typical “play with cute pet” behavior and simply sniffed back. “My family’s had lots of them over the years. Where’s his cage?”

“Er . . . I ended up getting him today without warning. Long story. So I’m going to keep him in this box for tonight.”

Dexter — a contrast in opposites to his much older friend, with long golden-blond hair carelessly combed back, a delicate-featured face, and slender build — made a face. “If he decides he wants out, he’ll get out of that in about two seconds. You’d better get a cage real quick.”

“I know, I know. Now put Silvertail down. The others will be here soon, and I thought you had character work you wanted to get done.”

“Oh, yeah!” Dex returned Silvertail to his friend’s shoulder and sat down, dumping a large collection of books, papers, and a bag of dice of varying shapes onto the large, chipped folding banquet table that occupied a large part of Steve’s living room. “Look, I was going through this supplement, and since I’m playing a wizard I thought . . .”

Silvertail tuned out the details of the conversation; he was aware of how role-playing games worked — in fact, he remembered with a slight pang the similar games that had existed long before this civilization ever rose, games he had played before that had become impossible. He was much more interested in observing the people, and especially Stephen.

The other players who filtered in over the next hour were an interesting group; one young woman, probably ten years younger than Steve Russ, named Anne, clearly paired with another man of her own age named Mike; a rather hefty but energetic boy named Chad, with a scruffy almost-beard and a cheerful expression, who appeared about the same age as Dex; and one much older man named Eli, quiet but with the air of a military man about him.

What most impressed Silvertail was the way in which Stephen directed his game, even though he was clearly distracted by the events of the evening. It was obvious that Dexter was the smartest member of the group, although Anne was often more dynamic as a personality. That only applied in the real-life interactions, though; Dexter shed his nerdish uncertainty when playing his character, and his quick mind and surprisingly powerful voice often dominated play. Eli was quiet, contributing to the game with a considered and careful approach that made his comments and characters’ actions stand out the few times they acted; Chad simply played his character with a cheer and verve that echoed his own personality, while Mike always seemed a bit intimidated by the louder members of the group like Dex, Anne, and Chad.

What Steve did — without, as far as Silvertail could tell, making the others consciously aware of it — was to redirect the sometimes overbearing certainty of Dexter to reduce his spotlight-hogging tendencies, bring Mike more into the game by asking him exactly the sort of questions that his character would be most interested in, and direct events to allow, in general, all of the players to get their moment to shine.

After several hours, the game had to come to a temporary end; it was getting late and some of the others had to get up early. Silvertail noticed Steve trying to hide his interest in the leftovers — chips, pizza that Eli had brought, a vegetable plate from Anne. This is not a luxurious apartment. Did Steve sacrifice more than I realized this evening?

To his surprise, Dex — who Silvertail had tentatively tagged as a rather self-centered young man — intervened as the others were packing up. “Hey, let’s just leave the extras here. Either Steve’ll eat them, or we can have them for the next game day after tomorrow.”

“Well . . .” said Anne, hesitating.

“Remember, always bribe the game master,” Dex said, glancing at the fridge with an expression that told Silvertail that the younger man was very aware of how empty it was.

At that, the others laughed and agreed. Dex was the last to leave, and as he did, Steve touched him on the shoulder. “Hey, Dex,” he said. “Thanks.”

“For what?” the younger boy asked; he looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“For making sure they left the food.”

“Well . . . yeah.” Dex flushed visibly. “Figured you could use it. Didn’t see your usual bag of bagels.”

Steve grinned. “You’re sharp. Anyway . . . thanks.”

“You’re welcome. I mean, it’s just smart game tactics — ”

“Shut up and get out of here before you make yourself look like a dick.”

“Right. See you in a couple!”

The door closed and Stephen sat down with a whoosh of relief. Then he glanced at Silvertail. “You can still talk, right?”

“I certainly can,” Silvertail answered.

“Still going to take some getting used to,” Stephen said. “So, I still have questions.”

“I have no doubt of it, Stephen Russ. But it is quite late; I believe you have to work in the morning?”

“Yeah, but right now I’m not ready to sleep. Not without some more answers.”

“As you wish.” The questions were, after all, inevitable, and it wouldn’t matter if they came now or later. The real trick would be to answer them in a way that would be acceptable to Stephen Russ. Mostly, of course, Silvertail intended to be — and had to be, in fact — honest, but there were very delicate aspects of the situation that probably were best left to later.

Stephen sat down, looking at him somberly. “Not that it really makes much difference if the situation’s as bad as you say . . . but I’d like to know if I get anything out of this.”

“You mean, is there a reward, other than the self-satisfaction of fighting for humanity’s survival?”

He looked pained. “I guess, yeah. I mean, it’s worth it just for that, don’t get me wrong, but . . .”

“Say no more. A hero is still a person, and still needs to worry about their survival. Yes, Stephen Russ. The magic that binds you to the contract once made also binds the world to reward you once Azathoth of the Nine Arms is banished once more to the realms beyond this one.”

“Azathoth? I thought that was the, what, ‘blind idiot god’ at the center of the universe.”

He sighed. “Stephen Russ, you of all people should recognize that the common perception is not going to always be the truth. Lovecraft . . . sensed certain things, was exposed to elements of the truth in passing. But they were filtered through his mind, his beliefs, his prejudices and perceptions of the world. This is true of all others who have glimpsed portions of the truth.

“So no, Azathoth Nine-Armed is not a formless mass of chaos. She — for that pronoun fits better than any other — is an alien invader, ruler and director of the forces and beings beneath her. Her precise manifestation — and even more so that of her underlings, the scouts and shocktroops who will come to prepare the way — is affected by the human consciousness, the gestalt of human perception and the specifics of those that they encounter and of the civilization that they are seeking to conquer. So some manifestations of your adversaries — if you take up your destiny — will be of ancient lineage, while others may seem far more contemporary.”

“So they’re shaped by, what, our beliefs? Some Jungian collective unconscious?”

Silvertail twitched his whiskers. “To an extent, yes, that would be a reasonable way to view it. A more modern and cynical way might be to say that they are rather subject to meme infection.”

Steve laughed, a short and nervous but still genuine sound of amusement. “That’s funny. Hopefully that doesn’t mean that they’ll manifest spouting ‘all your base are belong to us’ or something stupid like that.”

“No, the more amusing memes would not be their forte,” he replied. If only they were. But the memes they will likely manifest . . . you do not need to be reminded of now. “In any event . . . yes, there is a reward, Stephen Russ. If you defeat these enemies, avert the apocalypse, then the world returns to what it was before this began. Even you will not recall it. But you will find that you are . . . well, fortunate would be the best term. The success that has eluded you thus far will seek you out; whatever ‘happy ending’ you might wish for in this world will be made possible. That will be true of you and all the other Apocalypse Maidens.”

“So I’ll save the world, not know the world ever needed saving, but then have everything start coming up roses?”

“In essence, yes.”

“That kinda sucks. I mean, not the everything coming up roses part — I guess you can tell I’m not exactly doing great on my own, though I won’t complain, lots of other people are worse off. The having done something awesome and not knowing it, that sucks.”

“I cannot disagree,” Silvertail said. “But it is part and parcel of the nature of the enchantment and the war. The powers of magic that make the war possible are usually walled off from this world, ever since the first great conflict. So the battle is fought, the world witnesses the battle, but all of this is affected by — is a part of — the grand contest. Once the conflict is resolved, the world returns to what it was before the magic appeared.”

“That almost sounds as though magic’s real source is this Azathoth, or wherever she comes from.”

“Not truly. It is more a matter of the fact that the way in which she was sealed away was done using all the power of magic we could channel, so that her entry to the world would of necessity bring the magic back . . . and any attempt to bring magic back would, almost certainly, unleash her as well.”

Stephen looked at him. “So why do you remember?”

“I am . . . the key, you might say. Or the flaw in the prison, an inescapable one given that there were magic-workers on this side of the barrier. I am the one who watches for the cycle to resume, whenever the conditions are right, because I am the only one with the ability to find those who can close the door.”

“But why?”

He sighed, feeling his whiskers drooping, remembering in the distant, distant past when it would have been human shoulders slumping. “Because I was the one who created the Apocalypse Maidens, Stephen Russ. One of thirteen, the most powerful of Lemuria’s wizards, and the only one to survive the conjuration that transformed my daughter and her four closest and most courageous friends into the weapon the world needed. As you can see” — he gestured to himself — “it . . . cost me.”

Steve looked simultaneously sympathetic, outraged, and pained. “Do you have any idea how hard this is for me to deal with? I mean . . . Lemuria? A wizard stuck as a white rat? And you did this to your own daughter?”

“I did not do this to her; she volunteered, and . . .” His voice, despite untold centuries of control, threatened to break. “And . . . I have never been more proud than I was that day.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Steve paused. “So . . . what about the other twelve of you?”

“They . . . were consumed by the ritual. We knew the risks, of course — the power we were unleashing was by far the greatest magic ever worked by mankind. I think I only lived because there was, as I said, a necessity that there be a key, a linchpin, a nexus of the enchantment that would remain throughout eternity.” Even after all the centuries, remembering the deaths of his friends still hurt.

“But your daughter and her friends . . . they did win, right?”

“They won, yes. And in doing so ripped the foundations of magic from this cosmos, shattered the stability we had enforced upon the world, and wiped out our entire civilization, nearly dooming humanity to extinction.”

“Holy shit. And this is the good outcome if I take this brooch-thing up and win?”

“No, no, Stephen. That was then, when the world was filled with magic, when so much relied upon magic that to withdraw it was like turning the foundations of a building to water. My daughter and her friends did survive, and so did enough of humanity — or we would not be here to speak of it. But in the other repetitions of the cycle . . . while there is great destruction sometimes wrought during the combat, the world is returned to its prior state afterward. Not entirely without cost — if people were specifically slain by the forces of our enemies, they will be found to have died, albeit by more mundane forces, after the victory. But the world will not be destroyed if you win. Only if you lose will it be plunged into a creeping shadow of its old self.”

Steve nodded slowly. “Jesus.” He looked down at the Star Nebula Brooch, lying on the table between them, and picked it up reluctantly. “And this really is the only way to fight these things?”

He shrugged. “The only one I know of.”

Stephen Russ sighed. “Tell you what. I’ll . . . carry it for a while. Think about it. But . . . this is all of me you want me to change.”

“Not all of you. I might even say the least important part of you. I do not wish to change the sort of person you are.”

He bit his lip. “Yeah. I guess. But dammit, my entire life and self-image aren’t just something to toss aside, either.”

“I did not say they were, and perhaps I should apologize; one’s self-image is not at all unimportant, and indeed for a man of your age, that self-image is the rock on which you have built your identity. So, yes, I was wrong, and I do apologize. I ask you to make a very significant sacrifice, of your self-image, of your position in a society that — you know well — values men more than women in many areas. I ask you to, at least temporarily, sacrifice even the respect that age and size have given you.

“But know that these sacrifices will make you, as Holy Aura, vastly stronger; the willingness of the Chosen to take up the battle at great personal cost, this is one of the greatest sources of power in any magic. Your willing acceptance of this price may give us the key to a swifter and more certain victory. And they will certainly make it more likely that one day you will wake up — the same Stephen Russ you are now — and your life will become brighter, and the world will be safe.”

Silvertail could see Stephen considering that. “So,” he said, “in a nutshell, the more I’m personally willing to sacrifice to the cause, the more powerful Holy Aura will be.”

“Correct. If you accept the burden, you are — while Holy Aura, in any event — sacrificing a major portion of your personal foundation and viewpoint; this will make you immensely stronger as Princess Holy Aura.”

“You say ‘while Holy Aura’; does that mean I can change back to Stephen Russ?”

“Yes. You will of course have no access to any of Holy Aura’s powers while in your original form, but yes, you will be able to change back. You will not, however, be able to change your mind once you have accepted the power; once done, the enchantment cannot be undone.”

Stephen surveyed the brooch again, eyes tracing the beauty of the curves absently. Finally he straightened. “Okay. I’ll think on it. And not too long. I promise I’ll have an answer for you in . . . um . . . a week. Is that okay?”

A week . . . She will have learned of the loss of her creatures soon. She will know that either I chose to act, or that the Princess has been found. Yet . . . I have no right, nor power, to force the issue. “If it must be, then it must be. One week, Stephen Russ. May that time be well spent, for our enemy is already moving.”