I wanted to get more of Ghost's story done, but yesterday didn't at all work as planned. I meant to finish the next Near-Apocalypse article, the final My Little Po-Mo, and today's post. Instead I got more and more distractible and tired as the day wore on, so it got to be 8 p.m. and I was still only 80% through the MLP, struggling to force my way through, and I just couldn't. So I gave up and played STO the rest of the evening, so you get another chunk of the Xenosaga. Click the "der wanderer..." tag if you forgot where we left off. (Tumblr users and possibly people on feeds, you'll have to click through to the blog first.)
"Daaaaasraaaa," called Aser. "Ohhh Daaasraaa. Dasra!" Damn it, that girl was never around when he needed her. He'd made it to the benighted little planet his prey was on in five hops. One more had taken him to the large desert that was the one part of the planet flat enough to build a spaceport in. Somewhere in this ridiculous capital, his quarry was trying to sell the Primus' shiny new toy--and Dasra wasn't around to tell Aser where!
"Ah well," he said. "I suppose I'll just have to check the usual places for spacers to spend their time." He flew the UR Hod overland to the spaceport, looking for somewhere to dock it.
Just outside the spaceport, Seth's crew finally managed to find an open bar. It was local mid-morning, so most places were closed; fortunately, this close to the spaceport, there were enough offworlders running on different clocks to fill one bar.
"I'm not sure I like the looks of this place," said Wehj.
Vix looked around. The dim, smoky interior of the bar was half-filled with a mix of spacers in a wide variety of dress and local alcoholics getting an early start. The locals, just like everybody she'd seen on the streets outside, seemed to dress in nothing but loose brown and rust, with scarves and hoods they had to pull aside in order to drink. The bar was extremely bare -- unpadded seats, exposed pipes in the ceiling, everything made of some dark, hard stone. Nothing was clean. "It looks perfect," she said.
"Are you serious?"
"Absolutely," said Vix. "Weren't you looking around outside? We passed four different churches on the way here. Bethelians are clearly a spiritual people, which means their booze is going to suck."
"Then why are we bothering?"
"Poor, naïve, foolish boy," Vix teased, "don't you get it? On a planet with good booze, you find the best in the best bars. On a planet with bad booze, you find the least bad in the worst bars. It's just how it works."
"If you say so..." said Wehj. They sat at a table and a surly-looking waitress silently brought them dirty mugs full of pale-brown liquid. "Um..." said Wehj.
"What, were you expecting a wine list?" asked Vix. "Drink it. It's been long enough."
Wehj sighed and took a sip. "Gah!" he said. "You could strip paint with this."
"Bye-bye, brain cells!" said Vix, and downed half her mug at a gulp. "Ah," she sighed. "Blessed boozehol. Mommy missed you."
Wehj took another sip. "Okay, it's a little strong, but it's not bad."
"There, you see? Told you."
About twenty minutes later, a man entered the bar. "Hey, check it out," said Wehj. "He doesn't look like a local."
Vix half-turned to look at the entrance. The man was tall and gangly, with prominent elbows. He was blonde and pale, and wore a form-fitting green jumpsuit that left his arms bare. A large symbol on the jumpsuit's chest, an inverted cross topped by a spreading tree and flanked by stylized wings, marked him as an Ormus monk. A pair of crossed swords above the tree might have indicated his order, but Vix wasn't sure. "A monk," she said. "Not the kind of guy you expect to come into a bar like this."
"I don't like the looks of him," Wehj whispered.
Vix had to agree. There was a strange look in his eyes, like he was laughing at a private joke at everyone else's expense. He moved wrong, too. He was unnaturally still, mostly, and when he did move, it was suddenly, swiftly, and precisely, almost mechanical. She considered the possibility that he might be some kind of Realian, then discarded it. He wasn't pretty enough to be artificial.
"I'm looking for the crew of the Isolde," he said. "They have something I wish to buy."
Wehj shook his head at Vix, but she ignored him. "I'm the pilot of the Isolde. Pull up a chair."
He walked over to them with swift small steps. "I prefer to stand." The corner of his mouth twitched as if he were struggling to keep from laughing, and Wehj shivered.
"We can't sell you anything ourselves, but the captain should be back from his delivery in an hour or two. You can talk to him then."
"The captain..." said Aser, rolling the words in his mouth, tasting them. "Where has he gone?"
"None of your business, is it?" Vix appeared utterly nonchalant, but alarm bells were ringing in her head. Something told her that she was speaking to a killer.
Anger flashed briefly across Aser's face, to be replaced by a broad smile that didn't touch his eyes.
"Of course, of course! The legendary privacy and independence of free traders. Mustn't tread on that." He laughed a little too long. "Well, if you could inform your captain that a potential buyer wishes to speak with him, I will return in the afternoon." He turned on his heel and walked out of the bar.
Vix looked down at her cup. "I've lost my taste for booze," she said. "Come on, let's go find some lunch, then go back to the ship and wait for the captain. Soon as he gets back from the refugee camp, we should leave. Go to Ur-Chaldis or something, wait for buyers there."
"Yeah," said Wehj. "I don't want to be on the same planet when this guy comes looking for us."
The two walked out of the bar. As soon as they turned the corner, Aser stepped out of the alleyway and reentered the bar.
"Now!" he said. "Who wants to tell me what they said after I left?"
A few pairs of eyes looked up at him, then returned to their drinks.
"I said," he giggled, "who wants to tell me what they said?"
"What's in it for us?" slurred a local, blinking over his twelfth cup.
Aser moved across the room with blinding speed, upending the local's chair and slamming him into the floor. "Survival," Aser said, grinning, his hand tightening around the man's throat.
A dozen chairs creaked or fell as their occupants jumped to their feet. Several ran for the door, only to be brought up short when the half-choked man Aser had been holding crashed into it and slid to the ground, moaning.
Two spacers came at Aser with knives. He laughed as he killed them with a single blow each.
***
A city in space, a world unto itself, the Dammerung floated in space. More than five hundred years ago, it had been the headquarters of the mighty Vector Corporation, a neutral power on par with the Immigrant Fleet and the Federation. After the Gnosis War, when the Dark Ages began, Vector collapsed, and Scientia took the city-ship over and devoted it entirely to research, to preserving and extending the knowledge of mankind.
For the Dammerung was no longer merely a ship the size of a city or a city built into a ship. It was a university the size of a city, built into a ship. Like any university, it had a plethora of committees and subcommittees, departments and colleges. One stood above all the others, however: the Council of Deans.
Here they met to discuss the important matters that affected all Scientia, the plans and policies, budgets and projects. Each of them represented the interests of one great College. Some were academic leaders, such as the Dean of Cosmology and Physics; others were concerned with more temporal affairs, such as the Quartermaster. Still others stood entirely alone, their position on the Council guaranteed by tradition, but the reasoning forgotten by all (excepting always HANA, of course, who would explain if asked, but no one ever did).
No matter the reason for their presence, each of these men and women was considered equal. Each possessed one and only one vote in their deliberations. No one could claim precedence over the others, and for this reason they were arrayed on either long side of the table.
Except one. The Director-Captain of the Dammerung sat alone at the head of the table. She alone could force a debate to close without a vote. She alone could demand an immediate vote on any issue she chose. She decided who sat on what subcommittee, and her approval was required for any budget. In times of crisis, she could even claim sole control of the ship for the duration, in her capacity as its captain.
She was reputed to be the most powerful person in the cluster. Her power was checked only by the Council itself, which could vote to replace her; in practice, however, deft political maneuvering could ensure that there were always more Deans who gained by her position as Director-Captain than gained by replacing her. Few Director-Captains had ever left office by means other than retirement or natural death in the five centuries since the legendary Momo Mizrahi had assumed and combined the positions formerly held by her equally legendary parents.
The current Director-Captain was the twenty-second to hold that title. Kara Mizrahi-Dirdan was a slim, tall, regal-looking woman with iron-gray hair pulled back in a tight bun. She radiated an aura of confidence and power, unsurprising in the woman who had held the title of "most powerful person in the cluster" for nineteen years.
All that power, unfortunately, was not enough to escape committee meetings.
"And so it appears necessary that, in order to minimize inefficiencies, we must vertically integrate the departments providing ship functions," droned the Provost, and insufferably tweedy old man who'd served three Director-Captains with precise, fussy, mind-numbing distinction.
Enough was enough; he'd been talking for nearly half an hour without sitting down. That wasn't unheard of, but with the Provost, half an hour could seem like an eternity. "Summary conclusion to discussion," Mizrahi-Dirdan said. "All in favor?"
The Provost's own hand waved pathetically in the air.
"All opposed?" Mizrahi-Dirdan's own hand was joined by two others. The other forty eyes in the room were still completely glazed over. "HANA, record one in favor, three opposed, twenty abstentions. Motion defeated. Next item?" The Provost sat down, looking disgruntled. Doubtless he'd bring up the same scheme next time he found a patsy willing to second the motion, but hopefully that would be a while.
The Secretary glanced at his tablet. By tradition that had the force of law, he was neither a professor nor an officer, but a Hydroponics, Security, or Maintenance worker selected at random once each year. Besides keeping track of the agenda and reading the minutes (both provided to him, of course, by HANA), he had the same single vote of any other member, though he nearly always abstained. "Report by SDI Chief on destruction of Affiliate on Ur."
Mizrahi-Dirden nodded to the Chief of Security, Defense, and Intelligence, who stood. "Madame Captain," he acknowledged. He tapped his own tablet, and a hologram projector in the center of the table lit up, displaying a map of the Lesser Spiral Galaxy with the Fifth Jerusalem Sector marked. As he spoke, it zoomed in to display the region, showing the tiny Ur system in the neutral area between the two powers -- the Fifth Jerusalem Federation and the Empire of Artaxerxes -- that dominated the region. "As most of you by now know, a matter of hours ago, the Gate Station in the Ur system picked up a burst of radiation consistent with catastrophic asymmetry from the southwest quadrisphere of Ur itself. Repeated attempts to contact our Affiliate in that area have since failed."
"Is it the disappearance phenomenon?" asked the Dean of Humanities fearfully.
The SDI Chief shook his head. "The burst was consistent with a Hilbert Atrophy bomb. We've monitored coded transmissions among Ur's investigators. Apparently, they believe it's a terrorist attack, backed by either a militant Fleet Church splinter group or a pro-FJF faction trying to look like the Fleet Church, it's not clear."
"Damn," said the Dean of Social Sciences. "Either way, it's going to destabilize the region still further, and possibly push Ur into joining one side or the other. I believe we'll soon see a fourth Federation-Artaxerxes War over the matter."
"And that, coupled with the internal instability of both empires..." said Humanities. She looked thoughtful. "It could seriously delay the renaissance we expect the completion of the IS Gate system to bring. You all know that the Fifth Jerusalem Sector is one of the likeliest places for it to begin."
"There's a more immediate concern," said the Dean of Engineering. "The Original was being kept there. Its loss represents a serious setback for several projects."
"Engineering projects," scoffed the Dean of Physics. "Need I remind you that the completion of the IS Gate System, though a matter deserving of celebration, is not the final stage of Project Tetragrammaton? That remains, as it has always been, our highest priority."
"I'd like to see you finish Tetragrammaton without engineers," countered Engineering.
"What about trade?" asked the Quartermaster. "We've been getting a lot of our luxury foods and textiles from that area for the past decade. Should I be looking for another source?"
"Madame Director-Captain," interrupted HANA. "There is an urgent matter requiring your attention."
Everyone in the room stared at the ceiling, the usual source of HANA's voice. She never spoke in Council meetings, or indeed in any meeting, unless asked a direct question. For her to interrupt was unthinkable.
"I'll take it in the anteroom," Mizrahi-Dirdan said, getting up.
It was popular, in Scientian poetry, to compare the Dammerung to a body. Its power cores and generators were a multitude of hearts; the bridge its nerve center; the Council of Deans its will. If that were true, reflected Mizrahi-Dirdan, then HANA was its soul.
HANA was the computer of the Dammerung. It was said that, centuries ago, she was a person, a Scientia researcher in the first two or three generations after the Fall. In the Golden Age, legend said, it had been a trivial matter to transmit a mind back and forth between body and machine, but with the loss of the UMN--whatever that was, if there ever really was such a thing, thought Mizrahi-Dirdan--it had become nigh-impossibly difficult. HANA was the one true success, a living mind copied into the Dammerung's computers, vastened far beyond the capabilities of a mere human or Realian.
HANA watched, and listened, and advised. When you ate an exotic food for the fourth time in your life, and you got sick three days later, just as you had the last three times, HANA would notice even if you didn't, and she would warn you to get tested for allergies. When you needed someone to talk to, someone who would never judge, HANA was there. HANA already knew.
It was HANA, Mizrahi-Dirdan suspected, and HANA alone that had kept Scientia from straying from its mission over the centuries. When the Dammerung was the only ship capable of traveling faster than light, it must have been tempting to come as conquerors rather than teachers, to set up puppet states instead of research Affiliates that were as much about helping the locals as helping Scientia. Seventy years ago, when the first IS Gates were built, it must have been tempting to use Scientia's control over them to establish an empire, rather than remain strictly neutral and allow everyone who paid the fee to pass, from peaceful traders to enormous warfleets. Or to use the fees to become as rich as Vector had once been, able to buy anything they wanted and impose their will through economic force, instead of charging just barely enough to keep the gates running. That was the one Mizrahi-Dirden tended to fantasize about.
Hardly a week went by that HANA didn't gently remind Mizrahi-Dirdan herself of some responsibility she was neglecting or some principle that a policy she was considering backing violated. Sometimes, Mizrahi-Dirdan wondered about her predecessor, retiring into obscurity at the peak of her career. HANA knew everything, after all. Every bit of knowledge Scientia gleaned, every Affiliate report, and everything said or done anywhere on the Dammerung, all went into HANA's capacious memory banks. No one could reach the heights of the Director-Captainship without a few skeletons in their closet. Had, perhaps, HANA encouraged the old battle-axe to retire?
Sometimes Mizrahi-Dirdan wondered who the real leader of Scientia was.
No matter. HANA had interrupted the Council; it must be important. "What is it, HANA?" she asked.
A small text ad appeared, floating in the middle of the anteroom. "A small-scale independent trader uploaded this to our marketplace about an hour ago. Anything strike you as interesting?"
"That's it?" asked Mizrahi-Dirdan. "I don't understand."
"The container is appropriately sized to contain the Original and support apparatus."
"Huh," said Mizrahi-Dirdan. "That's an interesting coincidence, but there's no evidence to connect it to the destruction of the Affiliate."
"No?" asked HANA. "How about if I told you the Ahura was outward bound from Ur?"
"Okay, now that's a little more interesting. But why don't you get to the point?"
"It wasn't called the Ahura when it left Ur. It was the Pellegri. Both ships are registered to dummy corporations, owned by --"
"Oh, hell. The Fleet Church."
"Precisely," said HANA.
"So, the Church staged a terrorist attack as a cover to steal the Original from us, probably with the collaboration of the Ur government. Then somebody else, also after the Original, attacked them off Bethel. The two groups mutually annihilated, and then this salvager picked up the Original. That's the scenario you've mapped?"
"Very nearly," said HANA. "The timing is slightly off. The Original must have left Ur no later than two days ago, assuming they traveled directly to Bethel. As it is in precisely the opposite direction from their most likely destination, Artaxerxes, I suspect it was indeed their first stop and that the Original was therefore on board the Pellegri when it left, rather than transferred from another ship in Imaginary Space."
Mizrahi-Dirdan sat down and pinched her nose. She could feel a major headache coming on. "So whoever attacked the Ahura destroyed the Affiliate? No, that doesn't make any sense. If they knew it was on the Ahura, why attack the Affiliate?" She groaned. "We're dealing with at least three parties. The Fleet Church stole the Original and shipped it to Bethel. Somebody else learned about this and attacked the Ahura, trying to steal the Original. And the third party, unaware the Original was already gone, staged a terrorist attack on the Affiliate as cover for their own attempt to steal the Original. Yeesh."
"That accords with my own analysis. I would append the possibility that the trader himself is a front for the second party, who seized the Original for purposes of selling it back to us."
"Or the FJF, or the Church, or anybody else who might have the cash on hand. Do we have anyone nearby we can trust? I'll have to use the discretionary fund for this; there's too much politics involved to let the Council know. By the time they agreed to buy it, somebody else would have beaten us to it."
"Agreed," said HANA. "We do not have an Affiliate on Bethel, but there may be someone on the planet or in the IS Gate staff. An additional coincidence to note: the ship which made the salvage is the Isolde."
Mizrahi-Dirdan blinked. "Why is that name familiar?" Her jaw dropped. "No," she said, shaking her head. "No, the universe doesn't work that way. It can't be the same ship."
"I have located someone I believe known to you personally who can ensure we are not cheated. Will this individual suffice?"
Mizrahi-Dirdan needed only to glance at the dossier HANA called up before she began laughing. "Perfect," she said. "Set up a call with the trader."
Aser is a bit of a struggle as a character, because there's three competing things going on with him. First, I wanted an Albedo-like villain, because Albedo is one of the all-time great, effective villains. That's easily done. Second, I wanted him to be distinct from Albedo. Also relatively easy--do some research, give him a real disorder instead of generic "crazy" villainy. Third, that's still ableist as fuck, which is where the challenge is. I think I have an idea of how I can retain the unpredictability and viciousness of the archetype while not supporting stereotypes about the mentally ill, but it will take a little bit to unfold and will look quite a bit like those stereotypes in the early stages.
So, basically: sorry, I'm aware of the problem, and I'm working through it?
Analysis Is Magic
Showing posts with label Fiction Friday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fiction Friday. Show all posts
Friday, January 2, 2015
Friday, December 26, 2014
Fiction Friday: Faultless, Part 2
Continuing on from where we left off... wow, was it really a month ago? Bit of a short one, but this feels like a natural break point.
Content Warning: Child abuse/neglect
It wasn't her first time outdoors, of course. She'd been in the garden many times, to pull oranges and avocados off the trees or smell the flowers or just feel the sun on her skin. It was hot out there, beyond the faint blue glow of the cooling spells at every door and window, and sometimes she just needed to be hot. She would stand out there and hug herself tightly and just let the sun wash over, beating at, imagine it squeezing its way through her skin and deep down inside. Sometimes for hours, if nobody came out--she had a vague notion that she was not supposed to go outside, but fortunately there were a great many doors between garden and house, and she could always get back inside without being seen.
But this wasn't like going out into the garden. You couldn't see anything but house from there--you could hear the noises of the city, and sometimes smell its smells, but not see it. Ghost found that these days she very much wanted to. Maybe it was from being in the cellar so long, but she had developed a powerful yearning to actually see the place in which she was, supposedly, growing up.
Of course, she'd watched people coming in and out of the house for years. She knew that you dressed differently for outside than in. She wasn't entirely clear on why, but she could see what--going out meant shoes, and frills, and hats. Fortunately there was the ragpile in the corner of the laundry, where all the clothes that couldn't be mended or cleaned went. Ghost had gotten her smock there, and the one before it. Before that she was fairly sure she'd been dressed by the servants, but it was long enough ago and she'd been small enough that it was only a vague, fuzzy notion. A lot of the past seemed to dissolve into those, sometimes very quickly.
From the ragpile she procured her secret treasure, her going-outfit as she thought of it, a broad-brimmed hat that had once been white, with a chunk missing from the brim, a pair of shoes that were only a little too big for her, and which she stuffed with torn and crumpled paper stolen from her father's study, and a light, loose white dress with a broken strap, but she was able to tie the two halves together. The result was a little lopsided and too big for her, falling well past her knees, plus it was supposed to be belted at the waist and she couldn't find a belt, but it would do well enough.
She slipped out the servants' and traders' entrance when no one was looking, and found herself on a sort of ribbon made of a strange rock, gray and pitted with other rocks--all smooth and rounded and in a variety of colors--sort of half-buried in it. Up the hill and to the left the ribbon split off a side-branch which ran under the house's main gate--Ghost thrilled to finally see it from the other side--while the main trunk of it continued up the hill. Some ways beyond that, at least ten times as far as Ghost had ever walked in a straight line, was another house.
To the right, the ribbon--which, Ghost realized, could only be a road--descended to the base of of the hill, where it grew suddenly wider. From up here she could see buildings of all descriptions lining it, and dirt ribbons--roads, she corrected herself, or maybe alleys?--running away from it through more buildings, spreading out as far as she could see. And rising up from it came a blurred hubbub of noises, voices, sounds Ghost couldn't identify, sharp cracks and creaks and a sort of rumbling undercurrent to it all where the sounds just gave up and dissolved together, and smells! Good smells, bad smells, cooking meat and baking bread and garbage and something not unlike what Ghost's cellar had smelled like by the time she was let out of it. It was enticing and horrifying, inviting and lurking--but within all those things it was exciting, and Ghost was determined to experience it at least once.
She set off down the hill.
Content Warning: Child abuse/neglect
It wasn't her first time outdoors, of course. She'd been in the garden many times, to pull oranges and avocados off the trees or smell the flowers or just feel the sun on her skin. It was hot out there, beyond the faint blue glow of the cooling spells at every door and window, and sometimes she just needed to be hot. She would stand out there and hug herself tightly and just let the sun wash over, beating at, imagine it squeezing its way through her skin and deep down inside. Sometimes for hours, if nobody came out--she had a vague notion that she was not supposed to go outside, but fortunately there were a great many doors between garden and house, and she could always get back inside without being seen.
But this wasn't like going out into the garden. You couldn't see anything but house from there--you could hear the noises of the city, and sometimes smell its smells, but not see it. Ghost found that these days she very much wanted to. Maybe it was from being in the cellar so long, but she had developed a powerful yearning to actually see the place in which she was, supposedly, growing up.
Of course, she'd watched people coming in and out of the house for years. She knew that you dressed differently for outside than in. She wasn't entirely clear on why, but she could see what--going out meant shoes, and frills, and hats. Fortunately there was the ragpile in the corner of the laundry, where all the clothes that couldn't be mended or cleaned went. Ghost had gotten her smock there, and the one before it. Before that she was fairly sure she'd been dressed by the servants, but it was long enough ago and she'd been small enough that it was only a vague, fuzzy notion. A lot of the past seemed to dissolve into those, sometimes very quickly.
From the ragpile she procured her secret treasure, her going-outfit as she thought of it, a broad-brimmed hat that had once been white, with a chunk missing from the brim, a pair of shoes that were only a little too big for her, and which she stuffed with torn and crumpled paper stolen from her father's study, and a light, loose white dress with a broken strap, but she was able to tie the two halves together. The result was a little lopsided and too big for her, falling well past her knees, plus it was supposed to be belted at the waist and she couldn't find a belt, but it would do well enough.
She slipped out the servants' and traders' entrance when no one was looking, and found herself on a sort of ribbon made of a strange rock, gray and pitted with other rocks--all smooth and rounded and in a variety of colors--sort of half-buried in it. Up the hill and to the left the ribbon split off a side-branch which ran under the house's main gate--Ghost thrilled to finally see it from the other side--while the main trunk of it continued up the hill. Some ways beyond that, at least ten times as far as Ghost had ever walked in a straight line, was another house.
To the right, the ribbon--which, Ghost realized, could only be a road--descended to the base of of the hill, where it grew suddenly wider. From up here she could see buildings of all descriptions lining it, and dirt ribbons--roads, she corrected herself, or maybe alleys?--running away from it through more buildings, spreading out as far as she could see. And rising up from it came a blurred hubbub of noises, voices, sounds Ghost couldn't identify, sharp cracks and creaks and a sort of rumbling undercurrent to it all where the sounds just gave up and dissolved together, and smells! Good smells, bad smells, cooking meat and baking bread and garbage and something not unlike what Ghost's cellar had smelled like by the time she was let out of it. It was enticing and horrifying, inviting and lurking--but within all those things it was exciting, and Ghost was determined to experience it at least once.
She set off down the hill.
Friday, December 19, 2014
Dragons of Industry Minifesto
Warning! Spoilers ahead! No major plot twists, but lots of setting and thematic details.
So, since one or two people have asked about it, here's an infodump on The Dragons of Industry.
Themes
There are certain themes I want to keep in mind throughout the writing of this series:
The original ideas for this setting involved something more fantasy-with-rivets, which is to say a system of magic that was reliable, dependable, and obeyed clear, precise rules. Meh.
I've revised that fairly heavily, so that magic feels more alive, more integrated into the world instead of the video game-like thing it tends to be in fantasy-with-rivets. There are two forms of magic, innate and constructed.
So, since one or two people have asked about it, here's an infodump on The Dragons of Industry.
Themes
There are certain themes I want to keep in mind throughout the writing of this series:
- Diversity: A continent is a big place, with room for lots of different kinds of people. Racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity; gender diversity--not just men and women, but genderfluid, third gender, trans, and agender--diverse sexualities, diverse religions, diverse ages, diverse politics. Most of all, I just want lots of diverse points of view, because fantasy has been historically really bad at that. Which is why each story in the series will use a third person limited perspective with a different point-of-view character, even though they cover overlapping events and characters.
- Power: It comes in many forms, and each of them will try to bend you to itself. It distorts, disrupts, destroys. To wield it is to be wielded by it. And yet the only thing that can oppose power is power... though not necessarily the same kind of power.
- Apocalypse and Revolution: This is another reason I want multiple POVs, because of course these are both just words for "massive, rapid change on a large scale."
- Defying the "Great Man" Theory: Science fiction and fantasy are rampant with singular heroic men (and, occasionally but not often, women) who alter the course of history by ingenuity, pluck, power, and will. This is bullshit. I don't want any Chosen Ones; just people, making choices, some of which turn out how they'd hoped and some don't; it is the aggregate of thousands upon thousands of such choices, not any one heroic individual, that shapes the course of history.
- No Hegemonic Masculinity: Since I want to talk about power and a multiplicity of perspectives, I decided to imagine what it would be like if no culture had ever associated power with one gender. So, there is no hegemonic masculinity in Dorn; different cultures construct gender differently, but none have a hierarchical notion that men are strong, women weak, or that showing weakness is unmasculine, or that shows of power are inherently masculine.
The original ideas for this setting involved something more fantasy-with-rivets, which is to say a system of magic that was reliable, dependable, and obeyed clear, precise rules. Meh.
I've revised that fairly heavily, so that magic feels more alive, more integrated into the world instead of the video game-like thing it tends to be in fantasy-with-rivets. There are two forms of magic, innate and constructed.
Innate magic is instinctive and physical, an inborn connection with one of the elements, which you can use to sense and manipulate that element; it can be trained to build skill and power, but this training is often quite physical and always more about developing reflex and technique than learning theory. Both element and capacity vary from person to person, with some people having such a low capacity that their element can't be determined.
By contrast, constructed magic is symbolic and cerebral; it involves channeling magical energy through runes or symbols representing concepts--both the elements themselves and the "verbs" and "adjectives" describing the intended effects--to create effects. Key here is that te sequence of symbols IS the effect, It just needs magic to being it to life. Still, you can't just plop down symbols and push magic into them; it takes skill and power both, and since each person's magic is innately tied to one element, certain symbols will he easier or harder for that person.
The elements are the traditional earth, water, fire, air, plus lightning, darkness/light (there is some scholarly disagreement over which of the two the element actually is, or if there's even a difference), pattern, form, life, mind, time, and magic itself. Each also has associated concepts and personalities, though it's not true that people with a particular innate element always have the same personality.
Dragons and Familiars
Despite the name, dragons are not remotely like the familiar creatures of legend and fantasy. Well, not collectively anyway. Some of them...
Anyway, there are twelve dragons, one for each element. Dragons are the absolute paragons of innate magic, casting no spells, but each able to manipulate their chosen element with near-perfect skill drawing on millennia of experience, and they are also effectively immortal so long as they can bond to a human. The bonding is a process by which the minds and lives of human and dragon are linked; it only works with a human who shares the dragon's innate element, and the result is that they can both tap into the combined power of both, though it is a rare human indeed that can make any significant difference to a dragon's power. When a dragon's human dies, or more rarely when a dragon is "killed," the dragon reverts to a stone-like dormant state in which it is unconscious, sessile, and effectively indestructible until the next time a human of the appropriate element whom the dragon deems worthy touches it, at which point the dragon revives and bonds to the human.
Dragons are also the only ones capable of creating familiars, also called elementals, lesser spirits that bond to a human similarly. The familiar shares the innate element of its dragon and can only bond to humans of that element, and like dragons shares in the power of the human; the main difference is that elementals are generally in the mid-to-high range of human power, while no human has ever lived who could come close to a dragon's power in innate magic, and only one or two master mages who, if extremely well-prepared, could do it with constructed magic.
The Setting
The primary setting of the series is the continent of Dorn, a large continent, with diverse biomes and climates. The far south is mostly frozen tundra, while the center of the continent is dominated by tall mountains and dark forests. West of the mountains is a great desert, and beyond that wide rolling fields dotted with the occasional forest. North of that is the Altavari Sea, and west and north of that is the huge, mountainous, volcanic, hot Northern Peninsula. Meanwhile, north of the mountains, southeast of the mouth of the Altavari Sea, are the rain forests of the north-central coast, fading into swamps in the east. South and inland from the swamps, east of the central mountains, are more plains, though less well-watered than the western plains.
North of the continent, forming a sort of blobby chain curving east and north away from the Northern Peninsula, are the Karaian Islands, volcanic and tropical. Beyond that are vast wastes of trackless ocean, growing steadily hotter and more storm-prone as one goes north, until at last one reaches a hot region of constant mist and storm where the wind blows and current flows only south. Those few intrepid explorers who have fought their way still further north tell grim tales of the Boiling Ocean, where sudden gouts of steam, invisible in the thick hot mist, can boil a sailor's flesh from their bones, and ceaseless storms slash with wind and lightning at the hapless ships toiling forward into the unknown.
History
For most of human history, the most ancient of laws held: one dragon, one nation. To be bonded to a dragon was to be so overwhelmingly powerful that one almost couldn't help but conquer everything until you hit the next dragon, not to mention being able to supply an army with familiars; as such, while there's been some fluctuation of who rules what, there have effectively always been twelve nations in Dorn, corresponding to the twelve elements. Citizens of a given nation are no more likely to have a particular innate element than in any other nation, but since dragons and familiars must match their bondlings' elements, and for most of human history the ruling class was defined by possessing dragons and familiars, their leaders have traditionally possessed a particular element, and this has impacted the culture and character of each nation.
In addition, there have been for centuries twelve international Guilds, each of which specializes in a professional associated with a particular element and with the study and exploration of that element's magic, such as the Mages' Guild for magic, the Healers' Guild for Life, or the Sailors' Guild for Water. Again, one does not have to possess the element in question to join or work for the guild, but they do tend to be one of the places for someone who has that element to work.
As said, this was the pattern for most of human history. Three major events have disrupted it, the first about 2200 years ago, when the Great Alliance of eleven nations banded together to destroy the Unnamable Realm, transforming it into the Glass Desert in a single night and annihilating its people. No one remembers any longer what it was called or who lived there, though some believe the scattered nomads who now roam the desert are descendants of its people; other scholars believe they are simply a mix of Tornik and Hologi who wandered into the desert or fled their from justice or persecution, and built lives. Regardless, it is known that once the Nation of Time was there, and as punishment for its crimes--whatever they might have been--it was destroyed and its people and cities annihilated. The Dragon of Time, Melkeledh, has never been seen by reliable witnesses since; legend has transformed him into a sort of dark trickster figure, a tempter who offers power for service, but always ends up demanding more than he gives. He is frequently referred to as the Dark One, as some believe saying his name can attract his attention. In addition, time-innates are now extremely rare--some say as a divine punishment, others as a result of some great magical working by the leaders and dragons of the Alliance, and still others that it was always so--and nascent wielders of its power usually whisked off to their nation's capital to be trained in prescience and history-reading. They are in particular strictly forbidden to learn any constructed magic, for fear of what they might be able to do--or undo, as the case may be.
The second great disruption began about 1100 years ago, when the Alterian Empire began a campaign of conquest after its mages developed the first complete, workable system of constructed magic. The only realm actually ruled by a dragon, namely Empress, the Dragon of Magic, it expanded for centuries until at last all of Dorn except the Wannet lands of the far east, some of the Karaian Islands, and part of the southern tundra remained free. By 500 years ago, however, enough people in the conquered realms knew enough magic, and the dragons grew restless enough, to tear the Empire apart, so that eventually there were eleven nations once more, though many with quite different borders and ethnic makeup than before the Empire.
The third disruption occurred about 300 years ago, and has yet to settle down, when two events happened quite close to each other in time. First, Pryderys, traditionally the realm of Fire, developed the Firestone, an enchanted stone that released heat, either as a comforting gradual warmth or as an explosive burst, depending on the construction of the spells. Second, the Mage Guild announced the development of the first new rune in centuries, the Combine rune, a simple to learn and use rune which allowed one spell to be woven into another--an act which previously had required a complex spell of the Magic element, one of the hardest to master. The difficulty and power needed for a spell had always grown swiftly with its effectiveness and complexity, but the Combine rune circumvented this, allowing one to build a spell by stacking simpler spells atop one another. The result: clever members of the Guild of Sappers and Pyrotechnics invented the first magical assembly line and began mass-producing Firestones.
Even the most destructive Firestone came nowhere close to the power of a familiar, let alone a dragon, but they could be made in great quantities, wielded by people with neither strong innate talent nor long years of training nor a familiar, and used anywhere and everywhere. Suddenly, even though a dragon-bonded ruler could conquer basically anyone who didn't have equivalent defense of their own, said ruler couldn't protect them once conquered. A century of widespread chaos, war, and civil war followed, until eventually the eleven nations reached their modern forms.
Nations and Ethnicities
The twelve realms are:
The Unnameable Realm: Associated with the element and dragon of time, the realm was destroyed over 2,000 years ago, turning it into the great desert in south-central Dorn. It is still pocked here and there with great glass-lined craters where, it is said, the dragons did battle.
Alteria: Once an empire stretching across the continent, this realm still commands a healthy portion of northwest Dorn. Fertile fields and one of the most defensible capitals in the world, which also houses the headquarters of the Mage's Guild, make Alteria still a military, economic, and cultural force to be reckoned with. The majority of Alterians are ethnic Alterians, generally brown-skinned, with narrow faces and longish noses, usually dark (but occasionally red) curly hair and dark eyes. The Alterian language is the most widely spoken in the world, being still the language of culture, trade, and diplomacy throughout the former Empire, and the Alterian faith is likewise the most widespread, teaching that the Dragons formed from the raw elements themselves at the dawn of the world, and created and shaped mankind to be their partners. However, people of nearly every ethnicity live in the capital and throughout the country, and there is a sizable Keiokarnan minority in the northeast and Tornik minority in the south--indeed, the Ackerbucht region along the border with Toftor is almost all ethnically Tornik. Realm of Magic.
Pryderys: Occupies the southeastern part of the Northern Peninsula, a hilly, volcanic region known for glass, olives, wine, and the mass production of weapons. Ruled by a Tarnic minority who conquered the native Keiokarnan majority (often referred to as "Keo," because the Tarnic speakers who conquered them could not pronounce the "ei" sound and considered the long name unwieldy; today, many Pryderian Keiokarnans us the term for themselves, though the more rebellious, and any Keiokarnans elsewhere in the world, consider the term a slur) some 400 years ago following a war with Caertarn that went very badly, then declared independence just a decade later. Ironically given it is where Firestones were originally invented and mass produced, it is the only realm still ruled under traditional, post-imperial draconic feudalism, which is to say the member of the royal family selected by the dragon Lazukoazu is the King or Queen, with familiars issued to members of loyal noble houses. All of these families are, of course, strictly Tarnic. Realm of Fire.
Karaia: Occupies the Karaian Archipelago that stretches east and north from Pryderys. It is populated mostly by Keiokarnan people, who tend to be short, broad, and dark, with flat noses, wide faces, dark eyes, and coarse, curly hair black hair. Its people are considered to be unquestionably the greatest navigators and explorers in the world, and are among the wealthiest and happiest thanks to a massive trade empire built mostly on the luxury foodstuffs, textiles, and exotic herbs (both spice and medicinal) they ship around the world. Realm of Water.
Toftor: Occupies the southwestern portion of Dorn, the most fertile land in the world and largest nation in area. Toftor is inhabited mostly by Tornic people [I may change this or Tarnik, as they're a bit too similar], who tend to be a similar brown to Alterians, but taller and with straight hair, ranging from brown to black (never red, unless there is Alterian ancestry somewhere in the line). There is also a small Holodni minority in the southeast of the nation. Toftor is ruled by a series of hierarchically arranged council; the landowners of each village form a council, which selects one of their number to serve on a county council, which in turn elects one of their number to serve on a regional council, which in turn elects one of their number to serve on the Grand Council. These councils act as both legislature and judiciary, while the executive function (which is mostly law enforcement, military, and tax collection) is handled by a professional, career civil service/military--each member has both a civilian peacetime role and a military wartime role. Nation of Earth.
Avaris: Occupies the western part of the Northern Peninsula, down to the isthmus where it borders with Alteria. The last part of the Empire to break away from Alteria, the Tarnic majority are still ruled over by a militaristic faction of Alterians. One of the poorest and most brutal nations, a place of sharp peaks and narrow valleys. Home base for the Guild of Airmen, the newest guild, which is still working on expanding its airship routes across the continent. Realm of Air.
Caertarn: The northeastern part of the Northern Peninsula, similar in climate to Pryderys but less fertile and more mineral-rich. A place of mines and machineries, which has taken to industrializing like no other nation. Caertarn is the original homeland of the Tarnic people, and still inhabited almost exclusively by them, although there are Alterian and Keiokarnan minorities scattered about; Tarnic people tend to be dark-skinned, tall, and lean, with dark eyes and straight dark hair. Realm of Lightning.
Tamryl: A quiet, neutral realm on the southern slopes and foothills of the Central Mountains, shrouded in dark forests. The Tamri people tend to be small, slender, very dark, and straight-haired; the beauty of their art is renowned throughout Dorn, especially their fashion and jewelry. Since they keep mostly to themselves, there is a tendency for other cultures to view them as "exotic," "mysterious," "alluring," in ways that can be quite problematic. They worship the celestial bodies of Sun, Moon, and Stars. Realm of Darkness/Light.
Holog: The isolated and isolationist "barbarian" tribes of the far southern tundra, mountains, and highlands. Though the Holodni have no coherent nation, their realm is held together by a shared language, culture, and faith, the last of which is maintained by The Order of the Divine Crystal, who believe that in the beginning of things the universe existed in a state of near-perfect order, but one tiny bit of discord grew and grew until it shattered everything into chaos; the purpose of humans and dragons alike is to reorder the universe so that this time there is no disharmony at all. The Holodni are tall and pale, with hair ranging from white through yellow to light brown, straight or wavy, and blue or light brown eyes. Realm of Pattern.
Wannet: The great realm of the east, second-largest in the continent. The Wannet have possibly the most different culture in Dorn, mostly due to having never been part of the Empire. For example, they regard gender as a verb, and consider anyone who stays the same gender their whole life to be a bit eccentric, rather like deciding you love a certain outfit so much you'll just buy five identical outfits and never wear anything else again. They also have a unique religion, not entirely dissimilar from the Holodni faith, but pantheistic, teaching that all things are part of All, and in particular humans are the Hands of All, tasked with the never-ending, always-in-progress task of endlessly shaping and reshaping the universe into more pleasing forms. Their storytellers, known as Shapers, are highly trained and highly respected. Like Holog, Wannet has no central government, but exists as scattered, independent settlements linked by wandering Shapers. Nonetheless, as the occasional Holodni or Tamri raiding party has found, when threatened the Wannet are capable of banding together and fielding a formidable fighting force with surprising speed and organization. Realm of Form.
Keioloaia: Located along the north-central shores of Dorn, south of Karaia, with which it has strong cultural, ethnic, and political ties. Keioloaia is a rather harsher environment that Karaia, being a little less hot but a lot less fertile, being mostly full of either rainforest or swamp. However, those forests and swamps contain many of the exotic herbs and spices which Karaia sells to the world, and the rough terrain make the country near-impossible to invade; even the Empire never conquered Keioloaia by force of arms, but instead by egging them on in a series of disastrous wars against their neighbors over the course of which they progressed from ally, to protectorate, to vassal. The country is mostly Keiokarnan, with small but significant Chennelish and Tamri minorities in the south. Realm of Life.
Chennelea: Located in more or less the center of the continent, in the high pine forests and mountains of the center part of the Central Mountains, with Keioloaia to the north, Tamryl to the south, Toftor and Alteria to the wast and Wannet to the east. A study in contrasts, it is metal rich and full of mines, nearly as industrialized as Caertarn, but also renowned for producing far more than its share of scholars, mystics, and teachers. The University of Chenm is considered the greatest institution of learning in the world, except possibly for magical theory, where it is at least rivaled by the school of the Mage's Guild headquarters in Alteria. Chennelea is traditionally neutral in all conflicts involving its neighbors. Its people tend to be olive-skinned, with pale or brown, loosely curly hair and prominent noses. Realm of Mind.
Dragons are also the only ones capable of creating familiars, also called elementals, lesser spirits that bond to a human similarly. The familiar shares the innate element of its dragon and can only bond to humans of that element, and like dragons shares in the power of the human; the main difference is that elementals are generally in the mid-to-high range of human power, while no human has ever lived who could come close to a dragon's power in innate magic, and only one or two master mages who, if extremely well-prepared, could do it with constructed magic.
The Setting
The primary setting of the series is the continent of Dorn, a large continent, with diverse biomes and climates. The far south is mostly frozen tundra, while the center of the continent is dominated by tall mountains and dark forests. West of the mountains is a great desert, and beyond that wide rolling fields dotted with the occasional forest. North of that is the Altavari Sea, and west and north of that is the huge, mountainous, volcanic, hot Northern Peninsula. Meanwhile, north of the mountains, southeast of the mouth of the Altavari Sea, are the rain forests of the north-central coast, fading into swamps in the east. South and inland from the swamps, east of the central mountains, are more plains, though less well-watered than the western plains.
North of the continent, forming a sort of blobby chain curving east and north away from the Northern Peninsula, are the Karaian Islands, volcanic and tropical. Beyond that are vast wastes of trackless ocean, growing steadily hotter and more storm-prone as one goes north, until at last one reaches a hot region of constant mist and storm where the wind blows and current flows only south. Those few intrepid explorers who have fought their way still further north tell grim tales of the Boiling Ocean, where sudden gouts of steam, invisible in the thick hot mist, can boil a sailor's flesh from their bones, and ceaseless storms slash with wind and lightning at the hapless ships toiling forward into the unknown.
History
For most of human history, the most ancient of laws held: one dragon, one nation. To be bonded to a dragon was to be so overwhelmingly powerful that one almost couldn't help but conquer everything until you hit the next dragon, not to mention being able to supply an army with familiars; as such, while there's been some fluctuation of who rules what, there have effectively always been twelve nations in Dorn, corresponding to the twelve elements. Citizens of a given nation are no more likely to have a particular innate element than in any other nation, but since dragons and familiars must match their bondlings' elements, and for most of human history the ruling class was defined by possessing dragons and familiars, their leaders have traditionally possessed a particular element, and this has impacted the culture and character of each nation.
In addition, there have been for centuries twelve international Guilds, each of which specializes in a professional associated with a particular element and with the study and exploration of that element's magic, such as the Mages' Guild for magic, the Healers' Guild for Life, or the Sailors' Guild for Water. Again, one does not have to possess the element in question to join or work for the guild, but they do tend to be one of the places for someone who has that element to work.
As said, this was the pattern for most of human history. Three major events have disrupted it, the first about 2200 years ago, when the Great Alliance of eleven nations banded together to destroy the Unnamable Realm, transforming it into the Glass Desert in a single night and annihilating its people. No one remembers any longer what it was called or who lived there, though some believe the scattered nomads who now roam the desert are descendants of its people; other scholars believe they are simply a mix of Tornik and Hologi who wandered into the desert or fled their from justice or persecution, and built lives. Regardless, it is known that once the Nation of Time was there, and as punishment for its crimes--whatever they might have been--it was destroyed and its people and cities annihilated. The Dragon of Time, Melkeledh, has never been seen by reliable witnesses since; legend has transformed him into a sort of dark trickster figure, a tempter who offers power for service, but always ends up demanding more than he gives. He is frequently referred to as the Dark One, as some believe saying his name can attract his attention. In addition, time-innates are now extremely rare--some say as a divine punishment, others as a result of some great magical working by the leaders and dragons of the Alliance, and still others that it was always so--and nascent wielders of its power usually whisked off to their nation's capital to be trained in prescience and history-reading. They are in particular strictly forbidden to learn any constructed magic, for fear of what they might be able to do--or undo, as the case may be.
The second great disruption began about 1100 years ago, when the Alterian Empire began a campaign of conquest after its mages developed the first complete, workable system of constructed magic. The only realm actually ruled by a dragon, namely Empress, the Dragon of Magic, it expanded for centuries until at last all of Dorn except the Wannet lands of the far east, some of the Karaian Islands, and part of the southern tundra remained free. By 500 years ago, however, enough people in the conquered realms knew enough magic, and the dragons grew restless enough, to tear the Empire apart, so that eventually there were eleven nations once more, though many with quite different borders and ethnic makeup than before the Empire.
The third disruption occurred about 300 years ago, and has yet to settle down, when two events happened quite close to each other in time. First, Pryderys, traditionally the realm of Fire, developed the Firestone, an enchanted stone that released heat, either as a comforting gradual warmth or as an explosive burst, depending on the construction of the spells. Second, the Mage Guild announced the development of the first new rune in centuries, the Combine rune, a simple to learn and use rune which allowed one spell to be woven into another--an act which previously had required a complex spell of the Magic element, one of the hardest to master. The difficulty and power needed for a spell had always grown swiftly with its effectiveness and complexity, but the Combine rune circumvented this, allowing one to build a spell by stacking simpler spells atop one another. The result: clever members of the Guild of Sappers and Pyrotechnics invented the first magical assembly line and began mass-producing Firestones.
Even the most destructive Firestone came nowhere close to the power of a familiar, let alone a dragon, but they could be made in great quantities, wielded by people with neither strong innate talent nor long years of training nor a familiar, and used anywhere and everywhere. Suddenly, even though a dragon-bonded ruler could conquer basically anyone who didn't have equivalent defense of their own, said ruler couldn't protect them once conquered. A century of widespread chaos, war, and civil war followed, until eventually the eleven nations reached their modern forms.
Nations and Ethnicities
The twelve realms are:
The Unnameable Realm: Associated with the element and dragon of time, the realm was destroyed over 2,000 years ago, turning it into the great desert in south-central Dorn. It is still pocked here and there with great glass-lined craters where, it is said, the dragons did battle.
Alteria: Once an empire stretching across the continent, this realm still commands a healthy portion of northwest Dorn. Fertile fields and one of the most defensible capitals in the world, which also houses the headquarters of the Mage's Guild, make Alteria still a military, economic, and cultural force to be reckoned with. The majority of Alterians are ethnic Alterians, generally brown-skinned, with narrow faces and longish noses, usually dark (but occasionally red) curly hair and dark eyes. The Alterian language is the most widely spoken in the world, being still the language of culture, trade, and diplomacy throughout the former Empire, and the Alterian faith is likewise the most widespread, teaching that the Dragons formed from the raw elements themselves at the dawn of the world, and created and shaped mankind to be their partners. However, people of nearly every ethnicity live in the capital and throughout the country, and there is a sizable Keiokarnan minority in the northeast and Tornik minority in the south--indeed, the Ackerbucht region along the border with Toftor is almost all ethnically Tornik. Realm of Magic.
Pryderys: Occupies the southeastern part of the Northern Peninsula, a hilly, volcanic region known for glass, olives, wine, and the mass production of weapons. Ruled by a Tarnic minority who conquered the native Keiokarnan majority (often referred to as "Keo," because the Tarnic speakers who conquered them could not pronounce the "ei" sound and considered the long name unwieldy; today, many Pryderian Keiokarnans us the term for themselves, though the more rebellious, and any Keiokarnans elsewhere in the world, consider the term a slur) some 400 years ago following a war with Caertarn that went very badly, then declared independence just a decade later. Ironically given it is where Firestones were originally invented and mass produced, it is the only realm still ruled under traditional, post-imperial draconic feudalism, which is to say the member of the royal family selected by the dragon Lazukoazu is the King or Queen, with familiars issued to members of loyal noble houses. All of these families are, of course, strictly Tarnic. Realm of Fire.
Karaia: Occupies the Karaian Archipelago that stretches east and north from Pryderys. It is populated mostly by Keiokarnan people, who tend to be short, broad, and dark, with flat noses, wide faces, dark eyes, and coarse, curly hair black hair. Its people are considered to be unquestionably the greatest navigators and explorers in the world, and are among the wealthiest and happiest thanks to a massive trade empire built mostly on the luxury foodstuffs, textiles, and exotic herbs (both spice and medicinal) they ship around the world. Realm of Water.
Toftor: Occupies the southwestern portion of Dorn, the most fertile land in the world and largest nation in area. Toftor is inhabited mostly by Tornic people [I may change this or Tarnik, as they're a bit too similar], who tend to be a similar brown to Alterians, but taller and with straight hair, ranging from brown to black (never red, unless there is Alterian ancestry somewhere in the line). There is also a small Holodni minority in the southeast of the nation. Toftor is ruled by a series of hierarchically arranged council; the landowners of each village form a council, which selects one of their number to serve on a county council, which in turn elects one of their number to serve on a regional council, which in turn elects one of their number to serve on the Grand Council. These councils act as both legislature and judiciary, while the executive function (which is mostly law enforcement, military, and tax collection) is handled by a professional, career civil service/military--each member has both a civilian peacetime role and a military wartime role. Nation of Earth.
Avaris: Occupies the western part of the Northern Peninsula, down to the isthmus where it borders with Alteria. The last part of the Empire to break away from Alteria, the Tarnic majority are still ruled over by a militaristic faction of Alterians. One of the poorest and most brutal nations, a place of sharp peaks and narrow valleys. Home base for the Guild of Airmen, the newest guild, which is still working on expanding its airship routes across the continent. Realm of Air.
Caertarn: The northeastern part of the Northern Peninsula, similar in climate to Pryderys but less fertile and more mineral-rich. A place of mines and machineries, which has taken to industrializing like no other nation. Caertarn is the original homeland of the Tarnic people, and still inhabited almost exclusively by them, although there are Alterian and Keiokarnan minorities scattered about; Tarnic people tend to be dark-skinned, tall, and lean, with dark eyes and straight dark hair. Realm of Lightning.
Tamryl: A quiet, neutral realm on the southern slopes and foothills of the Central Mountains, shrouded in dark forests. The Tamri people tend to be small, slender, very dark, and straight-haired; the beauty of their art is renowned throughout Dorn, especially their fashion and jewelry. Since they keep mostly to themselves, there is a tendency for other cultures to view them as "exotic," "mysterious," "alluring," in ways that can be quite problematic. They worship the celestial bodies of Sun, Moon, and Stars. Realm of Darkness/Light.
Holog: The isolated and isolationist "barbarian" tribes of the far southern tundra, mountains, and highlands. Though the Holodni have no coherent nation, their realm is held together by a shared language, culture, and faith, the last of which is maintained by The Order of the Divine Crystal, who believe that in the beginning of things the universe existed in a state of near-perfect order, but one tiny bit of discord grew and grew until it shattered everything into chaos; the purpose of humans and dragons alike is to reorder the universe so that this time there is no disharmony at all. The Holodni are tall and pale, with hair ranging from white through yellow to light brown, straight or wavy, and blue or light brown eyes. Realm of Pattern.
Wannet: The great realm of the east, second-largest in the continent. The Wannet have possibly the most different culture in Dorn, mostly due to having never been part of the Empire. For example, they regard gender as a verb, and consider anyone who stays the same gender their whole life to be a bit eccentric, rather like deciding you love a certain outfit so much you'll just buy five identical outfits and never wear anything else again. They also have a unique religion, not entirely dissimilar from the Holodni faith, but pantheistic, teaching that all things are part of All, and in particular humans are the Hands of All, tasked with the never-ending, always-in-progress task of endlessly shaping and reshaping the universe into more pleasing forms. Their storytellers, known as Shapers, are highly trained and highly respected. Like Holog, Wannet has no central government, but exists as scattered, independent settlements linked by wandering Shapers. Nonetheless, as the occasional Holodni or Tamri raiding party has found, when threatened the Wannet are capable of banding together and fielding a formidable fighting force with surprising speed and organization. Realm of Form.
Keioloaia: Located along the north-central shores of Dorn, south of Karaia, with which it has strong cultural, ethnic, and political ties. Keioloaia is a rather harsher environment that Karaia, being a little less hot but a lot less fertile, being mostly full of either rainforest or swamp. However, those forests and swamps contain many of the exotic herbs and spices which Karaia sells to the world, and the rough terrain make the country near-impossible to invade; even the Empire never conquered Keioloaia by force of arms, but instead by egging them on in a series of disastrous wars against their neighbors over the course of which they progressed from ally, to protectorate, to vassal. The country is mostly Keiokarnan, with small but significant Chennelish and Tamri minorities in the south. Realm of Life.
Chennelea: Located in more or less the center of the continent, in the high pine forests and mountains of the center part of the Central Mountains, with Keioloaia to the north, Tamryl to the south, Toftor and Alteria to the wast and Wannet to the east. A study in contrasts, it is metal rich and full of mines, nearly as industrialized as Caertarn, but also renowned for producing far more than its share of scholars, mystics, and teachers. The University of Chenm is considered the greatest institution of learning in the world, except possibly for magical theory, where it is at least rivaled by the school of the Mage's Guild headquarters in Alteria. Chennelea is traditionally neutral in all conflicts involving its neighbors. Its people tend to be olive-skinned, with pale or brown, loosely curly hair and prominent noses. Realm of Mind.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Fiction Friday: Untitled
The Princess sat by the tower's one window, chin in hand. Today was the day, it seemed--today she came of age. Which meant that today was the day her three years of imprisonment in the tower ended, to be replaced by something even worse: marriage.
It was not that the Princess was inherently opposed to marriage. She was sure it probably worked out quite well for some people, if they were suited to it and to each other. It was just that she was quite sure it was not for her, and definitely not with the Regent, who had locked her in the tower in the first place, precisely to ensure that he could wait until this day, then marry her and be crowned king.
After which, well, she wouldn't expect much in the way of life expectancy, to judge from history. Which the Princess could, better than most, because although she was locked in the tower, she was permitted books, and over the course of three years she'd read every single one the quite extensive castle library had to offer.
The door opened. She stood, brushed down her dress, and faced the Regent. If nothing else, she had her dignity.
"Well, Princess," said the Regent, smiling the same way he did everything, smarmily. He was, the Princess had come rather quickly to realize, more or less made of smarm. To wit: He didn't so much walk across the small chamber toward her as ooze. "I trust you are excited for this day as much as I?"
She gave a small smile and inclined her head. "Indeed, my lord."
He looked surprised. "Really? Well, that is good news. I'm glad you've come around and realized marrying me is the best thing for our nation."
She laughed, a bright, crystal sound echoing in the dingy room. "No," she said.
"What?"
"No. I will not be marrying you today. Instead, I will be removing you from power, eliminating the cronies and mercenaries with which you have imposed your cruel reign on the kingdom's people, and either banishing you or having you executed, I haven't decided yet."
It was the Regent's turn to laugh, though if anything, his made the room even dingier. "Oh?" he said. "You and what army?"
The princess turned and looked out the window. He stepped forward to stand beside her, creating a study in contrast: him tall, thin, and pallid as a dead fish; her short and dark. Three years of imprisonment with effectively no opportunity to exercise and little to do besides eating and reading had left her quite fat, but it had also carried her past the gangly, clumsy, spotty phase of late adolescence and left her with clear, smooth black skin and a body that fit precisely, while all that study had done wonders for an already keen and curious intellect. She had matured, quite simply, into the most beautiful and wisest princess in the land, and she knew the Regent quite hated her for it. Not as much as he was about to hate her for what came next, though.
He followed her gaze, past the city spreading out below the castle, past the high walls and shining gates that girded it, to the wide and fruitful plains beyond. And there they were, filling those fields, stretching out into the distance until they faded to the horizon.
"How?" he asked.
"I escaped," she said. "Every day. Multiple times, some days. And I went out, and I made friends, and I asked them to come help me on this day."
"Escaped..?" he said weakly, paling from merely dead fish to vampire victim fish. "But... it's impossible! There is no escape from this tower!"
"I had everything I needed right here," she said, picking up a book. "Over and over again, I escaped into these stories, so full of wonderful people." She gestured out the window. "And in some of those stories I found other books, and tales, and narrative forms you have never dreamt of, and I went to all of them I could, shared in their lives, and gave them of myself to make them live. And now, they are here at last."
The two of them looked out the window at them all, brave knights and noble rebels, rogues with hearts of gold and friendly witches, people armed with sword and spear and whip and hammer, gun and blaster and disruptor, angry revolutionaries and disappointed idealists, elves and fairies and dwarves and trolls and goblins and aliens and ghosts and vampires and humans and werewolves, rockbiters and Gorons, all the serried ranks of the armies of Fantastica and Emelan and Terabithia and the Republic of Heaven, martial artists and martial artists with power over the elements and martial artists with magic and martial artists with alchemy and ninjas and samurai and princesses! Princesses with bows and magic bows and crossbows, princesses with wands and glowing staves and magical lacrosse sticks, a small young red-haired princess leading an army of wild animals and Fair Folk, and a tall dark-haired one leading an army of elves and dragons.
"But," the Regent protested, "they're only stories! They're not real, they can't come here!"
A skinny redheaded teenager incanted something and blew a massive hole in the city wall. The army came charging through, while from the skies above--well, they were as full as the sky, full of schoolchildren on brooms and angels with fiery swords and efreeti with fiery everything and fighter planes and bombers and starships and starfighters and battlestars and starfuries...
"You poor, pathetic, silly man," the Princess said, the contempt in her voice tempered with just a trace of pity. "You're an evil Regent who kept a wise and beautiful Princess locked in a tower for years so that you could marry her and cement your tyrannical rule over a once-peaceful and prosperous kingdom. This is a story. We're no realer than they are, so if I can go to them, of course they can come to me! So you see, I rather think the answer to your original question is, well, this one."
And then the army of everyone who never existed swept over the city, and in less time than it takes to read this sentence, it was done, because of course this is the kind of battle that moves faster for faster readers.
The regent was exiled, of course, the Princess having wisely decided that starting a new, better realm with a murder was probably not the best precedent. His exile was her first decree as Queen, and her second was to abolish the kingdom and establish an interim government to oversee the reconstruction and ease the transition into a less authoritarian form of government, and so there would never be a third decree because she wasn't Queen anymore, and of course having been a Queen she couldn't go back to being a Princess.
After that, as she mused to the new chairman of the interim council, "I suppose there's not much left for me to do here. It's time I was moving on for good."
"Really?" he asked. "But we only just got you back!"
"Well, yes," she said, "but there's in infinity of stories out there and only all of eternity to see them all. I really must be getting started." She paused. "I rather think I won't need the books anymore--I've had a lot of practice, and I believe I've developed a knack for it. Farewell!"
And then, with a wheezing, groaning sound, the woman without a title stepped out of this story and into another.
It was not that the Princess was inherently opposed to marriage. She was sure it probably worked out quite well for some people, if they were suited to it and to each other. It was just that she was quite sure it was not for her, and definitely not with the Regent, who had locked her in the tower in the first place, precisely to ensure that he could wait until this day, then marry her and be crowned king.
After which, well, she wouldn't expect much in the way of life expectancy, to judge from history. Which the Princess could, better than most, because although she was locked in the tower, she was permitted books, and over the course of three years she'd read every single one the quite extensive castle library had to offer.
The door opened. She stood, brushed down her dress, and faced the Regent. If nothing else, she had her dignity.
"Well, Princess," said the Regent, smiling the same way he did everything, smarmily. He was, the Princess had come rather quickly to realize, more or less made of smarm. To wit: He didn't so much walk across the small chamber toward her as ooze. "I trust you are excited for this day as much as I?"
She gave a small smile and inclined her head. "Indeed, my lord."
He looked surprised. "Really? Well, that is good news. I'm glad you've come around and realized marrying me is the best thing for our nation."
She laughed, a bright, crystal sound echoing in the dingy room. "No," she said.
"What?"
"No. I will not be marrying you today. Instead, I will be removing you from power, eliminating the cronies and mercenaries with which you have imposed your cruel reign on the kingdom's people, and either banishing you or having you executed, I haven't decided yet."
It was the Regent's turn to laugh, though if anything, his made the room even dingier. "Oh?" he said. "You and what army?"
The princess turned and looked out the window. He stepped forward to stand beside her, creating a study in contrast: him tall, thin, and pallid as a dead fish; her short and dark. Three years of imprisonment with effectively no opportunity to exercise and little to do besides eating and reading had left her quite fat, but it had also carried her past the gangly, clumsy, spotty phase of late adolescence and left her with clear, smooth black skin and a body that fit precisely, while all that study had done wonders for an already keen and curious intellect. She had matured, quite simply, into the most beautiful and wisest princess in the land, and she knew the Regent quite hated her for it. Not as much as he was about to hate her for what came next, though.
He followed her gaze, past the city spreading out below the castle, past the high walls and shining gates that girded it, to the wide and fruitful plains beyond. And there they were, filling those fields, stretching out into the distance until they faded to the horizon.
"How?" he asked.
"I escaped," she said. "Every day. Multiple times, some days. And I went out, and I made friends, and I asked them to come help me on this day."
"Escaped..?" he said weakly, paling from merely dead fish to vampire victim fish. "But... it's impossible! There is no escape from this tower!"
"I had everything I needed right here," she said, picking up a book. "Over and over again, I escaped into these stories, so full of wonderful people." She gestured out the window. "And in some of those stories I found other books, and tales, and narrative forms you have never dreamt of, and I went to all of them I could, shared in their lives, and gave them of myself to make them live. And now, they are here at last."
The two of them looked out the window at them all, brave knights and noble rebels, rogues with hearts of gold and friendly witches, people armed with sword and spear and whip and hammer, gun and blaster and disruptor, angry revolutionaries and disappointed idealists, elves and fairies and dwarves and trolls and goblins and aliens and ghosts and vampires and humans and werewolves, rockbiters and Gorons, all the serried ranks of the armies of Fantastica and Emelan and Terabithia and the Republic of Heaven, martial artists and martial artists with power over the elements and martial artists with magic and martial artists with alchemy and ninjas and samurai and princesses! Princesses with bows and magic bows and crossbows, princesses with wands and glowing staves and magical lacrosse sticks, a small young red-haired princess leading an army of wild animals and Fair Folk, and a tall dark-haired one leading an army of elves and dragons.
"But," the Regent protested, "they're only stories! They're not real, they can't come here!"
A skinny redheaded teenager incanted something and blew a massive hole in the city wall. The army came charging through, while from the skies above--well, they were as full as the sky, full of schoolchildren on brooms and angels with fiery swords and efreeti with fiery everything and fighter planes and bombers and starships and starfighters and battlestars and starfuries...
"You poor, pathetic, silly man," the Princess said, the contempt in her voice tempered with just a trace of pity. "You're an evil Regent who kept a wise and beautiful Princess locked in a tower for years so that you could marry her and cement your tyrannical rule over a once-peaceful and prosperous kingdom. This is a story. We're no realer than they are, so if I can go to them, of course they can come to me! So you see, I rather think the answer to your original question is, well, this one."
And then the army of everyone who never existed swept over the city, and in less time than it takes to read this sentence, it was done, because of course this is the kind of battle that moves faster for faster readers.
The regent was exiled, of course, the Princess having wisely decided that starting a new, better realm with a murder was probably not the best precedent. His exile was her first decree as Queen, and her second was to abolish the kingdom and establish an interim government to oversee the reconstruction and ease the transition into a less authoritarian form of government, and so there would never be a third decree because she wasn't Queen anymore, and of course having been a Queen she couldn't go back to being a Princess.
After that, as she mused to the new chairman of the interim council, "I suppose there's not much left for me to do here. It's time I was moving on for good."
"Really?" he asked. "But we only just got you back!"
"Well, yes," she said, "but there's in infinity of stories out there and only all of eternity to see them all. I really must be getting started." She paused. "I rather think I won't need the books anymore--I've had a lot of practice, and I believe I've developed a knack for it. Farewell!"
And then, with a wheezing, groaning sound, the woman without a title stepped out of this story and into another.
Friday, December 5, 2014
A brief Fullmetal Alchemist fanfic
Sorry, I was hoping to have more Faultless but my week has been kind of shitty and it just never happened. So here's a brief Fullmetal Alchemist fanfic I wrote last year, pretty much because the Mark Watches community dared me to. It could conceivably be the beginning of a longer fic, but I have no particular intention of ever extending it, and I think it works well enough on its own.
Sergeant Lem hesitated in front of the door, checking as she always did to confirm her uniform was buttoned correctly and her hair properly up in a regulation twist. Not in front of every door, of course, but this was the door of the Director of Military Intelligence's office, her boss's boss's boss's boss. It was a big deal to be called in here.
Proper attire confirmed, she knocked. "Come in, Sergeant!" came the voice of Colonel Focker.
She entered the room and saluted, but he waved at her to close the door and sit. "At ease, Sergeant," he said. He laid a folder he'd been reading from on the table. "I've been looking over Cryptography's initial reports on the documents from the Drachman embassy. Looks like they do have a spy in Briggs, and Cryptography thinks there might be enough information there to figure out who. Well done--if this pans out fully there's probably a medal in it for you, maybe even a promotion!"
"Thank you, sir!" she answered.
"However, it's going to take them a couple of weeks to fully decrypt everything and compare it to who knows what at Briggs, so we need a short-term assignment for you." He laid a hand on an envelope on the desk. It was sealed and marked Top Secret. "I have something for you, but it's highly sensitive, and I can't tell you much without you accepting the assignment first."
She smiled wryly. "More sensitive than working in an enemy country's embassy's mail room so that I make copies of all the documents I handle?"
Focker sighed. "Honestly? Yes. This could be two weeks of sitting around in a manor garden reading books--or if it goes south, it could get you killed. Either way, there's a case to be made that taking part will make you an accessory to any of a dozen crimes, from invasion of privacy on up to public endangerment and possibly treason."
"You had me at 'reading,' sir!" Sciezka Lem smiled. "What can you tell me?"
"Well, how do you feel about working with children..?"
---
Four days later, Sciezka found herself sitting in a chair in the garden of the Bradley manor, enjoying the bright late-spring sun and listening to a small boy playing with tin soldiers. A shadow fell over her, and she looked up. "Hello, Ma'am," she said politely, and the middle-aged woman above her smiled.
"Hello, dear," said Mrs. Bradley. "Selim behaving himself?"
"Always," Sciezka answered. "He's been a delight." This was true. Selim was a cheerful, quiet, and easygoing child, happy to play with his toys or have Sciezka read to him. Sciezka had never been around children much, but he seemed more mature than she had expected. She quite liked Mrs. Bradley, too--she felt bad about deceiving them both by pretending to be a substitute tutor, replacing the regular live-in tutor while she "visited her mother," actually a cover for the biennial training and recertification everyone in Military Intelligence had to do.
Guilty as she felt, however, she understood why it was necessary. She'd read the case file, and therefore she remembered every word of it: the autopsies on the Briggs soldiers murdered by the being known as Pride, the report by Hawkeye on her confrontation with Pride, by Mustang on being forced through the Gate, by Ed Elric on how he'd fought Pride and reduced him to a fetal state. She didn't quite understand the alchemy of it all, but as far as she could gather, Ed had reduced Pride from many souls to one, turning him into effectively a normal human and erasing his memories, after which Mrs. Bradley had adopted him.
However, the other known single-souled homunculus--briefly, Sciezka wondered who that might be--had possessed frightening powers of the sort typical of homunculi, but aged normally. There was reason to believe Pride's powers might manifest within Selim--and if they did, Sciezka was to report it immediately.
"Well, I don't know about always," Mrs. Bradley answered. "Selim, dear, can you come here for a second?"
"Yes, mother?" he asked, standing and walking over to the two of them. "What's wrong?"
"One of the maids found this in a fireplace," she said, holding out the mangled remnants of a toy soldier. "Care to tell me what happened to it?"
Selim grinned proudly as he answered.
The moment she heard his response, Sciezka's blood froze. She stared in horror as Mrs. Bradley snatched up her son and clutched him tightly to her chest.
"Mother!" Selim laughed, squirming. "No, I'm too big for that."
"Please," said Mrs. Bradley. "It wasn't... it was just a child's prattling. Don't, don't tell..."
"You know," said Sciezka. She could barely breathe. She could see the tears in Mrs. Bradley's eyes, refusing to fall. "You know who I am."
"Your face," said Mrs. Bradley. "When he... you know, and if you know, that means you're one of Focker's..."
"Is something wrong, mother?" asked Selim, stopping his struggles. "Did I do something bad?"
Mrs. Bradley clutched her child even harder. "No, Selim," she said firmly, glaring at Sciezka. "You haven't done anything."
"I'm sorry..." Sciezka said. "I'm sorry. I have to."
"Do what you have to do." The bitterness in Mrs. Bradley's voice cut Sciezka to the core, but she really didn't have any choice.
--
Three days after that, Sciezka slouched despondently in a corner of a meeting room deep inside Central Command. This is not how I wanted to meet the Fuhrer! she thought despondently. Even if she hadn't been miserable, she would have been deeply uncomfortable in such a high-powered meeting. Besides her and Mrs. Bradley, who sat alone on one side of the room's long conference table, straight-backed and expressionless, there were Fuhrer Grumman himself, Colonel Focker, Lieutenant General Mustang, his aide Major Hawkeye, and Lieutenant General Armstrong with her aid, Captain Falman.
That was the reason it had taken three days to have the meeting--in the Fuhrer's words, when Focker had dragged her into his office three days ago, "It sounds like he's starting small and not fully aware of what's going on, so we don't have to move immediately. I want to bring in Armstrong and Mustang, since they're the only others outside of military intelligence aware of the Selim situation, so we can decide precisely how to proceed."
Wait they had, while the telegraph went to Armstrong in Briggs and Mustang in Ishval, and then a longer wait while the two traveled to Central. The meeting had finally begun three hours ago... but to Sciezka, it felt like weeks as she sat in the corner, imagining huge black clouds hovering over her head.
"I fail to see why we're still discussing this," said Armstrong. "Kill him and be done."
"No!" snapped Mustang. "He's a child who has harmed no one--"
"He's a mass murderer with tremendous alchemical powers, nearly impossible to contain," countered Armstrong. "If he learns to use them effectively--"
"That was a previous life!" countered Mustang. "He has never shown any signs of violent tendencies until now."
"Oh, a previous life of slaughter," said Armstrong, nodding sagely. "I suppose you'd know all about that, wouldn't you, Hero of Ishbal?"
Mustang was half out of his chair, his face contorted with rage, before Hawkeye's hand on his shoulder gently but firmly pushed him back down. "She has a point, sir," Hawkeye said. "Selim is a potentially very serious threat to national security, and we have to take that into account."
"So we're back to slaughtering children in the name of national security?" asked Mustang bitterly.
"Child," corrected Armstrong, "and not even that. He's a homunculus, a created thing, not a child."
"He is a child," said a quiet voice. It was the first words Mrs. Bradley had spoken since the meeting began. She drew her shawl around her shoulders, looking very small and very old. "He's my little boy."
Armstrong tsked. "With all due respect, Madame Bradley, every man I've killed was someone's little boy. It's a soldier's duty to protect this nation from those who would harm it."
Grumman nodded. "I take it your opinion is that we should kill him, then. Yours as well, Focker?"
Focker nodded.
"And you, Mustang?"
Mustang ground his teeth. "We should watch him more," said Hawkeye. "Keep forces ready to attack if he makes a move, but until then, do nothing."
Mustang nodded.
"Hmm," said Grumman. Sciezka sank a little lower in her chair, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with anyone, especially Mrs. Bradley. She knew what was about to happen, and wished fervently the earth would open up and swallow her before it did.
That was when the shouts started outside, followed by the thuds.
Sciezka couldn't even see the three of them move, let alone which one was first, but somewhere between one blink and the next Armstrong, Mustang, and Hawkeye were on their feet, Armstrong's sword and Hawkeye's pistol drawn, while Mustang's hand was outstretched and ready to snap.
Their came a ringing crash, metal slamming into the metal door of the room, and it dented slightly. Another crash, and then another, and the door burst open, the automail foot that had been ramming it slamming into the ground.
A tall, blonde man in his early 20s stormed into the room. "And just what the hell do you think you're doing!?" he demanded.
"Fullmetal--" Mustang began, but Ed cut him off.
"That's not my title anymore!" he snapped.
"Who told you about this meeting?" demanded Focker.
"That's for me to know!" shouted Ed. "Who told YOU you had the right to sit here and debate killing a kid like it's a zoning petition?"
"I told him," Sciezka said quietly. "I sent a telegram before I went to you, Colonel Focker."
"Sorry I took so long," he said. "It's a long trip from Rush Valley."
She shook her head. "You made it in time, though."
"This is a violation of the Official Secrets Act," said Focker, his face drawn and expression full of cold fury. "Maybe treason."
"That would make you and Mrs. Bradley the only people in this room not guilty of treason," answered Riza, smiling slightly.
"Put your weapons down," said Grumman. "Fullmet--I mean, Professor Rockbell, if you leave now we won't press charges."
"I kept him alive for a reason," said Ed. "Mrs. Bradley deserves a chance to raise her son, and it sounds like she's doing a good job. I won't let you kill him."
"Thank you," Mrs. Bradley said quietly. "Both of you..."
Sciezka stood. "Ex-exactly! We won't let you!"
"Sit down, Sergeant!" snapped Focker.
Sciezka dropped back into her chair, again sinking low. I am in SO much trouble...
"So, what happened?" asked Ed. The telegram had been very short, just a travel itinerary, with the first letter of each town spelling out the words "SELIM IS PRIDE. COME TO CENTRAL." Sciezka had remembered Ed's own notebook, and used a similar code. "Selim's shadow sprout teeth?"
Mrs. Bradley shuddered.
"No," said Mustang. "He blew up a toy with a firecracker."
Ed scoffed. "I did worse than that when I was five."
"Then he said it was his imaginary friend's idea," Mustang continued.
Ed shrugged. "Urey has an imaginary friend, too, and tries to pin things on him sometimes. It's pretty normal, Trish will probably do the same thing in a couple of years."
"Yes, but Urey's imaginary friend isn't named Solf Jackson Kimblee," said Armstrong.
"Oh."
Sergeant Lem hesitated in front of the door, checking as she always did to confirm her uniform was buttoned correctly and her hair properly up in a regulation twist. Not in front of every door, of course, but this was the door of the Director of Military Intelligence's office, her boss's boss's boss's boss. It was a big deal to be called in here.
Proper attire confirmed, she knocked. "Come in, Sergeant!" came the voice of Colonel Focker.
She entered the room and saluted, but he waved at her to close the door and sit. "At ease, Sergeant," he said. He laid a folder he'd been reading from on the table. "I've been looking over Cryptography's initial reports on the documents from the Drachman embassy. Looks like they do have a spy in Briggs, and Cryptography thinks there might be enough information there to figure out who. Well done--if this pans out fully there's probably a medal in it for you, maybe even a promotion!"
"Thank you, sir!" she answered.
"However, it's going to take them a couple of weeks to fully decrypt everything and compare it to who knows what at Briggs, so we need a short-term assignment for you." He laid a hand on an envelope on the desk. It was sealed and marked Top Secret. "I have something for you, but it's highly sensitive, and I can't tell you much without you accepting the assignment first."
She smiled wryly. "More sensitive than working in an enemy country's embassy's mail room so that I make copies of all the documents I handle?"
Focker sighed. "Honestly? Yes. This could be two weeks of sitting around in a manor garden reading books--or if it goes south, it could get you killed. Either way, there's a case to be made that taking part will make you an accessory to any of a dozen crimes, from invasion of privacy on up to public endangerment and possibly treason."
"You had me at 'reading,' sir!" Sciezka Lem smiled. "What can you tell me?"
"Well, how do you feel about working with children..?"
---
Four days later, Sciezka found herself sitting in a chair in the garden of the Bradley manor, enjoying the bright late-spring sun and listening to a small boy playing with tin soldiers. A shadow fell over her, and she looked up. "Hello, Ma'am," she said politely, and the middle-aged woman above her smiled.
"Hello, dear," said Mrs. Bradley. "Selim behaving himself?"
"Always," Sciezka answered. "He's been a delight." This was true. Selim was a cheerful, quiet, and easygoing child, happy to play with his toys or have Sciezka read to him. Sciezka had never been around children much, but he seemed more mature than she had expected. She quite liked Mrs. Bradley, too--she felt bad about deceiving them both by pretending to be a substitute tutor, replacing the regular live-in tutor while she "visited her mother," actually a cover for the biennial training and recertification everyone in Military Intelligence had to do.
Guilty as she felt, however, she understood why it was necessary. She'd read the case file, and therefore she remembered every word of it: the autopsies on the Briggs soldiers murdered by the being known as Pride, the report by Hawkeye on her confrontation with Pride, by Mustang on being forced through the Gate, by Ed Elric on how he'd fought Pride and reduced him to a fetal state. She didn't quite understand the alchemy of it all, but as far as she could gather, Ed had reduced Pride from many souls to one, turning him into effectively a normal human and erasing his memories, after which Mrs. Bradley had adopted him.
However, the other known single-souled homunculus--briefly, Sciezka wondered who that might be--had possessed frightening powers of the sort typical of homunculi, but aged normally. There was reason to believe Pride's powers might manifest within Selim--and if they did, Sciezka was to report it immediately.
"Well, I don't know about always," Mrs. Bradley answered. "Selim, dear, can you come here for a second?"
"Yes, mother?" he asked, standing and walking over to the two of them. "What's wrong?"
"One of the maids found this in a fireplace," she said, holding out the mangled remnants of a toy soldier. "Care to tell me what happened to it?"
Selim grinned proudly as he answered.
The moment she heard his response, Sciezka's blood froze. She stared in horror as Mrs. Bradley snatched up her son and clutched him tightly to her chest.
"Mother!" Selim laughed, squirming. "No, I'm too big for that."
"Please," said Mrs. Bradley. "It wasn't... it was just a child's prattling. Don't, don't tell..."
"You know," said Sciezka. She could barely breathe. She could see the tears in Mrs. Bradley's eyes, refusing to fall. "You know who I am."
"Your face," said Mrs. Bradley. "When he... you know, and if you know, that means you're one of Focker's..."
"Is something wrong, mother?" asked Selim, stopping his struggles. "Did I do something bad?"
Mrs. Bradley clutched her child even harder. "No, Selim," she said firmly, glaring at Sciezka. "You haven't done anything."
"I'm sorry..." Sciezka said. "I'm sorry. I have to."
"Do what you have to do." The bitterness in Mrs. Bradley's voice cut Sciezka to the core, but she really didn't have any choice.
--
Three days after that, Sciezka slouched despondently in a corner of a meeting room deep inside Central Command. This is not how I wanted to meet the Fuhrer! she thought despondently. Even if she hadn't been miserable, she would have been deeply uncomfortable in such a high-powered meeting. Besides her and Mrs. Bradley, who sat alone on one side of the room's long conference table, straight-backed and expressionless, there were Fuhrer Grumman himself, Colonel Focker, Lieutenant General Mustang, his aide Major Hawkeye, and Lieutenant General Armstrong with her aid, Captain Falman.
That was the reason it had taken three days to have the meeting--in the Fuhrer's words, when Focker had dragged her into his office three days ago, "It sounds like he's starting small and not fully aware of what's going on, so we don't have to move immediately. I want to bring in Armstrong and Mustang, since they're the only others outside of military intelligence aware of the Selim situation, so we can decide precisely how to proceed."
Wait they had, while the telegraph went to Armstrong in Briggs and Mustang in Ishval, and then a longer wait while the two traveled to Central. The meeting had finally begun three hours ago... but to Sciezka, it felt like weeks as she sat in the corner, imagining huge black clouds hovering over her head.
"I fail to see why we're still discussing this," said Armstrong. "Kill him and be done."
"No!" snapped Mustang. "He's a child who has harmed no one--"
"He's a mass murderer with tremendous alchemical powers, nearly impossible to contain," countered Armstrong. "If he learns to use them effectively--"
"That was a previous life!" countered Mustang. "He has never shown any signs of violent tendencies until now."
"Oh, a previous life of slaughter," said Armstrong, nodding sagely. "I suppose you'd know all about that, wouldn't you, Hero of Ishbal?"
Mustang was half out of his chair, his face contorted with rage, before Hawkeye's hand on his shoulder gently but firmly pushed him back down. "She has a point, sir," Hawkeye said. "Selim is a potentially very serious threat to national security, and we have to take that into account."
"So we're back to slaughtering children in the name of national security?" asked Mustang bitterly.
"Child," corrected Armstrong, "and not even that. He's a homunculus, a created thing, not a child."
"He is a child," said a quiet voice. It was the first words Mrs. Bradley had spoken since the meeting began. She drew her shawl around her shoulders, looking very small and very old. "He's my little boy."
Armstrong tsked. "With all due respect, Madame Bradley, every man I've killed was someone's little boy. It's a soldier's duty to protect this nation from those who would harm it."
Grumman nodded. "I take it your opinion is that we should kill him, then. Yours as well, Focker?"
Focker nodded.
"And you, Mustang?"
Mustang ground his teeth. "We should watch him more," said Hawkeye. "Keep forces ready to attack if he makes a move, but until then, do nothing."
Mustang nodded.
"Hmm," said Grumman. Sciezka sank a little lower in her chair, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with anyone, especially Mrs. Bradley. She knew what was about to happen, and wished fervently the earth would open up and swallow her before it did.
That was when the shouts started outside, followed by the thuds.
Sciezka couldn't even see the three of them move, let alone which one was first, but somewhere between one blink and the next Armstrong, Mustang, and Hawkeye were on their feet, Armstrong's sword and Hawkeye's pistol drawn, while Mustang's hand was outstretched and ready to snap.
Their came a ringing crash, metal slamming into the metal door of the room, and it dented slightly. Another crash, and then another, and the door burst open, the automail foot that had been ramming it slamming into the ground.
A tall, blonde man in his early 20s stormed into the room. "And just what the hell do you think you're doing!?" he demanded.
"Fullmetal--" Mustang began, but Ed cut him off.
"That's not my title anymore!" he snapped.
"Who told you about this meeting?" demanded Focker.
"That's for me to know!" shouted Ed. "Who told YOU you had the right to sit here and debate killing a kid like it's a zoning petition?"
"I told him," Sciezka said quietly. "I sent a telegram before I went to you, Colonel Focker."
"Sorry I took so long," he said. "It's a long trip from Rush Valley."
She shook her head. "You made it in time, though."
"This is a violation of the Official Secrets Act," said Focker, his face drawn and expression full of cold fury. "Maybe treason."
"That would make you and Mrs. Bradley the only people in this room not guilty of treason," answered Riza, smiling slightly.
"Put your weapons down," said Grumman. "Fullmet--I mean, Professor Rockbell, if you leave now we won't press charges."
"I kept him alive for a reason," said Ed. "Mrs. Bradley deserves a chance to raise her son, and it sounds like she's doing a good job. I won't let you kill him."
"Thank you," Mrs. Bradley said quietly. "Both of you..."
Sciezka stood. "Ex-exactly! We won't let you!"
"Sit down, Sergeant!" snapped Focker.
Sciezka dropped back into her chair, again sinking low. I am in SO much trouble...
"So, what happened?" asked Ed. The telegram had been very short, just a travel itinerary, with the first letter of each town spelling out the words "SELIM IS PRIDE. COME TO CENTRAL." Sciezka had remembered Ed's own notebook, and used a similar code. "Selim's shadow sprout teeth?"
Mrs. Bradley shuddered.
"No," said Mustang. "He blew up a toy with a firecracker."
Ed scoffed. "I did worse than that when I was five."
"Then he said it was his imaginary friend's idea," Mustang continued.
Ed shrugged. "Urey has an imaginary friend, too, and tries to pin things on him sometimes. It's pretty normal, Trish will probably do the same thing in a couple of years."
"Yes, but Urey's imaginary friend isn't named Solf Jackson Kimblee," said Armstrong.
"Oh."
Friday, November 28, 2014
Xenosaga Fic: Chapter 3, Part Two
Continuing from where we left off a couple weeks ago...
In the absolute emptiness of intergalactic space a green AMWS drifted impossibly. It was tall and narrow and insectile, with an angular head much like a mantis' and long, jointed limbs. Spikes curved cruelly from its knees, elbows, and shoulders, and a pair of long blades extended from its wrists and along the backs of its hands. There was nothing to suggest that it was remarkable--except for its location, hundreds of thousands of light-years from the nearest IS Gate.
Even the Dammerung, Scientia's vast flagship and capital, which could create temporary Gates of its own, would have taken years to reach this distant spot. Any other ship would have had to have set out when stone tools and fire represented the cutting edge of australopithecine science.
And yet, here it was. The entire cluster lay beneath its feet, two great whorls of multi-colored light surrounded by a scattering of smaller balls and knots of stars. The Virgo Cluster gleamed over its shoulder, a tiny gathering of yellow and blue lights, impossibly distant. And beyond that...
Beyond that, spread out in every direction, was the universe. Great filaments of red and yellow, like rivers of jewels, curved and arced across the sky, marking the borders of vast bubbles of void. It was at once vibrant and serene, cold and beautiful, wonderful and terrifying.
Aser was the only human being to have ever seen it. Oh, astronomers had reconstructed it millennia ago, painstakingly mapping distant objects detectable only in radio through the thick dust and gas that surrounded every star, but Aser had seen it. He knew what no other human knew, would never know. He knew where God lived.
He gazed out in silence, at the infinite majesty of the universe, and pitied the poor fools who believed God cared about them. They ruled a cluster of a dozen galaxies, a paltry few billion stars, and believed themselves masters of the Universe. Aser knew better. One day, he would go out there, to the place no one else could ever reach, and touch the face of God.
He, and he alone, could do it. Those idiots, Calvin and the Primus, believed they led a cadre of Chosen, but Aser knew the truth. He was the only one could reach God, the only one truly Chosen.
He just had one piece of business to attend to first.
Aser, came a familiar voice drifting into his mind.
"Dasra," he said. "What does our fearless leader wish of me today? Shall I bring him rare fruits, perhaps, from the gardens of Magella Minora? Or perhaps something sweeter? A young virgin from the flesh-markets of Orleans 3, mayhap?" He giggled. "Ah, how silly of me to forget. Our fearless leader does not partake of the pleasures of the flesh. He --" Aser could hardly finish the sentence from laughing. "He believes they'd take him farther from God!"
Aser, you know you shouldn't speak of Calvin like that. In her own AMWS, countless quintillions of kilometers away, she sighed. Touching Aser's mind was never pleasant at the best of times, but when he was out in the deeps, it could be downright disturbing. Once, she had made the mistake of going deeper into his thoughts than the level of intentional words.
She had seen many terrible things in the minds of the Chosen. She had no illusions on that front. She had seen herself and her sister, performing lewd acts in van der Kaum's imagination. She knew how Mia felt every time she used her power. She knew what secret Calvin hid so deeply even he did not know it.
None of that had prepared her for Aser's mind. In Aser she found a whirlwind of crystal fragments, countless broken pieces of thoughts and memories caught up in an endless torrent of feeling, never quiet, never still. In Aser there were depths of joy and heights of despair beyond anything she had ever felt or imagined. There was nothing there she could follow or understand, just terrible, black, howling wind and the occasional flash of a half-formed idea or one tiny piece of a perception.
What little she did see was, however, enough. She knew who Aser was, better perhaps than he did. She knew what he thought of himself, and what he thought of others. She had sworn then two things: first, that she would never again go deeper into his mind than she absolutely had to, and second, that she would never allow him to be alone with herself or her sister.
He just asked me to show you something I picked up. He doesn't have any orders. Dasra fed Aser her memories of the attack on their freighter off Bethel, and the intervention of the Isolde.
"It is him?" said Aser. "You know his name?"
The only survivor is now her captain. It is him. His name is Seth Mikra.
"YES!" crowed Aser, and Dasra flinched at the burning-hot acid of his emotion pouring through every crack in her defenses. "Finally, finally! Oh, yes, I'm coming for you, old friend. I'll burn you, cut you, crush you..." He laughed.
He must not be killed. You know that, Aser."Oh, no, no, no. I won't kill him. Of course I won't." Aser paused. "Can I maybe kill him a little?"
Aser.
"Mia would have laughed." He pouted, but could only maintain it a moment before he began laughing again. "I'm going now."
Please, Aser, don't kill him. We need him. I'll be watching.
Aser's laughter faded to wonderment as he felt Dasra withdraw. He truly was closer to God out here. How else to explain that the one task he had left before he could fulfill his destiny was simply handed to him as soon as he began thinking about it?
"My slate will be wiped clean," he hissed, filling with rage at the memory of what that man had done to him. "Seth Mikra will pay, if I have to tear apart the entire cluster and all the Chosen to get to him." He looked out one last time at the universe. "I'll be back, God."
And then empty space was empty once more.
***
Nadeshiko put the lab report away with a sigh and looked down at her patient, a small and sallow man, balding and bearded. "Patient Ortir Kormas, age... approximately thirty-five," she said for the recorders. "Found unconscious behind the single men's barracks. Bloodwork indicates extreme hypoglycemia typical of late-stage Horviss-Greln disease." She sighed. "Intravenous feeding has proven inadequate to counter symptoms. Supplies of Isoprate are low, so I will commence treatment with Korana--"
"Stop!"
Nadeshiko looked up to see her boss, Dr. Viri, standing at the entrance to the medium-risk ward. "What's wrong?" she asked.
Viri's pale, pudgy face was flushed, and his eyes, overlarge and the best of times, were bulging. "Koranafil! Do you want to kill him?"
"I-- oh shit."
"Propanofil, Dr. Kodesh. Propanofil is the treatment of second choice for H-G. Koranafil is for renal failure."
Nadeshiko hung her head. "I know that, doctor. You know I know that!"
"Yes, I do." His flush was gone now; his face was stony as he walked over to the medication cooler and withdrew a bottle of Propanofil. "Normally. When did you last sleep, Nadeshiko?"
"I woke up half an hour ago," she countered. "Are you trying to accuse me of something?"
"That depends. How long did you sleep?"
She looked away. "Three hours."
"That's what I thought. You need to sleep! Better no doctor at all than one who can't keep her drugs straight."
Nadeshiko winced. "Mizrahi--"
"Aren't gods. You may need less sleep, but you still need sleep."
"And I'm getting enough!" she insisted. "Now get out of my way and let me treat my patient."
"No." Viri attached the Propanofil to a nozzle on the patient's IV, and watched a moment to make sure it was dripping properly into the stream. "There are two possibilities here, doctor. Either you're entirely incompetent, which we both know isn't true, or you're slipping because of tiredness. Which do you prefer?"
"I made a mistake," she said. "People make mistakes. Don't tell me you're not tired, too."
"I am," he said. "But I know I'll save more lives on a good night's sleep than I could by working myself into exhaustion. You seem to be having a hard time learning that."
"Fine," she said. "I'll try to sleep more. Now I have to check up on patients."
Viri shook his head. "No, Nadeshiko. You're taking the week off, starting now. The supplies should be here today, so I won't really need you for a few days. You can go back to town with the deliveryman, sleep in your own bed for a couple of nights, come back fresh when we start running low on nanomachines."
"You can't make me do that."
Viri sighed. "Yes, I can. Go to the gate and see if the deliveryman's here yet. If I hear of you touching a patient, you're fired."
For the second time that morning, Nadeshiko fought to deactivate her tear ducts. It was getting harder. Exhaustion pulled at every cell in her body, despite all her best efforts to fight it down. She wanted to scream at Viri, to tear him apart. Didn't he understand that people were dying? What if somebody she could have saved died while she was gone?
"Fine," she said, and slumped. "I'll go. I'll be back Saturday."
"Good," he said. "Get some sleep, and some exercise, and eat something fresh."
"Yeah," she said. She left the building, little more than a shack, and walked out into the harsh mid-morning sunlight. Finally alone, she shrieked her frustration at the sky.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. She came to Bethel full of hope and pride. She'd seen herself, Scientia-trained, amazing the other doctors with her ability to heal these poor patients. She would save lives, heal the sick, and by the time her two-year stint was up, the refugee camp would be empty, everybody healed and home.
What a little idiot she'd been.
In the absolute emptiness of intergalactic space a green AMWS drifted impossibly. It was tall and narrow and insectile, with an angular head much like a mantis' and long, jointed limbs. Spikes curved cruelly from its knees, elbows, and shoulders, and a pair of long blades extended from its wrists and along the backs of its hands. There was nothing to suggest that it was remarkable--except for its location, hundreds of thousands of light-years from the nearest IS Gate.
Even the Dammerung, Scientia's vast flagship and capital, which could create temporary Gates of its own, would have taken years to reach this distant spot. Any other ship would have had to have set out when stone tools and fire represented the cutting edge of australopithecine science.
And yet, here it was. The entire cluster lay beneath its feet, two great whorls of multi-colored light surrounded by a scattering of smaller balls and knots of stars. The Virgo Cluster gleamed over its shoulder, a tiny gathering of yellow and blue lights, impossibly distant. And beyond that...
Beyond that, spread out in every direction, was the universe. Great filaments of red and yellow, like rivers of jewels, curved and arced across the sky, marking the borders of vast bubbles of void. It was at once vibrant and serene, cold and beautiful, wonderful and terrifying.
Aser was the only human being to have ever seen it. Oh, astronomers had reconstructed it millennia ago, painstakingly mapping distant objects detectable only in radio through the thick dust and gas that surrounded every star, but Aser had seen it. He knew what no other human knew, would never know. He knew where God lived.
He gazed out in silence, at the infinite majesty of the universe, and pitied the poor fools who believed God cared about them. They ruled a cluster of a dozen galaxies, a paltry few billion stars, and believed themselves masters of the Universe. Aser knew better. One day, he would go out there, to the place no one else could ever reach, and touch the face of God.
He, and he alone, could do it. Those idiots, Calvin and the Primus, believed they led a cadre of Chosen, but Aser knew the truth. He was the only one could reach God, the only one truly Chosen.
He just had one piece of business to attend to first.
Aser, came a familiar voice drifting into his mind.
"Dasra," he said. "What does our fearless leader wish of me today? Shall I bring him rare fruits, perhaps, from the gardens of Magella Minora? Or perhaps something sweeter? A young virgin from the flesh-markets of Orleans 3, mayhap?" He giggled. "Ah, how silly of me to forget. Our fearless leader does not partake of the pleasures of the flesh. He --" Aser could hardly finish the sentence from laughing. "He believes they'd take him farther from God!"
Aser, you know you shouldn't speak of Calvin like that. In her own AMWS, countless quintillions of kilometers away, she sighed. Touching Aser's mind was never pleasant at the best of times, but when he was out in the deeps, it could be downright disturbing. Once, she had made the mistake of going deeper into his thoughts than the level of intentional words.
She had seen many terrible things in the minds of the Chosen. She had no illusions on that front. She had seen herself and her sister, performing lewd acts in van der Kaum's imagination. She knew how Mia felt every time she used her power. She knew what secret Calvin hid so deeply even he did not know it.
None of that had prepared her for Aser's mind. In Aser she found a whirlwind of crystal fragments, countless broken pieces of thoughts and memories caught up in an endless torrent of feeling, never quiet, never still. In Aser there were depths of joy and heights of despair beyond anything she had ever felt or imagined. There was nothing there she could follow or understand, just terrible, black, howling wind and the occasional flash of a half-formed idea or one tiny piece of a perception.
What little she did see was, however, enough. She knew who Aser was, better perhaps than he did. She knew what he thought of himself, and what he thought of others. She had sworn then two things: first, that she would never again go deeper into his mind than she absolutely had to, and second, that she would never allow him to be alone with herself or her sister.
He just asked me to show you something I picked up. He doesn't have any orders. Dasra fed Aser her memories of the attack on their freighter off Bethel, and the intervention of the Isolde.
"It is him?" said Aser. "You know his name?"
The only survivor is now her captain. It is him. His name is Seth Mikra.
"YES!" crowed Aser, and Dasra flinched at the burning-hot acid of his emotion pouring through every crack in her defenses. "Finally, finally! Oh, yes, I'm coming for you, old friend. I'll burn you, cut you, crush you..." He laughed.
He must not be killed. You know that, Aser."Oh, no, no, no. I won't kill him. Of course I won't." Aser paused. "Can I maybe kill him a little?"
Aser.
"Mia would have laughed." He pouted, but could only maintain it a moment before he began laughing again. "I'm going now."
Please, Aser, don't kill him. We need him. I'll be watching.
Aser's laughter faded to wonderment as he felt Dasra withdraw. He truly was closer to God out here. How else to explain that the one task he had left before he could fulfill his destiny was simply handed to him as soon as he began thinking about it?
"My slate will be wiped clean," he hissed, filling with rage at the memory of what that man had done to him. "Seth Mikra will pay, if I have to tear apart the entire cluster and all the Chosen to get to him." He looked out one last time at the universe. "I'll be back, God."
And then empty space was empty once more.
***
Nadeshiko put the lab report away with a sigh and looked down at her patient, a small and sallow man, balding and bearded. "Patient Ortir Kormas, age... approximately thirty-five," she said for the recorders. "Found unconscious behind the single men's barracks. Bloodwork indicates extreme hypoglycemia typical of late-stage Horviss-Greln disease." She sighed. "Intravenous feeding has proven inadequate to counter symptoms. Supplies of Isoprate are low, so I will commence treatment with Korana--"
"Stop!"
Nadeshiko looked up to see her boss, Dr. Viri, standing at the entrance to the medium-risk ward. "What's wrong?" she asked.
Viri's pale, pudgy face was flushed, and his eyes, overlarge and the best of times, were bulging. "Koranafil! Do you want to kill him?"
"I-- oh shit."
"Propanofil, Dr. Kodesh. Propanofil is the treatment of second choice for H-G. Koranafil is for renal failure."
Nadeshiko hung her head. "I know that, doctor. You know I know that!"
"Yes, I do." His flush was gone now; his face was stony as he walked over to the medication cooler and withdrew a bottle of Propanofil. "Normally. When did you last sleep, Nadeshiko?"
"I woke up half an hour ago," she countered. "Are you trying to accuse me of something?"
"That depends. How long did you sleep?"
She looked away. "Three hours."
"That's what I thought. You need to sleep! Better no doctor at all than one who can't keep her drugs straight."
Nadeshiko winced. "Mizrahi--"
"Aren't gods. You may need less sleep, but you still need sleep."
"And I'm getting enough!" she insisted. "Now get out of my way and let me treat my patient."
"No." Viri attached the Propanofil to a nozzle on the patient's IV, and watched a moment to make sure it was dripping properly into the stream. "There are two possibilities here, doctor. Either you're entirely incompetent, which we both know isn't true, or you're slipping because of tiredness. Which do you prefer?"
"I made a mistake," she said. "People make mistakes. Don't tell me you're not tired, too."
"I am," he said. "But I know I'll save more lives on a good night's sleep than I could by working myself into exhaustion. You seem to be having a hard time learning that."
"Fine," she said. "I'll try to sleep more. Now I have to check up on patients."
Viri shook his head. "No, Nadeshiko. You're taking the week off, starting now. The supplies should be here today, so I won't really need you for a few days. You can go back to town with the deliveryman, sleep in your own bed for a couple of nights, come back fresh when we start running low on nanomachines."
"You can't make me do that."
Viri sighed. "Yes, I can. Go to the gate and see if the deliveryman's here yet. If I hear of you touching a patient, you're fired."
For the second time that morning, Nadeshiko fought to deactivate her tear ducts. It was getting harder. Exhaustion pulled at every cell in her body, despite all her best efforts to fight it down. She wanted to scream at Viri, to tear him apart. Didn't he understand that people were dying? What if somebody she could have saved died while she was gone?
"Fine," she said, and slumped. "I'll go. I'll be back Saturday."
"Good," he said. "Get some sleep, and some exercise, and eat something fresh."
"Yeah," she said. She left the building, little more than a shack, and walked out into the harsh mid-morning sunlight. Finally alone, she shrieked her frustration at the sky.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. She came to Bethel full of hope and pride. She'd seen herself, Scientia-trained, amazing the other doctors with her ability to heal these poor patients. She would save lives, heal the sick, and by the time her two-year stint was up, the refugee camp would be empty, everybody healed and home.
What a little idiot she'd been.
Friday, November 21, 2014
Fiction Friday: Faultless, Part 1
Still running that Patreon! The Near-Apocalypse of '09 is still more than three months away, but Patreon backers can start reading it today!
I'm taking a break from Felda's story for a while, because I find I keep thinking about Ghost's instead. So I'm taking a crack at writing it. This is set quite a ways to the north of Toftor, in a culture with rather different structures and issues.
Trigger Warning: Child abuse and neglect, internalized racism, body image issues
Caer Wyndle, Pryderys
Twelve years, four months, and seven days until the end.
It wasn't Ghost's fault. Not really.
Sure, she was the immediate cause, but she had no idea what she was doing, and more importantly no way of knowing what she was doing. There had simply never been a chance for her to learn what she needed to know--if there had been, she likely would have learned it gladly.
That's what she was doing in the library, after all; learning. She spent a great deal of time there, there being little else to do. She got yelled at if her parents or Parry caught her doing servant work, and of course she couldn't go outside because someone might see how ugly she was.
Every once in a while Mother would send her maid, Kina--though mother always called her Kiah for some reason--to fetch Ghost. Kina would drag her to the baths to be washed and scrubbed and shoved into a frilly blouse and short pants, and then she would be presented to Mother. That was the only time Ghost was called Emlyn, which was her name in the big red book of family trees on the shelf by the mantle in the library: Emlyn Glenys Dyvis, daughter of Gwenfer Dylan and Caradoc Dyvis (nee Gruffyd). Mother was the only person who called her that, when she called her at all.
Every time started the same: Mother would grunt, say, "You seem in good health, Emlyn," and Ghost would agree. Then Mother would sigh and say, "Really, we must get you a governess or a tutor one of these days. It isn't right, a Dyvis child growing up wild."
Then Mother would brush her hair, or play a game with her, or teach her something, until eventually Ghost did something wrong and the screaming started. She stopped being Emlyn once mother started screaming; she was just that child, as in "Take that child out of my sight!" It was hard to tell what would be wrong, but there was always something.
Once, a few years ago, Mother taught Ghost her letters, and the sounds they made. After that Ghost would practice in the library, sounding out the words one by one. As time went on she got better at it, and learned more words. No one particularly cared if she sat for hours in the library--not like the kitchen, where sooner or later she'd be in someone's way, or the halls and rooms where Mother and Father lived and entertained guests, where Ghost wasn't permitted except when Mother sent for her.
No, in the library she was left in peace, except if Father or Mother or a guest wanted to use it. Then she had to disappear before they entered, so they wouldn't see her. She was very good at leaving a room just before someone else entered, which was why everyone called her Ghost. Well, at least, all the servants called her Ghost, and she herself did too, so that made Ghost her real name, whatever the family record-book might say.
So her education consisted of whatever books she pulled randomly from the library shelves, which meant a great deal of history, mostly in the form of "and then General so-and-so led the charge on Wherever and won the Battle of Thingy," books of advice on business, and literature, mostly in the form of "and then General So-and-So led the charge on Wherever and won the Battle of Thingy, as well as the hand of Princess Whatsername."
There was very little in there about magic, and none at all about the proper order in which things ought to be attempted when learning magic. And she was eleven, that age when such gifts begin to manifest. Not that her gift was that great--middling, really. But it was a Fire rune she looked at in the book, tracing her fingers over it while she read the instructions about focusing on it, letting herself flow into it. And the library was full of wooden shelves stacked with paper books. And they did put the fire out without too much damage. Eventually.
Honestly, she probably could have just faded away, stayed out of sight until the whole thing was forgotten, if not for the fact that she panicked as the first flickers of flame danced across the book, and ran screaming from the library straight into Mother, Father, and the Thain of Caer Wyndle.
On the other hand, six months in a dark cellar did give her both time and motivation to practice the fire rune. She had it quite under control by the time they let her back out.
Eleven years, nine months, and thirteen days until the end
Ghost sat under a table in the kitchen, nibbling at a twirlbread that had been dropped on the floor and trod on. Normally she wouldn't eat food that had had feet in it, since Alamea always made sure that every meal she prepared for Mother and Father had more leftovers than all the servants together could eat, but she very much liked twirlbread, with its cinnamon-sweetness and chopped nuts. Unfortunately she couldn't have the fun of unwinding it into a long thin strip of fluffy baked dough, because it had gotten all smashed, but it was still quite tasty after she scraped off the footprint.
Speaking of her, Alamea walked into the kitchen at just that moment, trailed by the new scullery lad. Ghost didn't know his name yet, since he'd started while she was in the cellar. Ghost quite liked Alamea; she was kind as long as you stayed out of her way and obeyed her iron-fisted rule of the kitchen, and she had a big, round, lilting voice that was somehow exactly right for a woman barely taller than Ghost and seven times wider, with a broad face and thick black calluses on her big, strong hands. The scullery lad was a bit taller and a lot thinner, but his face was close enough that he might be her cousin--and probably was, for all Ghost knew.
Alamea strode over to the bubbling pot of soup, and her apprentice, a shy and anxious girl named Luana, only a few years older than Ghost herself, stepped back. Alamea lifted a ladle and tasted the soup, while Luana clutched her slender hands together and watched in worried silence. "Hrm," said Alamea, and Luana visibly relaxed. That meant, Ghost knew, that the cook had no complaints about Luana's work.
Alamea turned to the counter, inspecting the vegetables and spices Ghost had watched Luana chopping and grinding for the last hour. "Hrm," she said again, and laid a saucepan on the stove next to the soup. Soon she was tossing and flipping vegetables, adding them and the spices to the pan in some arcane order Ghost couldn't figure out.
"Hi, Mele," Luana whispered to the scullery lad. Aha! So that was his name!
"Hi," he said.
"How is, uh, everything?" Luana asked. When he shrugged, she continued on, "Um, if there's anything that you need help with, or want to know... I mean, since I know you're new--I mean, of course you know that you're new, but--"
"Oh, just go fuck already," Alamea interrupted. "After work. Luana, I need you to start cleaning the fish. Mele, run to the pantry and get me more flour and two onions."
Luana blushed like two inkblots spreading across her cheeks, but Ghost caught the hint of a smile on the older girl's face as she turned to her work. Ghost watched in fascination; this was a part of life she'd only seen glimpses of before.
A couple of minutes later Mele returned and laid down the supplies Alamea had requested. "There actually is something I've been wondering," he murmured to Luana. "Who's that little girl I sometimes see? The one with the filthy face and the torn smock? Is she the maid's daughter or something?"
"Little girl?" asked Luana. "Oh, you mean Ghost! No, no, she's their daughter."
"Them?" he asked. "You mean--she's a nob? But then why do they let her just... wander like that? It's not right!"
Ghost perked up, suddenly interested. Wasn't it?
"You've answered your own question, boy," said Alamea. "You said she looked like a servant's girl. Oh, she's got the same lovely dark skin and eyes as her mother, all the Dyvis women do, but she looks more than half Keo, doesn't she?"
Ghost stifled a sigh, since that was likely to get her noticed and probably walloped for eavesdropping. That was always what it came down to, her ugliness. Fat and short and toadlike, flat nose in a broad face, and a tangle of curls that grew denser and bigger rather than longer--not like Mother's hair that hung down shining and dark and straight, tall, slender, long-limbed, beautiful Mother, or the tall, slender, long-limbed, straight-haired, beautiful ladies that sometimes visited her.
"Hard to believe she's their child," Mele agreed.
"Exactly," said Luana, voice dropping to an excited whisper. "Rumor is, His Lordship thinks she's not. He thinks Her Ladyship had a Keo lover and forgot to take her draft."
"Rumor," said Alamea, disgusted.
"Well, that's what Kina told me!" Luana protested.
"Yes, and she told me Her Ladyship thinks the child's a throwback, that the Gruffyds aren't quite as pure Tarnic as their family tree says," Alamea countered. "She repeats everything she hears, that girl." Alamea passed the vegetables in their pan to Luana and took the cleaned, boned fish from her.
"Well, if either one is true, why do they stay together?" asked Mele.
"Here, make yourself useful, boy, and peel this garlic." Alamea cracked a couple of eggs in a bowl and whipped them swiftly, then poured out the flour onto the counter. Soon she was at work coating the fish in first egg, then flour. "Because the Gruffyds might be rich and Tarnic, but they're as common as we are," she said. "And Lady Gwenfer might be a lady, but this manor was half in ruins and all her old father had left before young Mr. Gruffyd, as he was then, proposed. They may hate each other, and they do, almost as much as they hate her, poor little thing! But they need each other, Ghost or no."
Ghost clutched her scabby knees to her chest, hardly daring to breathe for fear they might catch her. She'd never heard anything like this before. Mother and Father hated each other? Hated her? She rolled the word around in her head. Yes. Yes, that was the right word. They hated her. And, she was vaguely surprised to notice, she hated them.
The next day she snuck out of the house for the first time.
I'm taking a break from Felda's story for a while, because I find I keep thinking about Ghost's instead. So I'm taking a crack at writing it. This is set quite a ways to the north of Toftor, in a culture with rather different structures and issues.
Trigger Warning: Child abuse and neglect, internalized racism, body image issues
Caer Wyndle, Pryderys
Twelve years, four months, and seven days until the end.
It wasn't Ghost's fault. Not really.
Sure, she was the immediate cause, but she had no idea what she was doing, and more importantly no way of knowing what she was doing. There had simply never been a chance for her to learn what she needed to know--if there had been, she likely would have learned it gladly.
That's what she was doing in the library, after all; learning. She spent a great deal of time there, there being little else to do. She got yelled at if her parents or Parry caught her doing servant work, and of course she couldn't go outside because someone might see how ugly she was.
Every once in a while Mother would send her maid, Kina--though mother always called her Kiah for some reason--to fetch Ghost. Kina would drag her to the baths to be washed and scrubbed and shoved into a frilly blouse and short pants, and then she would be presented to Mother. That was the only time Ghost was called Emlyn, which was her name in the big red book of family trees on the shelf by the mantle in the library: Emlyn Glenys Dyvis, daughter of Gwenfer Dylan and Caradoc Dyvis (nee Gruffyd). Mother was the only person who called her that, when she called her at all.
Every time started the same: Mother would grunt, say, "You seem in good health, Emlyn," and Ghost would agree. Then Mother would sigh and say, "Really, we must get you a governess or a tutor one of these days. It isn't right, a Dyvis child growing up wild."
Then Mother would brush her hair, or play a game with her, or teach her something, until eventually Ghost did something wrong and the screaming started. She stopped being Emlyn once mother started screaming; she was just that child, as in "Take that child out of my sight!" It was hard to tell what would be wrong, but there was always something.
Once, a few years ago, Mother taught Ghost her letters, and the sounds they made. After that Ghost would practice in the library, sounding out the words one by one. As time went on she got better at it, and learned more words. No one particularly cared if she sat for hours in the library--not like the kitchen, where sooner or later she'd be in someone's way, or the halls and rooms where Mother and Father lived and entertained guests, where Ghost wasn't permitted except when Mother sent for her.
No, in the library she was left in peace, except if Father or Mother or a guest wanted to use it. Then she had to disappear before they entered, so they wouldn't see her. She was very good at leaving a room just before someone else entered, which was why everyone called her Ghost. Well, at least, all the servants called her Ghost, and she herself did too, so that made Ghost her real name, whatever the family record-book might say.
So her education consisted of whatever books she pulled randomly from the library shelves, which meant a great deal of history, mostly in the form of "and then General so-and-so led the charge on Wherever and won the Battle of Thingy," books of advice on business, and literature, mostly in the form of "and then General So-and-So led the charge on Wherever and won the Battle of Thingy, as well as the hand of Princess Whatsername."
There was very little in there about magic, and none at all about the proper order in which things ought to be attempted when learning magic. And she was eleven, that age when such gifts begin to manifest. Not that her gift was that great--middling, really. But it was a Fire rune she looked at in the book, tracing her fingers over it while she read the instructions about focusing on it, letting herself flow into it. And the library was full of wooden shelves stacked with paper books. And they did put the fire out without too much damage. Eventually.
Honestly, she probably could have just faded away, stayed out of sight until the whole thing was forgotten, if not for the fact that she panicked as the first flickers of flame danced across the book, and ran screaming from the library straight into Mother, Father, and the Thain of Caer Wyndle.
On the other hand, six months in a dark cellar did give her both time and motivation to practice the fire rune. She had it quite under control by the time they let her back out.
Eleven years, nine months, and thirteen days until the end
Ghost sat under a table in the kitchen, nibbling at a twirlbread that had been dropped on the floor and trod on. Normally she wouldn't eat food that had had feet in it, since Alamea always made sure that every meal she prepared for Mother and Father had more leftovers than all the servants together could eat, but she very much liked twirlbread, with its cinnamon-sweetness and chopped nuts. Unfortunately she couldn't have the fun of unwinding it into a long thin strip of fluffy baked dough, because it had gotten all smashed, but it was still quite tasty after she scraped off the footprint.
Speaking of her, Alamea walked into the kitchen at just that moment, trailed by the new scullery lad. Ghost didn't know his name yet, since he'd started while she was in the cellar. Ghost quite liked Alamea; she was kind as long as you stayed out of her way and obeyed her iron-fisted rule of the kitchen, and she had a big, round, lilting voice that was somehow exactly right for a woman barely taller than Ghost and seven times wider, with a broad face and thick black calluses on her big, strong hands. The scullery lad was a bit taller and a lot thinner, but his face was close enough that he might be her cousin--and probably was, for all Ghost knew.
Alamea strode over to the bubbling pot of soup, and her apprentice, a shy and anxious girl named Luana, only a few years older than Ghost herself, stepped back. Alamea lifted a ladle and tasted the soup, while Luana clutched her slender hands together and watched in worried silence. "Hrm," said Alamea, and Luana visibly relaxed. That meant, Ghost knew, that the cook had no complaints about Luana's work.
Alamea turned to the counter, inspecting the vegetables and spices Ghost had watched Luana chopping and grinding for the last hour. "Hrm," she said again, and laid a saucepan on the stove next to the soup. Soon she was tossing and flipping vegetables, adding them and the spices to the pan in some arcane order Ghost couldn't figure out.
"Hi, Mele," Luana whispered to the scullery lad. Aha! So that was his name!
"Hi," he said.
"How is, uh, everything?" Luana asked. When he shrugged, she continued on, "Um, if there's anything that you need help with, or want to know... I mean, since I know you're new--I mean, of course you know that you're new, but--"
"Oh, just go fuck already," Alamea interrupted. "After work. Luana, I need you to start cleaning the fish. Mele, run to the pantry and get me more flour and two onions."
Luana blushed like two inkblots spreading across her cheeks, but Ghost caught the hint of a smile on the older girl's face as she turned to her work. Ghost watched in fascination; this was a part of life she'd only seen glimpses of before.
A couple of minutes later Mele returned and laid down the supplies Alamea had requested. "There actually is something I've been wondering," he murmured to Luana. "Who's that little girl I sometimes see? The one with the filthy face and the torn smock? Is she the maid's daughter or something?"
"Little girl?" asked Luana. "Oh, you mean Ghost! No, no, she's their daughter."
"Them?" he asked. "You mean--she's a nob? But then why do they let her just... wander like that? It's not right!"
Ghost perked up, suddenly interested. Wasn't it?
"You've answered your own question, boy," said Alamea. "You said she looked like a servant's girl. Oh, she's got the same lovely dark skin and eyes as her mother, all the Dyvis women do, but she looks more than half Keo, doesn't she?"
Ghost stifled a sigh, since that was likely to get her noticed and probably walloped for eavesdropping. That was always what it came down to, her ugliness. Fat and short and toadlike, flat nose in a broad face, and a tangle of curls that grew denser and bigger rather than longer--not like Mother's hair that hung down shining and dark and straight, tall, slender, long-limbed, beautiful Mother, or the tall, slender, long-limbed, straight-haired, beautiful ladies that sometimes visited her.
"Hard to believe she's their child," Mele agreed.
"Exactly," said Luana, voice dropping to an excited whisper. "Rumor is, His Lordship thinks she's not. He thinks Her Ladyship had a Keo lover and forgot to take her draft."
"Rumor," said Alamea, disgusted.
"Well, that's what Kina told me!" Luana protested.
"Yes, and she told me Her Ladyship thinks the child's a throwback, that the Gruffyds aren't quite as pure Tarnic as their family tree says," Alamea countered. "She repeats everything she hears, that girl." Alamea passed the vegetables in their pan to Luana and took the cleaned, boned fish from her.
"Well, if either one is true, why do they stay together?" asked Mele.
"Here, make yourself useful, boy, and peel this garlic." Alamea cracked a couple of eggs in a bowl and whipped them swiftly, then poured out the flour onto the counter. Soon she was at work coating the fish in first egg, then flour. "Because the Gruffyds might be rich and Tarnic, but they're as common as we are," she said. "And Lady Gwenfer might be a lady, but this manor was half in ruins and all her old father had left before young Mr. Gruffyd, as he was then, proposed. They may hate each other, and they do, almost as much as they hate her, poor little thing! But they need each other, Ghost or no."
Ghost clutched her scabby knees to her chest, hardly daring to breathe for fear they might catch her. She'd never heard anything like this before. Mother and Father hated each other? Hated her? She rolled the word around in her head. Yes. Yes, that was the right word. They hated her. And, she was vaguely surprised to notice, she hated them.
The next day she snuck out of the house for the first time.
Friday, November 7, 2014
Fiction Friday: Xenosaga Fic: Chapter Three Begins
Sorry for the lateness on this. Been having computer issues.
She drained the cup, staring blankly at the wall of her small, bare quarters. She had an apartment in the city, paid for by the Bethel Fund, but she hadn't slept there in a week. Hadn't left the camp in six days. With Berrol sick, she had no choice; it was just her and Dr. Viri caring for nearly three hundred refugees.
Most of the refugees were sick most of the time. The doctors took great pains to isolate themselves from infection, but with hundreds of people crammed together, most of them with damaged immune systems, there was simply no way to be completely safe. In her two years here, even Nadeshiko had been too sick to work twice. Hardly a month went by that Viri or Berrol didn't miss a day or two, and Berrol had now been throwing up virtually everything for six days. They had him in a hospital in the city now. Apparently, the city hospitals did have beds they weren't using, as long as you weren't from Midbar.
Nadeshiko slammed her cup down. Her eyes hurt, and frustrated, angry tears threatened to fall. Instinctively, she switched off her tear ducts until the feeling passed. She couldn't really blame the city. They could easily have filled every hospital bed with refugees, at the cost of leaving nothing for their own citizens; they chose, instead, to admit all the refugees under the age of twenty, and supplied food to the remainder. It was more than a lot of other places did.
No, she had only herself to blame for losing three more patients. Death had beaten her again. Next time, she'd fight harder.
Time to work. Closing her eyes, she concentrated, dissolving the fatigue toxins in her system, slowing the absorption rate of the caffeine and enhancing its effects, so that one cup of coffee would keep her up for several hours without making her hyper. The slight shaking in her hands subsided as she forced her biochemistry to accede to her will.
Feeling fully refreshed, albeit frustrated and a little slow, she stepped out into the bright desert sun and got to work.
***
Seth made the last finishing touches to his ad and sat back. "What do you think?" he asked.
"It's fine," said Izzy. "Just like the last three versions."
"I want it to be better than fine! I've got a good feeling about this find. Somebody out there's going to pay through the nose for this thing." Seth looked down at his ad.
"Salvage for sale," it read. "Sealed, armored container recovered from wreck of tramp freighter Ahura off Bethel. 1.4 tonnes, 18m x 8m x 2m. No identifying markings, content listing, or danger warnings. Sold as is, unopened. C25,000 OBO."
His asking price was five times the worth of the container empty. Unfortunately, not even he and Izzy together had been able to crack its lock codes, and its armor was too heavy to be pierced by anything less than the Isolde's bow cannon, which ran too much risk of damaging the contents. All they knew about its contents was that they weighed about half a tonne, based on their best estimate of the weight of the container, so Seth pretty much had to guess how much they'd have to be worth to warrant that level of protection.
"Okay," he said finally. "As soon as we land, get us some time on the spaceport's EPR and upload that to, uh," he ticked off markets on his fingers, "let's say the local market, Ur, the Federation, and Artaxerxes. Oh, and Scientia and the Church, of course."
"Gotcha, boss," said Izzy. Something about the way she said it made Seth feel she wanted to say more. "You ever think about how great it must have been in the old days, boss? Back when you could just upload this sort of thing to the UMN when you felt like it, with color and video, and talk to buyers in realtime?"
"Yes, in the wonderful golden age of our wise and benevolent ancestors," Seth answered sarcastically. "I don't know where you pick up these things. You know I don't believe in that stuff."
"You're a salvager, boss. You of all people know how much technology we lost in the Dark Ages. You really think we've gotten it all back?"
"I think legend has exaggerated what the ancients could do. If there really had once been a giant super-fast network spanning the whole cluster, don't you think Scientia would be at least working on recreating it now? Next you're going to tell me you believe there really was a Saoshi who magically visited a thousand planets a hundred and fifty years before IS Gates."
"Ah, boss, you don't have to make fun of me." There was a clear pout in Izzy's voice. "Anyway, we've got clearance to land. We hit atmosphere in five minutes."
"Gotcha," said Seth. "Let the guys know. I'll meet them at the bridge."
***
"Well, hell," said Wally. "Now what do we do?"
"First priority is to get out of here," said Sardula. "Judging by those cages, there's at least four more Divs in the building, and more to the point there'll be soldiers coming to pacify them as soon as they're confident everyone in the building is dead. After that, we watch their communications and try to figure out if the Original is still here, or if they've moved it offplanet."
"How exactly do you plan on getting out?" asked Wally.
Sardula pointed to the far end of the room, where an open shaft led up. "That must be how they got the objective out without anyone noticing; it's probably for bringing equipment and personnel in and out of the lab without having to pass through lower-security areas. The other end is no doubt concealed somewhere in the hills behind the facility."
"Sure," said Wally, "and it's probably covered by a squad of AMWS and a couple of missile batteries, too. They obviously aren't kidding around about securing the Original."
"At least one squad," Sardula agreed.
"So, what, you want to just crawl up the shaft and ask them politely to let us go through?"
"As much fun as that might be, I have a better plan." Sardula looked up the shaft. "Yes, the other end must be about six hundred meters south-by-southwest of the facility."
"That's really great to know," said Wally. "I don't suppose you've been transmitting all this to a small army of friends who are now going to fight their way down the shaft and pick us up, have you?"
"Not exactly," Sardula answered. For the first time, she gave a small, secretive smile. If Wally hadn't just seen her go toe-to-toe with two Divs and win, he'd have said it made her look pixie-ish. "Ah, it should just about be here."
"What?" asked Wally. "I don't see anything."
"Exactly," said Sardula, as a small black AMWS materialized at the bottom of the shaft, hovering in near-total silence.
"Oh, wow," said Wally. "Is that a Fuyutsuki & Ogilvy Stealth AMWS? I've heard of them, but this has a different profile. Is it a new model? I thought F&O cancelled the ZX series!"
"As far as anyone else is concerned, they did." The cockpit opened, and Sardula climbed nimbly up into the pilot's chair. "Coming?"
"Right, right!" said Wally, scrambling up into the copilot's seat, underneath the pilot's and slightly farther forward. The cockpit closed around them, and Wally felt the brief, quivering disorientation of an artificial gravity system kicking in. Then they were off, rocketing up the shaft at dizzying speed.
"Wait!" shouted Wally. "Shouldn't you turn the stealth back on? We'll be seen!"
"That's the plan," replied Sardula. "Hang on!"
Wally craned his neck, trying to look up the shaft to see what guards were waiting for them. As a result, he didn't notice something small and red and shining drop from the AMWS. Then the first missiles came spiraling down the shaft, and he couldn't bear to look any longer.
***
"So, how long are we stopping, Captain?" asked Vix. She shaded her eyes as she studied the town on the other side of the spaceport. She had to admit, from here it looked pretty -- long, low buildings of white stone, mostly, their domes shining in the desert sun.
"Couple of days at least," Seth answered. He'd discarded his jacket, and looked even younger than he was in his red t-shirt and black jeans. "Gotta give buyers time to notice us. I want our next stop to be delivering that box to its owner."
"Ahh," sighed Wehj, stretching as he stepped out onto the ramp. "Feel that sunlight!"
"All right," said Seth, "I'm going to make our delivery. You two try not to get into too much trouble, all right? I'm not covering bail this time, Vix."
"Hey, that guy had it coming! Just out of the blue, stops me on the street and starts yelling about something, tells me there's gonna be a reckoning? He's lucky I just decked 'im!"
"He was a street preacher!" Wehj protested.
"Whatever," said Vix. "I'm going to go find out what the locals drink. You coming?"
"Yeah, okay," said Wehj. "But you're paying for your own drinks this time!"
Seth shook his head as the two walked off across the landing pad, actually nothing more than a ring of lights on a flat stretch of packed-down red sand. "Any luck finding us a hopper, Izzy?" he asked.
"Sorry, boss," she answered through his earpiece. "Looks like it's going to have to be a truck. Hoppers are pricy around here."
"Ah, hell, I hate riding things with wheels. How expensive are we talking?"
"You want to eat this week?"
"Ow." Seth grimaced. "Fine, make it a truck. Where do I pick it up?"
Seth accepted the directions from Izzy, then went to get the truck, a battered old thing that didn't even have autopilot. "At least it's not internal combustion," he muttered to himself as he drove it back to the Isolde. "I guess I should be grateful for that."
Fifteen minutes later, he was bouncing and jolting his way across a badly-maintained desert road, practically crawling at 175 kph. The climate control was broken and the windows didn't open, so he was pouring sweat, envying the medicines in their nice, heavy refrigeration units, and hating the universe. "Next time, I'm sending Vix." A particularly skull-rattling bump spawned a stream of curses, giving Seth time to reconsider. "No, she'd murder me when she got back. I'll send Wehj."
A distance marker shot past. Forty kilometers still to go. "I hate planets," said Seth. "I don't know why anybody stays on them."
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