Eric Flint's Blog, page 166

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 18

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 18

Chapter Sixteen: The Hunt

Ursel was brooding on the dream again. She’d had the same, or nearly the same, dream for the past three nights. She’d been sleeping on her wool ground cloth as usual. In the dream she even knew where she was. Asleep on the forest floor.

But the sky above felt like it was reaching down to her.

Calling to her.

She’d never felt anything like this before. So real. The realness took her over completely.

Maybe this was the way Wulf felt when the dragon-call came to him.

At first the dream was confusing. She was gazing up into the sky and the stars were growing brighter and brighter. What was strange and wrong and terrible was the fact that she was lying in a pool of her own blood in the dream.

In the dream she had been shot through and through.

Pierced by an arrow.

She had bled out.

She was dead.

Not dying, not near death.

Dead.

This was the part that set her heart racing during the dream. And the part that set her mind in turmoil after she woke up.

She was dead.

It seemed so real.

And the sky was calling her.

What could it mean? She wanted to know before she let go and slipped away.

Ursel had always been faithful to the divine beings. She had a special devotion to Regen, the divine mother of water, both snow and rain. She hadn’t been particularly religious, but she had expected to end up in Valhalla at the end of things. She was a warrior at heart, after all–even if only with the bow. But this vision was not of Valhalla. Not of the afterlife.

What was going on? What was she supposed to do?

Then she heard a song. Something lovely beyond any beautiful music she had ever heard before. It took her moment to realize that it was a lullaby. It was a song the stars were singing to the dragons.

The dragons slept, and the song was in their dreams. It calmed them and nurtured them.

She understood.

This was what the stars were for.

But the song . . . she felt a lack in the sky. There was a star missing. There was a special note that was not sounding, that was meant to be part of the song and was not there.

Was it her? Was she somehow going to join the stars? Was that what dying really was?

If so, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

But she didn’t think that was it.

No. Something else.

The dragons did not know that a star was missing. They didn’t know anything. They felt.

And they felt that the song was not as comforting as it should be. Or could be.

That star needed to return. The note should sound. The sky-song was not right without it.

Ursel lay gazing up at the stars and felt this longing and lack. She felt that she would do anything to be able to restore peace to the dragons. To her dragon, the child dragon that lay under Shenandoah and needed to be cared for.

If only I could make a star, Ursel thought.

But it must take incomprehensible magic to do that. Beyond any she had at her command.

Then she understood the note that was missing in the lullaby. She felt the shape of its absence. In the dream-logic, that shape became a word.

An understandable word.

It was part of the last name of an elf that she knew.

Eberethen.

Amber. Stone.

Saeunn’s last name, Amberstone.

That was when she woke up. Each night. Three times now. It was infuriating. Now she was obsessing about saving Saeunn Amberstone.

I don’t even know if I want to save her, Ursel thought. Although maybe she would if it came down to it.

It wouldn’t come down to it.

And what is the other stuff.

About me being dead. I don’t like that one bit.

Am I seeing the future? Some vision?

Or just a lot of mixed-up nonsense bubbling up from my mixed-up heart?

***

There was a crackling in the brush to the northwest.

“Do you hear that?” the Powhatan named Manteos said.

Ursel put her finger to her lips motioning him silent. She held up her other hand to signal the group to stop moving. It took a moment for everyone to obey. They were strung out in staggered fashion in the woods.

She’d heard the sound of the woods rustling several moments before even while she’d been brooding on her dream. She hadn’t said anything because it could have just been an animal. But the leaf crackling got louder and closer. It wasn’t just one animal. What it sounded like was a traveling wolf pack. She’d run across wolves several times in the forest. They were one of the most dangerous of all predators. When they were nearby, she hid carefully. Usually she did this by climbing a tree after masking her scent as best she could.

At the moment they were walking through a little grove of saplings that was growing where a huge old tree had fallen down and left a small clearing. There wasn’t anything to climb here. But it was a much different thing to face a wolf pack with eight people than one person. Because humans were the most dangerous predator when they hunted in packs.

Then there was a scream from the forest in the direction the rustling had come from. It sounded almost as if some child were being torn apart. There were more whines and screams, a big chorus of them after that. The saplings began to shake on the other side of the clearing.

She had already fitted an arrow into her bow. She gazed around and saw that the others had too, except for big Ottaniak, who was deadly with his tomahawk. He had it ready.

 

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 17

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 17

Chapter Fifteen: The Star-stone

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Ravenelle Archambeault said.

“All right, sister,” Saeunn whispered. “Don’t be mad at me.”

She struggled to sit up, but couldn’t. A wisp of blonde hair fell across her eyes. Ravenelle reached down and brushed it away.

“I’m not,” Ravenelle said. “I’m mad because I can’t help you.”

“You’re a great help,” Saeunn replied with sigh. “Will you read some more of your romance to me?”

“We finished it,” Ravenelle said.

“Oh.” Saeunn blinked. “I guess I drifted off.”

“The prince finally tells Julia Silves he loves her and hands her a rose. But she pricks her finger on a thorn on the stem and–well, you know she has that noble bleeding sickness where it won’t stop?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“She’s sure she’s going to bleed to death, and it’s going to be long and drawn out and painful, so she asks the prince to plunge his dagger into her heart. He won’t do it, so she does it for him. She dies in his arms. But at least they get to kiss.”

“Gruesome,” Saeunn said. “But pretty.” She smiled wanly up at Ravenelle. “It makes you shudder.”

“That’s kind of the point,” Ravenelle replied.

Saeunn nodded. She tried to shift and sit up, but the strength went out of her and her head fell back on the pillow. Suddenly her eyes grew bright and hard, like little blue flints. Her smile turned to an expression of sadness. “The elfling loses more of her soul-roots,” she said–to no one in particular.

“Brennan?” There were allegedly two beings within Saeunn. One was Saeunn. The other was the elf whose star fell from the sky. It was Brennan Temeldar whose star-stone meteorite Saeunn wore on a chain around her neck.

“Yes, dark girl.”

Ravenelle hoped Brennan was only talking about the color of her hair and skin, which came from her Afrique and Aegyptian ancestors. But sometimes she was afraid that Brennan was seeing some other kind of darkness inside her.

Brennan Temeldar was an elf woman who allegedly shared Saeunn’s body now. She was supposed to be beyond ancient. Ravenelle didn’t know the sagas like Wulf–learning Kalte sagas had absolutely not been the part of her education she paid much attention to–but she did know that Brennan was in the oldest sagas. The sagas said she had done something terrible to herself–what that was, the saga was a bit vague on–and given up her soul. That was when her star had fallen from the sky. But a small part of her lived on in some way in the star-stone necklace. At least that was what everybody around Saeunn believed.

Ravenelle figured it was all some barbarian myth. But it was clear that Saeunn believed that part of her was Brennan Temeldar, and that had somehow helped her recover from what she’d done against the draugar. She had made him vulnerable to weapons. If it was good for Saeunn to believe in Brennan Temeldar, then Ravenelle would play along.

“What are soul-roots?” she asked.

“The places where the mind and body are together so closely you can hardly tell them apart,” Saeunn/Brennan answered. “She and I, we are . . . separating.”

“What can we do?”

“I do not know. So little remains of me. Just this ash, this cinder.” She fingered the star-stone at her breast. She let it go and sighed. “I’ve forgotten so much.”

“What I can see is that Saeunn has a fever and chills, and gets as weak as a baby. Then she recovers for a while. Today she seemed almost back to her old self.”

“No,” Brennan said. “She will never be back to her old self. The star that she was is gone. Fallen.”

“I don’t believe that. She can still laugh and cry like always. She still makes little Anya giggle when she plays with her.” Anya was Wulf’s youngest sister. She adored Saeunn and Saeunn returned the adoration. “She’s even kissed Wulf. A lot.”

“She burns brightly before night falls.”

“You are really depressing me, Brennan Temeldar,” Ravenelle replied. “Saeunn would never do that.”

“And are you angry, Ravenelle Archambeault?”

“I’m worried,” she answered truthfully. “There’s still no message from my mother. Nothing for over a year.”

“Then you must go and find out what has happened. You are of age now. Childhood is fast fading, and it is time to become a woman.”

Ravenelle looked down at her breasts. When she was twelve they had started growing. And growing. Even though she’d willed them over and over again to stop. She envied Saeunn her small, perfect breasts.

“I think I’ve been becoming a woman for a while,” she said dryly. “Listen, Brennan, please, please do something to help my sister.”

Saeunn/Brennan looked at her and shook her head in wonder. “You are so young,” she said. “You think you can stomp your feet and make the world obey.”

“I’ve gotten over thinking that.”

“You will always be young to me,” Brennan said. Her voice seemed to be fading. Saeunn/Brennan closed her eyes. “I will do what I can for now.”

Saeunn was sixty-three and a half years old–which meant she was an elf teenager. She would live on and on. Elves did not die of old age. Humans did. Even Roman nobles.

But elves could die of other causes, Ravenelle thought. It’ll be so wrong if Saeunn dies before me.

It wasn’t fair. Saeunn should always stay her wonderful older sister. Kind, quirky, laughing with you and not at you like so many others did. She also tended to fall into rhapsodies when standing in moonlight–then let you make fun of her about them when she came out of her trance. Ravenelle had teased her a lot about that when they were young. Looking back, she realized her younger self must’ve been quite a trial sometimes, even for Saeunn, who hardly ever got ruffled.

She loved her sister. She would do anything for her. Even stay in the Kaltelands for as long as she was needed, even though she had spent years thinking about finally being set free to go home.

“Your hair is a mess,” said Saeunn. “You’d better let Jakka fix it.”

“You’re back,” Ravenelle said.

“Was I gone?” Saeunn asked.

“Brennan Temeldar was here,” said Ravenelle.

“Oh.”

Ravenelle reached up and put a hand to her crazy, curly hair. No matter how she pinned it, it seemed to spring free. It was never long before it was as tangled as a bramble bush again.

“I feel much better, actually,” Saeunn finally said.

“I think Brennan did something to help.”

Saeunn reached for the star-stone and wrapped her fingers around it. “It’s cold,” she said.

Ravenelle bent over and touched the stone. It wasn’t just cold. It was freezing. A thin white layer of ice was on its surface.

Saeunn tucked the stone back under her nightdress. She sat up.

“I think I’ll get dressed,” she said. “I’m hungry.”

Ravenelle nodded. “If you’re feeling that well, I’m going to get some sleep. I’ll send Jakka to look after you for a while.” Saeunn had never wanted a lady’s maid during her years in Raukenrose castle, but now she nodded.

“That would probably be a good idea,” she said. “We don’t know how long this will last. Where are Wulf and Rainer?”

As if in answer, there was a soft knock on the door.

Ravenelle glanced outside through the eyes of Alvis.

It was Wulf, of course.

“Come,” said Ravenelle. She stood.

The door opened and Wulf stepped in. When he saw Saeunn sitting, his eyes lit up. “You’re better!” he said.

“For now,” Saeunn replied.

He went to her side and, before he could settle in, Saeunn pulled him down. She kissed him passionately for a long moment.

When she let him go, Wulf looked stunned. And very happy.

“Oh Wulf, it’s good to have now,” Saeunn said.

Wulf sat down in Ravenelle’s chair. He took Saeunn’s hand and kissed it. Tears were in his eyes.

And that cursed von Dunstig determination.

He’ll never give up, Ravenelle thought. And if he loses her, he’ll love her till the end of his days.

It would be nice to be loved so completely, she thought.

And then she realized that she probably was.

Don’t go there, Ravenelle thought. You are not a barbarian. Act like a Roman. Think like a Roman.

Ravenelle quietly left the room. In the hallway, she put a hand to her hair. Saeunn had been right. It was a continuing explosion of a briar patch. She would finally take the half-watch the task required, and have Jakka brush it out, wash it, and pin it back up properly.

Then she would check back in on Saeunn.

If she’s still strong, Ravenelle thought. If I think she’s better . . .

Then Rainer and I will head for Montserrat.

 

The Spark – Snippet 04

The Spark – Snippet 04

Beune isn’t very big, and the streams back home wouldn’t float anything more than a rowboat. Some of the ships on the Dun Add waterfront had sails on two masts for going back upstream against the current. I’d heard of ships that big, but seeing them made me blink.

The rafts were what really interested me. They were made by pinning together the trunks of full-sized trees, all softwoods that I could see. Some were still loaded with the bales and casks they’d carried from the interior, but others were empty and had been winched to an island in midstream.

I couldn’t tell whether the island was natural or if it’d been built on pilings, but I could hear the scream of a circle saw driven by a wheel out in the current. The rafts were being turned into boards and timbers to build Dun Add even bigger than it was already.

At least they’ll have room for me, I thought. I smiled, but there wasn’t a lot of laughter in my mind.

Duncan joined me again. Dame Carole was still well back in the line, and not looking best pleased about it, either.

“Here you go, lad,” Duncan said, counting five silver pieces into my palm one at a time. They had the face of Jon the Leader on one side and on the other a dragon with its tail knotted to fit in the space.

“They’re fresh from the mint here,” he said, which I could tell by looking at the coins. “And this–”

He added a brass piece, a little larger than the silver.

“–is from Castorman. In Dun Add it passes at about three to one against the dragons. We can have it weighed out in a jeweler’s booth, if you like?”

“No, I trust you,” I said, putting the coins into the suede pouch I hang inside my waistband in the front. I still had enough of the small change that I’d brought onto the Road that I wouldn’t have to break a silver piece right away.

We don’t use money a lot on Beune. Mostly it’s barter or what amounts to the same as barter: doing a favor for a neighbor because he’s done a favor for you, or he will do when you need one.

I needed minted money to go on the Road. Gervaise had to really scrape to come up with what my farm was worth, or something close to it. I think in the end he was getting money from folks who knew me and were doing me a favor. They didn’t want me to leave Beune, but if they had cash they helped me with my dream by paying Gervaise for a cask of next year’s cider or a sheep in the fall, to slaughter or to raise.

To the right of the landing place was a plain that was even bigger but with only a dozen or so people on it. They were too far away for me to catch details beyond seeing that most of them were men, but I suddenly realized from the shimmer that some of them were warriors fighting. I started walking in that direction, barely murmuring goodbye when Duncan headed back to his employer.

This was what I had come to Dun Add for: to be a Champion of Mankind, to fight other warriors not for my own sake or even for the Leader’s sake. I would fight so that scattered humanity could unite instead of being ground to dust piecemeal.

Buck caught my mood and growled at the back of his throat. The black bristles along his spine had risen, though he didn’t know what it was that’d made me feel this way.

“Mind how you go, buddy!” a voice said closer to me than my thoughts were. “Nobody gets off the landing place until they’re checked in with the Herald of the Gate.”

Called back to today, I blinked at the pair of stewards. They wore blue tunics with a dragon embroidered on the left breast; they carried wooden staves. One of them had set his staff crossways in front of me, but it was the other who’d spoken.

“Oh!” I said and backed a step. “Sorry, I was looking at the Champions instead of paying attention to where I was going.”

The fellow with the outstretched staff butted it and laughed. “You are new if you think those’re Champions,” he said.

“All right, I’m new,” I said. Being new didn’t give a fat man with a bad shave the right to sneer at me, and I was just about in a mood to remind him that I was armed and he wasn’t.

“If you don’t watch your tongue, Platt,” said the other steward in a weary voice, “somebody’s going to feed you your teeth. It might even be me.”

He looked at me, met my eyes and said, “Two of those fighting are Aspirants, kid. One’s named Newell and he’s been here a few years. The other fellow arrived in the past couple months, but I didn’t catch his name. They’re training for seats in the Champion’s Hall, but they haven’t passed the test yet. The other two, the nearer pair, they’re just a couple warriors from the army, getting in a little exercise.”

“I figured there’d be testing,” I said. That was true, but if Newell had been an aspirant for years it sounded like the testing was more formal than I’d expected.

What looked like shimmering around the fighters was the way they slipped out of Here when their shields went on. It was like being on the Road, only it was just you and you could engage it anywhere.

I guess it sounds funny, but I’d never seen what a warrior looked like with his shield on. I was the only person on Beune who had a shield, and I was inside when I engaged it. All I knew was what my neighbors told me they saw.

From what I’ve heard, different warriors control their shields in various ways. With me I take the grip in my left hand and switch it on with my thumb. I tighten my fingers to narrow the shielded segment or spread them for wider coverage.

The real problem is that I built the shield from what was basically an umbrella, which I beefed up really a lot. It’ll stop a weapon stroke–the two thugs I ran off Beune both hit me square before I knocked them down–but moving with it on is really hard. I figure it’s got a lot more inertia than a shield that was meant for fighting, though I haven’t tried one to be sure.

I could’ve asked Duncan to let me handle his unit. I guess I was embarrassed to, because he’d want to try mine. I know my shield and weapon–I made them, after all–and I know they’ve got quirks. Somebody who wasn’t used to those quirks, well, he’d laugh at me. Duncan wouldn’t have laughed out loud, but I’d have known what he was thinking.

I watched the warriors spar a little longer, then looked back at the line. It’d gotten down pretty short; Dame Carole and her crew were through, Duncan among them. I suppose he was off to a tavern, which made me a little sad. I had no right to feel responsible for a man who was older than my father had been when he died.

I nodded to the steward who’d been polite to me and headed back to clerk and his overseer. Dun Add was waiting for me, but I had to get through the official before I saw any of it.

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 25

Iron Angels – Snippet 25

“That depends,” she replied.

“On?”

“You saw my face when you turned around, right?”

“I did,” Jasper said. “We need to clear the shed. What if the animal went in there — ”

“Animal, huh? More supernatural — ”

“Let’s discuss the particulars after we peek into the shed. That okay with you?”

“Lead the way,” Temple said. “Oh, and your back is covered in a wet substance, by the way. I don’t think it’s water.”

“Blood?” Jasper cracked the wooden shed’s door, shining the flashlight in. He saw nothing, but two blind corners remained uncleared. He’d poke his head in and out.

“No,” Temple said. “I wouldn’t describe the substance that way. Not red, but it resembles ectoplasmic whatever — you know, Ghostbusters, but with a pinkish hue.”

“What are you getting at?” Jasper paused before stealing a peek into the blind corners. His face crinkled as he imagined his backside covered in wet and sticky goo. The situation reminded him of the yearly blood borne pathogen training and admonishment the nurse at the field office used to give: If it’s wet or sticky and not yours, don’t touch it. He shivered. Hopefully the stuff didn’t seep through his clothes and touch his skin.

“My reaction by the way, was horror at what you slipped and slid around in almost as much as the creature we’re both trying real hard to not discuss.”

“Oh.” Jasper’s face warmed, but he wasn’t sure why. Should he be embarrassed if Temple admitted she too witnessed something out of the ordinary? “Tell me, what did the beast we encountered look like to you?”

Jasper heard no scurrying or rustling from within the shed, so an animal was likely out, but a person remained a possibility. He knelt, pulled the door open and poked both head and flashlight inside the shed for a second. He breathed in the scent of damp wood, like fallen trees in the woods after a rainstorm. Old saw dust, kicked this way and that, covered the floor. A wooden workbench covered with tools in varying states of disrepair ran from one blind corner to the other. A rusty old gas can and a spout were on the floor before the bench.

“Nothing inside except a bunch of junk and gardening tools.” He glanced at Temple, and stood. “So, describe the thing we’re not talking about? You never answered.”

Temple licked her lips. “A winged beast, something out of the Bible. A — a demon or devil of some kind, since you’re asking.”

“A what? I have no idea what you’re even talking about. Wait, don’t tell me, the beast sported a cloven hoof or two — ”

“Really?” Her head spun toward him and her dark eyes regained the fierceness he’d come to know and expect in the short time they’d known one another. “Mocking my opinion of what I witnessed? This is how you’re going to approach the incident? You asked me what I saw and I told you.”

“All right, I’m sorry, I’m tired.” He held up his hands. “That shit wasn’t real — I mean, how can a crimson haze attack anything?”

“Explain the substance all over your back. The goo is like something coating the floor of a butcher shop. And what if the goo is a harmful or toxic substance? I think we need to check behind the shed.” Temple pushed past Jasper, flicked on her flashlight and faced the back of the shed.

Temple’s chest heaved and the rate of her breathing increased, accompanied by a slight gasping sound. Her eyes widened with the same fear Jasper had seen seconds earlier.

“What?”

“It’s — a person, though I’m not sure of anything beyond that,” she said.

Jasper swallowed involuntarily, and a moment of intense doubt and unease passed through him. “Like what we found near the animal control facility?”

“Sort of. You better take a look for yourself.”

Jasper took careful steps toward Temple, and upon reaching her spun and flicked up his flashlight.

A pile of pink and white with traces of red littered the small path behind the shed, some of the matter pressed against a weathered fence about five and half feet high. Only black existed behind the shed, and the yard on the other side of the fence was dark. No one could have observed the ruckus going on, but the wailing from a few minutes ago had drawn a crowd out front of the old man’s house.

“You think the body back here made the wailing sound?”

“I think so,” Temple said. “I’m going to get Vance over here for some samples.”

“But the wailing noise happened only minutes ago, how could anything — and I mean anything — do such a thorough job of turning a human into a pile of meat? It isn’t like we’re chasing some sort of living sausage grinder, for Christ’s sake.”

“What if we are?” Temple pulled on his shoulder. “Jasper, if this really is something out of the Old Testament… or Revelations…”

Jasper shrugged off her hand. “I’m taking a closer look. Call Vance if you like, but there’s got to be a natural explanation for this.”

He heard a click behind him and two seconds later Temple was speaking with Vance and pacing the backyard.

“What’s going on back there?” the old man yelled from the back door.

“Get back inside,” Jasper yelled.

“It’s my property, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but there’s been a death of some sort and we’re going to need to seal off the yard. In fact, we may need to search the residence.”

“I’ll call the police. That’ll fix you feds. Damn G-men,” the old man said, his verbal remonstrations replete with a figurative shaking of a fist. The back door rattled as the old man attempted a slam.

Jasper frowned at the space behind the shed. It was quite small, perhaps a few feet across. How did such a large beast fit in such a tight space? The creature he’d laid eyes on was at least the size of a horse, but the form resembled that of a sinewy dragon — and Asian-style dragon, like what had materialized before him and his cop buddy, Pete, outside the Euclid Hotel. He didn’t believe in dragons, though. Even Komodo dragons were exotic to him, and this hadn’t been one of those. This dragon flew off or vanished or had been a simple trick of the light. He wished Pete were here now — why not call him, anyway? Just because Jasper was assigned to assist Temple didn’t mean he shouldn’t utilize all the available resources at his disposal.

He stepped back from the space and hit up Pete on his cell. The conversation was mercifully short. Pete refused, wanting nothing to do with the strange deaths and certainly didn’t want to come within a few blocks of the Euclid. He’d begged off responding to the accident scene, even though he’d been close by, and he’d take a lot of heat for that in the morning.

Jasper hung up, pressed the phone to his forehead and closed his eyes. He was stalling. Admitting he faced bizarre circumstances beyond his ken was difficult.

Jasper took a deep breath, and either he’d gotten used to the scent of rotten meat, or it’d dissipated. He approached the back of the shed and directed the flashlight’s beam over the pile of meat and bones and skin. Under the scrutiny of the flashlight, the pile cast a greasy sheen punctuated by a bone jutting from the meat here and there. Jasper’s cheeks involuntarily puffed and he swallowed down creeping bile.

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 17

Chain of Command – Snippet 17

“Tell you what, Lieutenant Goldjune, why don’t you go back out into the passageway, count to ten, knock, and we’ll try starting this conversation over.”

“Why don’t you go to hell? Now answer the goddamn question.”

Sam leaned back in his zero gee restraint and looked Goldjune over. His fleshy face was flushed and he panted slightly, either with emotion or exertion.

“You’re really pissed, aren’t you? Well, if it makes any difference, I wanted you to take over TAC, but the captain overruled me. Filipenko was the only alternative. With Washington and Waring dead and me at Exec, there are only four line officers–two lieutenants and two ensigns–left to staff the two line departments–Operations and Tactical. Hard to figure out an arrangement that doesn’t end up with one lieutenant and one ensign in each department. So which would you prefer: to run Ops with Barb Lee as your ensign, or run Tac with Jerry Robinette?”

The answer was obvious for several reasons: Goldjune was a die-hard Ops man, Jerry Robinette was the most inept ensign on the boat, and it was an open secret that Larry Goldjune and Barb Lee had been having an affair for over a month.

Goldjune hooked his feet through a padded handhold on the wall and folded his arms across his chest, but Sam could see his anger slipping away, and Larry struggling to maintain it.

“So you wanted to stick me in TAC, huh? That figures.”

“Yeah, it does, because you’re better qualified than Filipenko. When the shooting starts, the Captain better have the best brain he can get sitting beside him in the Tac One chair. At least that’s how I see it. But he decided you’d be happier in Ops, and what the Captain says goes.”

Larry looked at him, thought that over, and for a moment Sam thought they might get past this wall of animus that separated them. But Goldjune’s eyes narrowed again, and hardened.

“What do you know about what he’ll need in combat? When did you become an expert on it? You think just because you guessed right once on an attack profile you’re some kind of military genius?”

Sam could have told him that neither of them had ever heard a shot fired in anger, that all any of them had to go on was their training, but he was suddenly tired of arguing. No matter what he said, nothing would change.

“Filipenko is taking Tac and that’s it. And while you’re here, your affair with Ensign Lee is over, effective right now–or at least on hiatus until end of our deployment. It’s none of my business after that. But she’s your direct subordinate, for Christ’s sake. Now get out of here so I can do some work.”

*****

An hour after Goldjune left, Sam’s commlink vibrated and he heard the ID tone of the captain.

“Yes, sir.”

“Bitka, come to my cabin at once,” Huhn said, clearly agitated, and then he cut the connection.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Sam said to the empty office around him. Now what?

As Sam unbuckled his restraint lanyard from the workstation he saw a flickering something out of the corner of his eye, just for a moment, and turned quickly, but nothing–or rather on one–was there. The image had been unclear but somehow familiar, familiar enough to make his scalp tingle, make his vision lose clarity and turn the colors pale, make his hands tremble. It had been Jules, hadn’t it? The thought filled him with a familiar warmth and dread realization in equal measures.

Oh, that’s great. First an interstellar war, and now I’m going nuts.

He looked around the office one more time, took a long breath to steady himself, and left.

Sam’s office was forward, off the bridge, and Huhn’s cabin was aft, in officer’s country, but it still took him less than five minutes to reach the door. He touched the knocker and camera-mike, which would turn the inside surface of the door into a window and show his presence to Huhn.

“Sir, it’s Lieutenant Bitka, reporting as ordered.”

Huhn immediately opened the door. He hadn’t shaved in at least a day, as near as Sam could tell, and pale stubble covered his cheeks, chin, and the sides and back of his head.

“Come in, Sam. Come in.” Huhn stuck his head out into the corridor and looked both ways before closing the door and locking it. “Care for some coffee? Or can I offer you something stronger–got some pretty good bourbon over here.” He kicked off from the door, gliding over to a cabinet behind his desk. Sam looked around and the cabin walls were still unadorned gray. A dirty sock was stuck to an exhaust ventilator.

“Thank you, sir, coffee sounds good. I still have some work to finish up later this afternoon. Better keep a clear head.”

“Of course, of course,” Huhn said. He punched in the order on his desk dispenser and in seconds handed a warm drinking bulb of coffee to Sam. He gestured to the padded restraints and handholds along the gray cabin walls. “Make yourself comfortable, please. No need to stand on ceremony.”

Sam pushed off the deck toward a wall stanchion and clipped his restraint lanyard to it. So far this was not the conversation he had anticipated.

Huhn floated silently behind his desk for a few seconds, as if gathering his thoughts. “Sam, I want to talk to you about Lieutenant Goldjune.”

Okay, here it comes, Sam thought and took a swallow of coffee. Maybe the bourbon would have been a smarter move.

“Yes, sir?”

“You and I have disagreed about him, especially in our assessment of him as an officer.”

“I think Goldjune is a talented and capable officer, sir,” Sam said, just to get it on the record.

“Of course he is,” Huhn said, nodding, “as far as that goes. But you know, sometimes character’s more important. Maybe that’s especially true in wartime. The war’s made me take another look at some things. I’ll tell you something, Sam: I don’t trust him. He’s been acting funny for the last day or so, talking to people in the wardroom and then they stop and just look at me when I come in. What’s that all about?”

Sam thought it might be about Del Huhn’s guilty conscience, but he didn’t say that.

“I don’t know, sir, but I’ll try to find out.”

“You haven’t heard anything? Any …disloyal mutterings?” Huhn searched Sam’s face but avoided his eyes.

“No, sir, and if I had, they’d have stopped right there. I give you my word on that.”

Huhn looked at him for a moment and then looked away and nodded.

“I believe you, Sam. I think you’re a man of character, an honest man–too honest maybe. I suppose that’s why we had our little disagreement. Seems a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? Well, water under the bridge. Peace and war, different times, different lifetimes. Maybe it’s only possible to be too honest in peacetime, you know, like I was saying, war and character …something about them going together, I …I don’t know. But I trust you, Sam.”

Huhn looked at Sam with eyes that shown with moist affection and entreaty, a combination Sam found pathetic, repellant, and vaguely alarming.

“Thank you, sir,” he managed and looked away, his eyes fastening again on Huhn’s family pictures, slowly cycling on the one small live area on the smart wall.

“That’s Joey, my boy,” Huhn said, and glided over to the video window. He stopped the display and enlarged it to show the family in yet another posed grouping. Did they ever vacation? Did they ever do anything together but pose for pictures? The son was in his late teens in this picture, beginning to look heavy in the face and upper body, and for a change staring directly at the camera in an apparent act of defiance with a hint of contempt.

“He’s a few years older now. He tried the Navy–probably wanted to please the old man, follow in my footsteps, you know how sons are. It didn’t work out, Navy wasn’t for him. Joey’s had trouble finding his niche, but he’s a good boy. He’s …well, he’s a good boy.”

Sam looked at the picture and nodded. The woman with her tentative smile, fleeing in quiet panic toward the safety of dowdy middle age, looking as if she needed permission to do anything, who might have been pretty when she was young if she’d let herself, if she’d just given herself permission. Married to a husband who tried to cheat on her when on deployment–probably thought it was what mariners always did, were supposed to do, made them somehow more manly and desirable. And Huhn couldn’t even manage to do that right, could he? Jules had turned him down, and how many others before her?

When Huhn had graduated from Annapolis and, with a thousand other white-clad men and women, thrown his hat as high into the air as he could, he must have envisioned a life about to unfold before him. He had seen those plans realized, but distorted and grotesque, as if reflected by a funhouse mirror. Did he sometimes wonder where he went wrong? Did he ever stop wondering?

“We’ll get through this, sir,” Sam said. “We’ll get through it, and we’ll get back to our families.”

Huhn put his hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“I know I can count on you, Sam. Now, Goldjune?” Huhn looked aside, eyes focused farther away than the barren gray wall he faced. “After all I’ve done for him? Stood up for him? Covered up his mistakes and indiscretions? He’s just a disloyal little shit. Sometimes I wish he was dead.”

*****

In the corridor outside Huhn’s room Sam stopped and closed his eyes, but the flickering shadow he knew to be Jules persisted, dancing at the periphery of his right field of vision, always just out of reach. Her being there, watching, waiting for something, made his nervous, almost sick to his stomach. Who was crazier? he wondered. Huhn or him?

He squinted up the medtech’s comm address.

Medtech Tamblinson. What can I do for you, Mister Bitka?

“Tamblinson, I’ve …I’ve got a headache,” he lied. “Yeah, a real skull-buster, and I need to get some shuteye. Can you give me something that will knock me out for a couple of hours but not leave me punchy when I wake up?”

They don’t call me Doc Feelgood for nothing, sir.

 

The Spark – Snippet 03

The Spark – Snippet 03

He’d stayed beside me, probably figuring how Dun Add was going to strike me. I’d been luckier than I knew to have met Duncan on the Road.

“You were one of Jon’s Champions?” I said.

Right away I was sorry that I’d sounded so disbelieving, but I really was. It was like Duncan had told me that he could flap his arms and fly like a bird.

He gave me a wry smile and said, “A Champion? No, lad, that’s not for the likes of you and me. But Jon needs regular men at arms too, and I was one of those. There’s only a hundred and fifty Champions all told, and that’s if the Company was at full strength–which I don’t know that it ever has been.”

I cleared my throat and said, “Ah, Duncan? You say the Champions aren’t for you and me. Why is that, exactly? Back where I come from, Beune, I’d heard that the Leader takes warriors from all over to fill his Company.”

“Oh, Jon takes warriors from anywhere, you bet,” Duncan said with a snort. “What he doesn’t take is any body. You have to have great equipment even to try. My stuff is good enough to see off a couple bandits on the Road.”

He waggled his weapon and shield, a modular unit. It didn’t impress me, but I hadn’t seen it in use. And I hadn’t been into it in a Maker’s trance, either, which I thought might show me more.

“For the Companions, though,” Duncan continued, “you need the best there is and that costs money. If you’re the lord of a big place like Mar or maybe the son of the top merchant on Castorman, you can afford it. I couldn’t, and I don’t guess Beune runs to that kind of money either.”

He frowned, staring at my equipment. “Now that I come to it,” he said, “where did you come up with this hardware, lad? I’ve never in my life seen anything looking like that.”

“Well…,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. I knew it looked rough. “I made it myself, on Beune. I’ve used it, and it works.”

That was true, but I’d have to admit that neither trial had been much of a test. A half a dozen bullies had arrived from Kleruch, that’s the node with the most people in our neighborhood. They tried to shake down Gammer Kleinze, who keeps what passes for a shop and tavern on Beune. I ran them off, but none of them had a shield and only two had real weapons. I kept my weapon at 20% power so I didn’t have to recharge.

The other time was when something from Not-Here landed in a patch of scrubland near the boundary with the Waste in the north side. Jimsey, who had the nearest farm to it, called me over.

The thing, whatever it was, didn’t have a real shape but it was the size of a barn. I jabbed it a couple times, then hit it full power. That punched a hole clear through and into the Waste beyond, but I had my heart in my mouth when I did it. If the thing had come for me, it’d have been all over. My weapon takes about five minutes to recharge because I’d rebuilt it from a miner’s rock drill.

The thing turned and oozed back into the Waste. None the worse for wear, as best I could tell, but it must not’ve liked the jolt I gave it. I’m not sure it ever knew I was there; if it had eyes or anything like that, I didn’t see them. Where it’d been browsing, not only the plants were gone but all the soil too, and a layer of the limestone bedrock had crumbled to a calcium dust.

“What do you mean you made it, hey?” Duncan said, a little sharper than I’d heard him speak before. “Are you saying you’re a Maker, then? Or are you just playing silly buggers with old Duncan, hey?”

I spread my boots a little farther apart and straightened my back. “Sir!” I said. “I’m a Maker, yes. I’m pretty much self-taught, but out on Beune we learn to make do. My neighbors have been bloody glad to have me around, and I’ve made stuff that peddlers have taken away to sell on too.”

“Well I’ll be,” Duncan said, relaxing again. Our dogs relaxed too. They’d picked up the smell of trouble when Duncan thought I was mocking him. They were both ready to mix it if that was the next thing that happened. “Sorry, lad. I’d taken you for a warrior.”

“I am a warrior,” I said, “or anyway that’s what I’ve come to Dun Add to be. There’s no law against being both, you know.”

“Maybe not,” said Duncan, “but I never heard of it happening.”

“Well, I don’t know that I have either,” I said. Duncan was the closest thing to a friend I had nearer than Beune. Even if I never saw him again, I didn’t want us to have parted on bad terms. “It’s two different ways of looking at the things that the Ancients left. Not everybody’s a warrior, and I guess there’s fewer still that’re Makers.”

I coughed and added, “I don’t claim to be any great shakes. But I’m good for Beune.”

“Just remember you’re not on Beune now, Pal,” Duncan said. “You’re a good lad, but Dun Add is a big place.”

He sighed and said, “I’ll get your money, now, and be right back with it. Bless you for your kindness to an old man who hasn’t always been a good friend to himself.”

Duncan walked over to Dame Carole. There was a line of people waiting from before we arrived, being checked in by a clerk. I guess a place like Dun Add has to have a notion of who’s come in, though it’s not something that you think about in Beune. Nobody much does come to Beune, of course.

It seemed to me that the clerk was doing just fine, but he had an overseer with a plush hat, puffed sleeves, and a pair of bright red galluses holding up his tights. The overseer waited till the clerk had gotten the particulars into a notebook, then snarled at both the clerk and the traveler and snatched the notebook away. The overseer made more marks, then slapped the notebook back into the clerk’s hands.

There was no chance I was going to forget that I wasn’t on Beune anymore. Every moment I stood looking at Dun Add, I more and more regretted leaving home. Buck whined like he was wondering why we’d left too. I rubbed him behind the ears.

The landing place was grassy, though it’d been tramped pretty bare except around the edges between the kiosks. I thought those might be something to do with the government like the clerk and his boss, but when I looked closer they were all selling something or trying to.

Some hawked clothing–“Town clothes! Don’t look like a rube on the streets of Dun Add!” and some were jewelry booths–“Show her that you care, bucko, and she’ll show you that she cares!”

But the most of them, twenty or more, were dram shops. Some fancier than others, but at a glance I wouldn’t expect anything better to drink than the cheap-jack clothes and the trashy baubles from the neighboring hawkers.

I didn’t mind being taken for a rube. I was one, right enough. I wasn’t a bloody fool as to spend my money on the shoddy I saw here, though.

A river, bigger than I’d ever imagined, lay to the left. More of Dun Add stretched along the shore than was down here by the landing place, though that may have been because of rules. The first hundred yards from here toward the castle was by paths through the woods.

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 16

Chain of Command – Snippet 16

Chapter Eight

5 December 2133 (six hours later the same day) (sixteen days from K’tok orbit)

Vice-Captain Takaar Nuvaash, Speaker for the Enemy, ducked his head to avoid a low-mounted circuitry trunk line as he entered the admiral’s tactical center in the rotating habitat wheel of the cruiser KBk Five One Seven. He already had one small patch of spray bandage on his forehead from an earlier collision with an equipment housing. In happier times Nuvaash had served as a liaison officer on two different Human warships and found them much more comfortable than Varoki ships. That was pointed to by some officers as further proof of the frivolous approach Humans took to war. But their ships had not struck Nuvaash as luxurious; their designers had simply paid more attention to their interior layout and to making them easier to use.

Nuvaash paused at the door to the admiral’s office and heard music from inside. The office was soundproof but Nuvaash noticed the slight trace of light along one edge. The door had been left ajar and the bright beauty of the music from within stopped him in his tracks.

Instruments unaccompanied by lyrics painted a rich picture of sunlight and hope and love, and he rested his head on the doorframe, eyes closed, and let it wash through him. It was as if every note surprised him as he heard it, but then reminded him it was the only note which could possibly have followed the ones before, and that of course he should had known that all his life.

The music ended. Nuvaash breathed deeply for a few moments to regain his composure, then rang for entry. The admiral’s voice sounded more gruff than usual and as Nuvaash entered he saw e-Lapeela rubbing his face with both hands, as if to scrub away whatever expression had been there a moment earlier.

“Admiral …I could not help but hear that music. I wonder …can you tell me the composer?”

“Some Human, of course,” the admiral answered. He nearly snarled the words but then he frowned in thought and shook his head. “His name is–was–Jobim. He has been dead for over a century. Have you studied music, Nuvaash?”

“No, admiral, although I have listened to a great deal of theirs, trying to better understand them. I often find it …quite moving.”

e-Lapeela ran his fingers along the surface of his desk, tracing the outline of the visual icon of the music file, his eyes far away.

“As a youngster I studied music,” he said. “I wanted to compose music like that, but I never could. I could understand it, duplicate it, but never create it. You are familiar with the concept of the Sequence of Creation?”

“I have heard of it, Admiral, but I am not familiar with its meaning.”

“It is a simple mathematical progression, beginning with the numbers zero and one, which bracket the moment of creation, the instant when something emerged from nothing. Every number following those two consists of the sum of the two which came before, so: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and on forever.

“It is not simply some mathematical curiosity; it is a sequence which repeats throughout the natural world. It describes the rate of creation of seeds in a plant, the multiplication of cells within an organism, the rate of decay of radioactive isotopes. Its ascending ratio perfectly defines every naturally occurring organic spiral, such as the carapace of many aquatic animals.

“All of the six races have studied it. How could they fail to notice something so omnipresent in nature? We call it the Sequence of Creation. The Katami call it The Pulse of God. Humans call it the Fibonacci Sequence. Trust them to name it after one of their own.”

“I see, Admiral,” Nuvaash said, although he did not see what this had to do with either music or their war.

e-Lapeela looked at him and his expression hardened. He tapped the icon on his desktop.

“Music follows a sequence of recurring and non-recurring harmonics, sounds at different frequencies. Given the natural relation between frequencies and their progressions, it is possible to chart the likelihood that a particular note will come next in a composition, and whether it will be of a certain length. I see that means nothing to you, but trust me as a former scholar of music, it is so.”

E-Lapeela’s eyes had grown wide, his ears lay flat back against his skull, and his voice became more intense as he spoke. Nuvaash felt a flash of danger, as people often do when they suspect they are in the presence of either madness or genius.

“Most music is communally generated, and is designed to be participatory” e-Lapeela went on. “As a result, it must rely on predictable and repetitive patterns of rhythm and harmonics.  But Human music includes a class of compositions designed to be communicated from the musician to the audience. The different races have wide varieties of music, but for some reason only this Human presentational music consistently reaches across the racial and cultural barriers, and appeals to the souls of all the intelligent species of the Cottohazz. How can that be? How is that even possible? I will tell you.

“Mathematically generated music is produced simply by varying how closely the creation of the next note adheres to expectation, based on what has come before.  If the probability is set very high, the music is rhythmic but repetitive, predicable, even dull. If it is set very low, the sound is nothing more than random noise. You understand that these are two extremes on a continuum?”

“I believe I understand that, Admiral.”

“If you study Human presentational music Nuvaash, if you study it as I have, you will find the pattern of progression of harmonic frequencies and rhythms is, nearly–but not quite–predictable. It sometimes delays the satisfaction of expectation, sometimes anticipates it, but over and over and over again, its likelihood of matching expectation is described by the Sequence of Creation. The Sequence of Creation, Nuvaash. And when we hear it, without knowing exactly why, we sense that it is …right.

“How can they so instinctively know that? It is as if Creation itself whispers in the Human soul, and speaks to us through their music.”

Nuvaash felt momentarily dizzy thinking about what that might mean. The admiral had not asked him to do so but he sat down in the chair facing the desk. For some time they sat together in silence.

“Do not let this information seduce you, Nuvaash,” the admiral finally said. “The Humans do not speak for Creation. Are you religious?”

Nuvaash blushed. Religion was the most private of matters, seldom if ever discussed in public.

“It does not matter,” e-Lapeela said. “My point is that I am not a mystic myself. I do not know that I believe in Creation. But I believe in blasphemy. How can the one exist without the other? I do not know how they can, only that there is something …abominable about Humans. If there is Creation, why would it speak through these crude, violent, evil beings? Why not speak through us?

“They are like demons, Nuvaash, and they will consume us. They are a plague. We must be the physicians who heal the Cottohazz, and the healing must begin here. Do you see?”

“Yes, Admiral, I see,” Nuvaash said, but what he saw most clearly was an obsession in the admiral bordering on madness.

E-Lapeela’s ears fanned out from his skull and his skin took on a slight orange anger tint.

“Our people are at a crossroads. Our governments are corrupt, the civilians softened by decades of luxury and now embittered when times grow only slightly harder. The coup in our own nation a year ago might have begun setting things right but we relied upon the ground forces to control the cities. Only one task did we entrusted them with, and they were not even capable of carrying that out!

“Now our navy is humiliated, many of our most visionary admirals and politician are in detention or dead, their voices stilled. Weak fools run the government.”

That the government was weak and corrupt was not news to Nuvaash, nor was the fact that ever since the disastrous failed coup the uBakai Star Navy’s loyalty had been an open question. But Nuvaash wondered why, given all of that, the government had authorized this reckless war.

The Admiral stood up and continued speaking, now more animated, more angry.

“The Cottohazz, which we Varoki created, which was once a bulwark of our primacy, is now only concerned with the rules and regulations of its massive bureaucracy–and satisfying the whining grievances of the lesser races.

“Only victory in this war can restore the Star Navy to its position of respect,” e-Lapeela continued, his ears relaxing back again, his skin clearing, “and give our people a vision of destiny worth fighting for. Do you see it, Nuvaash? Only victory matters.”

“Of course, sir,” Nuvaash answered soothingly, “only victory. But in that regard I have …questions. What is our real objective? How are we to achieve it with such limited forces? And as you say, the Navy is demoralized, the government uninterested in anything other than shoring up its political security.”

“Our objective is to destroy the Human will to resist, to question, and to expand. K’tok is only the pretext, the inciting event.

“Our resources are greater than you imagine, Nuvaash, because they are not limited to those solely of Bakaa. Others stand behind us, in the shadows, but they will emerge when the time is right.

“And the Humans will never understand what is happening to them until it is too late.”

*****

“Where the hell do you get off poaching my officers?” Lieutenant Larry Goldjune, the Ops Boss, demanded as he floated through the door to the XO’s office.

Sam looked up from the script he was drafting for the hologram message he’d record and send to the parents of Machinist Mate Second Class Pulaski, Vincent J., of Joliet, Illinois. Pulaski had died when the first uBakai pellet hit Puebla and evacuated the forward machinery spaces where he was conducting routine maintenance on the thermal shroud retractor. Pulaski had not died immediately, nor easily, and Sam had been trying to find a way around sharing that information when Goldjune’s outburst interrupted him.

“Where do you get off storming into my office without knocking and waiting for permission?”

“Don’t pull that XO crap on me, Bitka. It’s not going to fly.”

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 24

Iron Angels – Snippet 24

Chapter 14

The wail subsided, but the goose bumps on his arms remained.

The group of people, perhaps a half dozen, stood on the cracked sidewalk in front of the house on Ivy Street, a drab aluminum-sided number with a screen door hanging askew and a crumbling brick walkway — pretty standard for this section of town.

“Any of you the owner?”

They all shook their heads. “What’s going on?” a reedy Hispanic man asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Temple said. “Anyone know the owner?”

“He’s some crusty old white guy,” the Hispanic man said. “Yabutski or something.”

“A get-off-my-lawn sort of fella?” Jasper asked.

The Hispanic man smiled, revealing a bit of gold in his grill. “Yeah.”

“Do me a favor, you all stay back a bit while we check this out.”

“You cops or something?”

“Or something.”

Jasper nearly yanked the screen door clean off and rapped on the door.

The door whisked open and he was met by a whiskery old man, peering at him with one eye squinted almost shut and wild white hair resembling a bird’s nest. “And what do you want?”

“Uh, are you Mr. Yabutski? Didn’t you phone in a complaint earlier?”

“Yeah,” the old man said, “to the no-good cops around here. Who in the hell are you two? The mod squad or something? And it’s Yablonski, goddamnit.”

Jasper rolled his eyes. “You want us to check out the disturbance or what?”

“Don’t you have some identification?”

Temple flipped open her credential case and thrust it in the man’s face.

The old man pulled back. “Hey, what is this? I asked for the cops, not the goddamned G-men, err, G-women. Oh, never mind.”

“We’re FBI, and interested in a few other goings on around this area. Mind if we check out the animal attack?”

“Pfft, ain’t no animal attack if you ask me.”

“Then why did you phone in a complaint?”

“Because no one would have taken me seriously if I told them my real thoughts, and don’t think I’m not aware you all maintain a crazy file.”

Jasper grinned — the old man wasn’t wrong. “Okay, so what do you believe? Take us back.”

“Come inside. Come inside. Can’t have all those people,” he nodded toward the crowd on the sidewalk, “nosing about my business. As it is, they think I’m off my rocker. But I’m not that far gone, not yet.”

The interior was about as Jasper expected — an old man’s idea of freedom. Dirty dishes on a TV tray next to a recliner, and another stack on an ottoman not used as a footrest for quite some time. Thick dust covered much of the available surfaces save for the recliner. Pictures on the wall were off kilter and faded from sunlight, and cobwebs laced the room nearly as much as the drapes covered all the windows. Mustiness mingled with rotten food and body odor created a miasma making Jasper want to head for the backyard and confront the danger rather than breathe in and taste the nastiness inside.

“It’s little green men,” the old man blurted out. “Or a chupacabra, all those Mexicans around here, you never know.”

“For crying out loud,” Jasper said.

Temple sighed.

“I’m not crazy,” the old man said. “You go.”

“We will, but first put on your tin foil hat, that’ll help protect you from the rays of Uranus.”

“I’m not crazy. There’s aliens, I tell you.”

“Yeah, or a chupacabra, I heard you.” Jasper took a deep breath and regretted the exasperation as he’d allowed all the foulness of the air to penetrate his lungs.

“The wailing ceased as you two walked up, now you gonna check it out or what?”

Jasper motioned for Temple to follow him. He flicked the back light on, a bright spotlight that could burn the hairs off the healthiest head of hair and peered through the back door’s grime-caked window. “I got nothing. Gonna open the door.”

He cracked the door and listened.

“Still nothing.” He crouched, lifted his left pant leg, and removed his baby Glock from the ankle holster. “You packing?”

“Already have mine out, you ready?”

Jasper stood and opened the door. He performed two quick peeks, but saw nothing along the walls on either side of the door.

“What else is out back?”

“A shed and a few lines for hanging laundry.”

Temple snorted. “This guy probably only gets around to doing laundry once every couple of months.

A slurping noise got Jasper’s full attention.

“Hold on, I hear something.” He held a finger to his lips, but kept his focus on the back yard. He reached over and flicked off the interior lights — no point in giving whomever or whatever roamed back there a glimpse of them before necessary.

Jasper hesitated. Temple’s hand found his shoulder, as if at once providing both comfort and a nudge to exit the house.

He eased open the door and took a hesitant step out, scanning the areas of danger for any movement, but saw nothing. The wood step beneath him creaked under his full weight. He winced.

The slurping ceased.

“Must be behind the shed,” he whispered.

Temple squeezed his shoulder.

Crimson haze enveloped the ramshackle shed. That was perhaps a trick of the light, but the haze was nowhere else. A strange odor — not exactly putrid, but definitely not pleasant — smacked him in the face. He imagined a dead deer on the side of the road for a few days along with a sickly sweet twist, as if someone had dumped a bottle of cheap perfume on the poor animal.

“There’s something behind the shed.”

The slurping erupted into a sloshing, squishy noise.

Jasper ran for the shed, flashlight and Glock at the ready to expose and deal with whatever horror lurked.

“Wait!” Temple cried after him.

He slipped on the wet grass and slid into the front of the shed. The old man must have run his sprinklers recently, even though there hadn’t been any shortage of rain over the past couple of weeks. The grass was pretty slick.

The haze congealed alongside the shed, but then disappeared behind.

Jasper scrambled to his feet.

Temple cried out something inarticulate, halfway between a warning shout and a scream.

He glanced back at her and his body chilled. Her eyes and mouth were wide and her hands shook, causing her Glock to wave about wildly. Jasper spun back for another look at the shed and was met by what appeared to be a rather large beast — but strangely ephemeral as if occupying two worlds at once, not fully in one or the other. He shook his head, and stepped back, raising both Glock and flashlight.

The shape before him was similar to the dragon shape outside the Euclid Hotel. The dragon’s crimson tendrils extended from the broad snout and reached for him, groping the air, but yanked back when Jasper thrust his Glock forward. The dragon’s shape morphed, now resembling a giant sea creature, something prehistoric. Then, abruptly, it vanished.

“Holy shit.” He hadn’t smoked in years, but the habit suddenly appealed to him again. A stiff drink sounded better, though — too bad he didn’t carry a flask.

“I told you,” a voice said from behind him, and coughed. “See?”

“Sir, you need to get back in your house.” Temple’s voice trembled, all her fierceness vanished.

The door rattled.

“The old man’s back inside,” Temple said.

“Let’s check this out.” He took a step, but hesitated. Stopping now was out of the question — he was charged with protecting others — but he felt so inadequate at the moment, as if the beast stole his courage upon vanishing. He turned toward Temple. “Did you see the strange shape?”

 

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 16

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 16

Chapter Fourteen: The Postscript

Ursel paused a moment to force herself completely back to the present.

The scroll. The postscript from Ulla.

Wannas Kittamaquand standing against the sun, giving her shade to read in. Unaware of the reason she was tearing up.

Ursel sniffed, wipe away another tear, and made herself look back down at the unopened scroll.

She could do something about that, at least.

She took her knife from its sheath on her belt, and cut the seal. She rolled this scroll out on top of the first. Ursel recognized Ulla’s personal, flowing script. She’d written this bit herself. She began to read.

Dearest Ursel,

I don’t know if I can forgive Wulf for his selfishness. All right, I know I will, but really he’s gone too far. I understand how he feels. I love Saeunn, too. The thought that she might be fading before our eyes twists my stomach into knots.

But we all have our duty. And the mark seems to be in its greatest peril in a generation. He’s needed here. He needs to talk to the dragon under our feet. He needs to make a decision on war.

My heart warns me that a terrible trial may await my brother before he is done traveling this road he has chosen. Of course I may be giving in to my own fears. But if my worries prove to be true, I want to have done something. I want to have set some plan in motion that has a chance of keeping the disaster into which I suspect my brother is headed from leading to his death and the end of our freedom.

My, I sound melodramatic, even to myself. I’m sure that my fears are mostly phantasms because I’m worried about Wulf.

Nevertheless, what I would like most is to have you there to look out for him. I say this, first of all, because I know how you feel about Wulf.

Second of all, speaking as your regent, I have a job for you. Think of it as an unpaid government appointment.

Ursel, I know you are extremely competent in ways both physical and mental. It’s a rare combination, and frankly, you’re the only person I know in the mark who has a chance at succeeding at this assignment.

What assignment?

Find Wulf.

Stop him from doing something idiotic. 

Well, more idiotic.

If you can’t stop him, then I want you to help him out of whatever bog he throws himself into.

I think you understand duty better than most. I also know that you are someone I can depend on. You saved my brother’s life once–and did it in style, with an arrow shot worthy of mention in a saga, from what I’ve heard.

From what I’ve been told, you are not merely your father’s recording secretary, you are at this point running both the household and the county.

Your brothers are fine folk–I went to university with Hans and Frederic, you know–but it’s also clear they trust you with the big decisions. Your father talks openly about having settled an incredible dowry upon you. He made this very clear to Wulf.

Some may doubt he’ll follow through when it comes down to it. Bear folk with bear folk, some people say. Humans with humans.

I know he will.

And since I understand how you feel about my brother, I have had a few trusted advisers do some poking around in the Shwartzwald concerning just who you are.

Most interesting.

The story goes that you were found in the woods by the earl while he was out hunting one day. It is a very striking tale.

Deep in the forest, there is a thick grove of beech saplings that has been carefully cultivated by the woodsmen of the western valley. Iron nails are driven into the trunks of each beech sapling. The tree is then left to grow around the metal. When it’s done properly, the nail heads are fixed in place. You have the makings of a war club as deadly as any mace or morning star.

When the beeches are big enough, dangerous enough with their embedded nails, they are harvested. Cut to lengths. And made into deadly striking weapons for peasants who can’t afford swords.

So picture that. A grove of war-club beeches, nails driven into every tree, impassable even for most forest animals, especially the dangerous ones. And in the middle of this impregnable thicket? A little baby girl.

The story goes that a poor family who could not afford another mouth to feed put you there, a babe in the woods. But they couldn’t leave you to be eaten by wolves, bears, or any other terrible creature. So they put you in the safest place for a baby in the forest.

The middle of this specially cultivated war-club beech grove.

For all practical purpose, nothing can get into a beech war-club grove. It is like a little nest of nails. There you were safe from the bear and the wolf.

But, of course, left to starve to death.

So the story goes the bear man earl heard your hungry cries from the middle of this little grove. And, not caring a bit about himself, waded into that thicket. He was willing to cut and tear his own hide on the war-club beech trees to get you out.

And still Earl Keiler couldn’t reach you. The nails were too sharp, the thicket too dense.

I can see it now.

Still you cry.

The soft heart of the earl melts.

He orders axes brought up by his servants. He directs them to chop down those beeches so he can rescue the baby from within.

The war clubs must be sacrificed!

The question never answered in all the reports I have heard: how did you get in there in the first place?

If no one could get to you, how did your poor parents put you there?

Well, let us set that question aside for the moment.

Back to Earl Keiler.

So the earl has the beeches chopped down. He steps over the stumps to find the little babe. He plucks you up, babe, blanket, and basket–yes, I hear that you were found in a basket of woven oak strips, according to this legend, wrapped in a woolen red riding cape.

The great bear man is entranced with your sweetness. He loves your little cries, which sound very much like a cub’s cries for its mother. So he takes you back to Bear Hall. Lady Hilda, his wife, doesn’t like you at first. After all, you are a mewling human girl.

But you smile at her, and soon she warms to you. She raises you as the daughter she never had.

You grow up the enchanted foundling, the good luck charm of House Keiler.

It’s a wonderful story your family tells.

But that isn’t how it went at all, is it?

What I am saying to you is that, even knowing what I know about who you really are, what you really are, if there was ever a chance you might join my family, I, for one, would welcome you with open arms.

Wulf cannot marry Saeunn. Someday, after he realizes this in his heart of hearts, he may learn to love another.

I would not mind in the slightest if that other were you, Ursel Keiler. Daughter to bears.

Your sincere friend,

Ulla Smead

Ursel found herself blushing. She was thankful that Wannas had finally ceased staring at her. He had gone to confer with his men and was not watching her.

So.

Ulla was asking her, Ursel, to guide Wannas Kittamaquand to find Wulf.

Ursel didn’t for a moment think she would be able to win Wulf from Saeunn.

Ulla was dreaming when it came to that.

But there was no reason to avoid him.

It wasn’t like being away got her heart to grow less fond of him.

After all, whether Wulf wanted to or not, he was going to be duke of the mark one day, probably soon. His father, Duke Otto, with his mental wasting disease, was fading. Everyone knew it. And whether Ursel wanted it or not, she was a true child of House Keiler, the most powerful Tier family in the land.

She and Wulf would be seeing a lot of each other over the coming years.

That is if the Romans and Sandhaveners don’t overrun us all first, Ursel thought. And in that case, I’ll be dead.

She knew she would defend her family and her land until her last breath–and go down fighting.

But right now she needed to do all she could to make sure it didn’t come to that.

She carefully rolled up the correspondence from Ulla and tucked both under her bedroll. This was in a satchel she always carried on hunts.

Inside the satchel also was her small looking glass.

On a whim, she took it out. For a moment, she gave in and allowed herself to gaze into it.

What is wrong with him?

I’m not so bad. Not so bad at all.

Cold hell.

What is wrong with me?

For a moment, a red-brown glow came into her eyes.

A “dasein ring,” some called this. It was a telltale marker for her kind.

My kind, Ursel thought. What I am.

She raised a finger and touched a sharp tooth.

So Ulla knew.

One day her deepest secret may be out to all, Ursel thought. She was now old enough to deal with the bigotry this would arouse. It was prejudice the Keiler family had been shielding her from for years.

For now, though, she would keep it to herself.

She would remain just Ursel. Commoner. Foundling.

Instead of what she really was.

Sister to bears.

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 15

Chain of Command – Snippet 15

“Damaged?” Sam asked, nodding toward the open missile.

“Not so’s I can see, sir. We wasn’t hit back here but we take some jolts. I pull open every bird, run the internal diagnostics, make sure no ostie de crisse parts got shook loose, yeah?”

Listening to her mix of English and bits of Quebecois slang again reminded Sam of the yawning social gulf between Menzies and Filipenko. It was more than just enlisted and officer, it also had to do with education, experiences, and mannerisms. Filipenko’s background–growing up on Bronstein’s World–had toughened her, but not the same way the slums of Ottawa-Gatineau had toughened Menzies.

Sam hadn’t had a problem with her. He’d grown up with kids like her, at least when he was getting older. Also, he’d spent a year and a half in his company’s Montreal service center and had acquired a smattering of Quebecois trash talk. Filipenko, though …

“Good thinking, checking out the missiles.” Sam told Menzies. He turned to Filipenko and gestured to the massive cradles lining the hull of the missile room.  “These are our real stingers and nobody knows them better than Menzies. Chief, do the honors.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Menzies laid her hand on the open missile casing. “The DSIM-5 Bravo– Deep Space Intercept Missile Mark Five B. We call her the Mark Five Fire Lance. Manufactured by Lockheed-Siemens, this is the latest block four version: it has the better energy storage system and tweaked targeting mechanics.”

“I know some of that,” Filipenko said. “It has a nuclear warhead, right?”

“Yes, ma’am, here in the belly.”

She patted the smooth composite housing of the missile on the maintenance station and then explained how the thirty laser rods up front all aligned on target and then, when the nuclear warhead detonated, were completely vaporized, but not before–for just an instant, fewer than five nanoseconds–they were engorged with energy and discharged that energy in thirty incredibly powerful bolts of coherent x-ray energy.

“If it has a nuclear warhead, why not just crash it into their ships?”

Menzies glanced quickly at Sam and then back at Filipenko, her face expressionless.

“The missile can evade and it releases two dozen radar decoys, which can get it closer to the enemy ship. But the point defense lasers–at a certain range they do not miss something the size of a missile. But the fire lance only has to get within five thousand kilometers. It detonates and the x-ray lasers do the rest, tabarnak.”

Filipenko colored slightly with embarrassment and frowned. “Yes, of course. I remember, I’ve just been away from this for a while. But why thirty rods? Why not just one big one?”

“Insurance, ma’am. At them ranges it don’t take much deflection to miss: some vibration faible, the target starts to evade, you see? Thirty rods means a pattern of thirty shots, like the shotgun. Also we can independently target each rod ostie, take out up to thirty targets …or so they say.”

“What makes you think it won’t?”

Menzies looked back at the missile and frowned.

“Well, ma’am, is all new stuff, yeah?  Lots of times this new de saint-sacrament de câlice stuff don’t work as advertised. BuOrd says is fine, but they always say that. I hear talk–misaligned rods missing the targets in some tests, missing big.”

Filipenko eyebrows went up a fraction but her expression remained cool. “The Bureau of Ordnance is responsible for testing and evaluation. From what I know, they are very thorough.”

“Well, ma’am,” Menzies answered, with an edge of challenge in her voice, “is hard to pull them apart and see why mon crisse de missile is broke-dick-no-workee after it’s fired, being reduced to radioactive dust and all.”

“Thanks for the briefing, Chief,” Sam said quickly, now anxious to get Filipenko away before she and her chief petty officer started shouting at each other.

Sam led Filipenko back toward the spine of the boat. Sam had no idea which one was right about BuOrd–the Bureau of Ordnance. He knew nothing about their testing protocols, but he knew something about how the corporate world worked, and he knew there was a steady stream of former BuOrd officers moving into VP jobs at Lockeed-Siemens.

“You may be right about BuOrd,” Sam said once they were back in the transit tube. “Hope so. But the real takeaway here is that Menzies knows her stuff,”

Filipenko nodded. “Yes, I picked that up. I’m not crazy about her attitude, though. Wasn’t there a discipline problem?”

Sam could have said the problem was Del Huhn’s sexual frustration, his temporary mania for rooting out every sexual affair between enlisted personnel, but he couldn’t say that, and what did it matter now anyway?

“Peacetime stuff,” he said, “and nothing to do with her job performance. Don’t worry about that. This is what’s important.” He gestured toward the hatches to the two missile rooms on opposite sides of the transit tube. “This is Puebla’s reason for existing.”

Filipenko frowned and looked at Sam for a moment. “You really love this stuff, don’t you?”

Sam glanced around and shrugged. “I like hardware and I like tactical theory. I’m not sure I’d like throwing these monsters at living targets nearly as much.”

Sam said the words because it would ease Filipenko’s path, but it wasn’t really true. He did want to fire these missiles into an uBakai naval formation and watch it come apart. Part of it was a hunger for revenge, whose growing heat had begun to replace some of the dead, black places in his heart. But part of it was something possibly more primitive still–the thrill of the hunt.

Filipenko looked around half-heartedly. “It all seems so … mechanical. The point defense lasers are controlled by that automated fire control system–what’s it called again?”

“ATITEP,” Sam said, “Automated Threat Identification, Tracking, and Engagement Protocol.”

“Yes, that one,” Filipenko said. “We don’t make any decisions except to turn the system on or off–guns up or guns down. We maintain these missiles but most of the firing decisions on them are made by ATITEP, as well.”

“You’re mostly right,” Sam said. “This is all pretty mechanical. Setting up the shot window, keeping the enemy from detecting you until you’re in that window–those are the tough parts.”

“But astrogation does most of that,” she said. “What do I do other than …preside?”

“Presiding–if you want to call it that–is what a department head does. It’s ninety-nine percent of your job: keep the equipment running, keep your personnel trained, disciplined, and effective. That other one percent is sitting in the Tac One seat when people are shooting at us, and you giving the captain the best tactical advice you can.”

“Which I know nothing about,” she said and shook her head.

Sam thought that the unspoken second half of that sentence might have been, nor do I want to.

“Look, Filipenko, I know you’d rather stay in Operations. Honestly, I’d be happier running Tactical. Somewhere on the boat there’s probably someone who wants to wear ballet slippers and be called Princess Anastasia. But since none of that is going happen, why dwell on it?

“We’ve got a couple weeks to get ready, especially since they pulled us out of the first wave. I’ve got some drills slated that will sharpen your tactical thinking, bring back those course lessons from a few years ago. You’ll get the hang of it quicker than you think. I bet you’ll make a good Tac Boss.”

“Well, thanks for the confidence,” she said, although without much enthusiasm.

“Hey, it’s not rocket surgery. I got pretty good at it and I’m just a dumb reservist. You’re got The Ring of Power, so how tough can it be?”

She looked at her Annapolis class ring and smiled at that, but Sam knew words could only do so much. What Filipenko really needed was just to get into the routine of the job and build up some confidence. He pointed back to the missiles.

“Look, deep space tactics are easy. It’s all a matter of speed and distance. If you can put a Mark Five Fire Lance within five thousand kilometers of an enemy ship, it will take care of the rest. In order to get it where you want it, you point the boat in the direction you want the missile to go and shoot it out of our spinal coil gun. The coil gun’s a linear magnetic accelerator that runs from here all the way up to the bow, right through the boat, just ventral of this access tube. It kicks the missile out with an exit velocity of six kilometers per second. If you know the relative velocity of the target, it’s grade school arithmetic to figure out whether you can put a missile moving six kilometers per second within five thousand kilometers of it.”

“There’s more to it than just that,” Filipenko said.

“Well, sure. That’s why they pay us. But that’s the core of the problem: putting one of our missiles within killing range of a target. Everything else is a variation on that theme.

“This is your job now. To do it right you have to understand your tools–and your people. You’ve got a good weapons division chief in there. She may be a little rough around the edges, but she’ll help you learn the ropes and she won’t let you down in a crisis. You just need to get along with her.”

“Sure. The way you get along with the captain.”