Black Frost

by John Conroe

  Greer nodded, eyes still locked on the dragon, “Oh yes, Ian, this, as you say, changes everything.”

  Chapter 24

  The dragons kept arriving for the next three days. First there were tens of them but by day three there was well over a hundred, all immense, all anxious to meet and speak with Ashley. They came in different shades of black, grey, green, brown and bronze. Some were all one color, others a mix of shades, but all were enormous. The smallest was about the size of Ashley’s school bus, the biggest approached a hundred feet in length. They all had a similar body shape. A long flat head, like a crocodile mixed with a barracuda, connected to a sinuous snaky neck. A deep chest supported the front bat-winged forelegs and powered their impossible flight. Bat-like also described their ground locomotion, at least for the front half of their bodies, the rear portion was very dinosaurian in construction. Huge, powerful back legs, like a Spinosaurus or T-rex, and a long spine tipped tail.

  Their heads had horns and a boney crest and they all had the same gleaming yellow eyes.

  Our treatment had changed the moment Gargax touched down. The elves of both courts treated us with a very differential VIP status, Ashley in particular. My impression was that the elves really, really did not want any part of a conflict with the dragons. Watching Gargax send a gout of fire a hundred and fifty feet into the air helped me grasp their concern. The dragon biology allowed them to separate and store volatile chemicals from minerals they regularly chowed down on. Sacs, like a rattlesnake’s venom glands, stored the chemicals apart until the dragon sprayed them. When the chemicals mixed, they ignited in a napalm stream that burned with tremendous heat and vigor.

  The elves treated our wounds (mostly mine) with salves and ointments that would be worth a fortune to the pharmacy companies on earth. My worst cuts and punctures healed completely in less than twenty-four hours, leaving a spidery web of silver scars. In addition, they fed us a compound that allowed us to process the excess oxygen in Fairie’s atmosphere. I hadn’t noticed it in the short time before Gargax’s arrival, but Greer assured me the oxygen content was too high for me to breathe for any longer period of time without treatment.

  Greer had been assigned to be our liaison, due to his dettis onach. His mother was not particularly pleased with his actions to help me, yet his culture demanded he do nothing less than he had. I had a feeling that we would be meeting with the queens and their advisors a lot, but the initial days were spent with Ashley meeting each dragon, escorted by a small group that consisted of myself, Charm and Greer, as well as one of each queen’s advisors. We did meet Caillach, who was mother to the queens. She had known the last Speaker as he’d been a cousin of hers and lived during her reign as Winter Queen. The ancient elf had known Ashley was a Speaker and had even felt my thoughts when I watched the events in the field. But she had long removed herself from the machinations of the Elven Courts, except those times when she was called to mediate, so she had kept her silence.

  So the stream of aircraft sized dragons continued. Each dragon had a long unpronounceable name that Ashley would shorten to something she could use out loud. She told me that her conversations occurred completely inside her head, which I believed as my own head felt a buzzing sensation, like bees in my skull, whenever she was speaking with them. The dragons, for their part, could sense my mind from some distance, but that was it. I was deaf and mute in their world, yet we each could get the others attention mentally. The elves were very interested in this non-ability of mine and felt that it was the origin of Ashley’s Speaker Talent.

  Once the dragon introductions were complete, we got down to brass tacks. The order of business, though, was the status of the children still being kept as prisoners near the portals. The elves pled racial extinction, the right for survival as a people and every other card they had. But we were adamant that the children of earth be returned home. The queens were very old and very crafty, but they met their match in Ashley’s stubborn will, which was like iron once she’s made up her mind. It was fun to watch these ancient aliens bash their heads against the granite of my daughter’s will, which was backed by hundreds of tons of fire breathing dragons.

  So it was that six days after our violent arrival on Fairie, I stepped back through the portal on Bear Mountain, immediately raising both hands as I faced a forest of rifle barrels. My little part of earth had changed drastically. The cleft granite of the summit was now the focus of several machine gun nests and about thirty or so soldiers. Even as I tensely waited with my hands in the air, I could hear many heavy vehicles down around my GrandFather’s house and barn.

  The extremely serious looking soldiers in front of me held me at gunpoint for several minutes till a six wheeled Polaris ATV came bouncing up the hill and discharged an elderly looking gentleman in a black suit complete with black cane. He was white haired and white mustached, with extremely sharp eyes and the slightest limp in his left leg. Accompanying him was an extremely fit looking young woman with brown hair and dark serious eyes wearing black military battledress. She didn’t carry a weapon, but I knew immediately that she was really dangerous, didn’t need a weapon, and would kill me dead if I threatened her boss. Just an intuitive hunch, the kind I get watching fighters and simply understanding their strengths and weaknesses. What I understood was that she could kick serious ass.

  The older gent walked up to where I waited, a smile on his face.

  “Mr. Ian Moore, I presume?” he asked.

  I nodded, hands still up, but arms trembling from the effort.

  “Relax Mr. Moore. Master Sergeant Cooper, I think you can have your men stand down. I don’t think Mr. Moore is going to raid his own property, besides, we have lots of questions and I’ve never been a fan of answers made under duress,” the gent said, waving his hand absently at the blocky sergeant.

  The troops lowered their weapons but none of them took their eyes off me either.

  “Mr. Moore, my name is Nathan Stewart and this is my assistant Adine Benally,” he continued with a nod at his assistant, who was watching me with cold eyes. “The President employs me to handle odd situations like this one.”

  “If you would be so kind as to ride down the hill with us, maybe we could get a cup of coffee in your comfortable little home? I feel that you have much to tell us,” he suggested.

  I cleared me throat, belatedly dropping my hands. “That would be fine, Mr. Stewart, but before we do that I’m gonna need help with the children,” I said.

  He looked at me with raised white eyebrows for a moment. “Children?”

  I nodded, then spoke. “Yes, the children that were taken when the Fairies came through.”

  “Fairies?” he asked.

  “It’s a long story Mr. Stewart, one I will be glad to tell, along with a whole slew of information on their world, culture and what they want from us and what they have to offer. You see, I’m back as something of an ambassador, although that’s not an exact fit for my situation. But before we delve into that, I have all of the children that were taken waiting to come through,” I explained.

  “I see,” he said thoughtfully. “How many children were taken here in Groton’s Falls?” he asked, although I suspected he knew the number as well as I did.

  “Seven, but I have two hundred and seventy- four children waiting to come through. That’s the total that was taken everywhere.”

  He looked at me blankly for a moment and even his poker faced assistant showed a glimmer of surprise.

  “Taken everywhere?” he echoed.

  “I think you know that the incursions occurred in many locations around the world at the same time. The children taken were specifically targeted and even though they were selected from all over Earth, there is only a few of them. I would like to bring them back here and then maybe we could get them to their home countries?” I asked.

  Nathan Stewart stared at me for a full fifteen seconds, the persona of affable old gent gone, replaced by one of an analytical government agent. Then he came to
some decision, nodded once and the good old guy was back, a big smile on his face.

  “I think we can take good care of the children. How do we begin?” he asked, curious. His badass assistant was still giving me the cold stare.

  “Like this. Pancho!” I said. The puck leader loyal to my daughter, let go of the webbing on the back of my assault vest where he had remained hidden from view, dropped into the air and immediately backwinged through the Portal.

  “What was that?” Nathan exclaimed, real interest in his eyes. I was raising my hands again, as the puck’s exit had startled the combat troops who brought up their rifles again.

  “That was a messenger,” I replied, not taking my eyes off the rifle barrels.

  Agent Stewart waved his hands in a down motion at the soldiers and they lowered their weapons.

  “Mr. Stewart, can I ask if your troops are carrying M855 ammo in their M4’s or the newer heavy bullets?”

  Stewart turned and looked at the Master Sergeant, eyebrows raised in question.

  “77 grain ammo Sir,” the tough looking soldier replied.

  Stewart looked back at me, eyebrows still raised.

  “The old 855 ammo will be more effective against elves and their allies. Most of the species of their world are allergic to iron and steel,” I explained.

  “So that old myth was true?” Stewart asked.

  “Yes sir. Those claymore mines set up there will be extremely effective with their load of ball bearings, and fragmentation grenades work wonderfully,” I said, now having everyone’s interest.

  “You would appear to have even more information than I hoped for,” Stewart said.

  “Sir, you have no idea. And I’m fully prepared to disclose it all, when the children are taken care of,” I said, just as the first of the kids, a Groton Falls child, stepped through the Portal.

  “I would have thought your daughter would be first through?” Stewart asked, obviously aware that the girl coming through was not Ashley.

  “She won’t be coming over Mr. Stewart,” I replied to his astounded expression. “But that tale is part of what we’ll talk about.”

  “I look forward to it,” he replied, eyes watching the steady stream of children that were now coming through the interplanetary gateway behind me.

  Final Thoughts

  So there you have it, as promised. I spent three days debriefing with Mr. Stewart and an ever increasing number of government types, sending a steady stream of messages back to Ashley through Pancho. I met with a ton of federal people; State Department, Department of Defense, FBI, CIA, NSA, SEALs, Marine Recon troops, biologists, physicists, astronomers, hell even IRS. There was a lot to tell. These pages were copied from my written statement, but I doubt the government will take long to find it.

  It doesn’t matter. They won’t be able to cover this up for long. It’s too big of a story, the biggest in fact. First contact with aliens. Well not really first, but rather first official contact. They’re already part of our folklore.

  But you need to prepare. Because the governments of this world will be wheeling and dealing, fast and furious with Fairie. The biological knowledge they possess will change our world. Cancer will be cured, damaged organs regrown in place, Alzheimer’s, dementia, autism, diabetes, and even old age is as good as gone, or will be in the next five years. But to get this knowledge, we’ll have to trade. And what they want are children. So don’t deceive yourselves into thinking our government or any other government won’t empty its orphanages in exchange for knowledge. Oh, they’ll call it exchange programs, or inter-dimensional training, cross cultural learning or some other happy horseshit. But in the end it’ll be legalized trade in children of Talent. And the good, kindly folks of Fairie will be here in large numbers as well (please note for those of you who aren’t following, that was sarcasm). They will have their own agendas, seeking power and knowledge from us. They’re faster than we are, very savage and have been trained for decades if not centuries in fighting skills. Tackling them one-on-one is a bad idea. Instead, you need to prepare, arm yourselves, seek out training, accumulate ammunition (steel tipped) and supplies, and above all, keep your children close. Read to them from this story if you like, maybe it will scare them into behaving safely. After all, that’s what our original folktales were for, too bad we forgot to pay attention.

  For myself, I’ll be heading back over to Fairie, to Ashley. There’s nothing left for me here and no one on that planet, elves or dragons, is interested in letting my daughter leave. I’ll have a chance to influence events as father of the new dragon speaker and, of course, I’ll be there to protect her….as I will do till my last breath.

  End Blog

  Acknowledgements

  One of the fun parts about writing novels is all the cool stuff you learn along the way. The internet has sure helped with the research side of things but you still need smart people to keep your facts straight.

  On this book, Marty Munson filled that role admirably, particularly on the topics of forging knives and military hardware. He’s also a hell of a proof reader.

  Bob Braun continues to be a major help in telling me when I’m writing too many words and when I’m writing too few.

  The town of Groton Falls is loosely based on Ballston Spa, NY but otherwise fictitious. I couldn’t bear to damage the real thing.

  The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is, on the other hand, entirely real and providing science with a true shot at proving that the elusive Higgs particles are real. All references to it are my own and therefore any mistakes belong at my feet as well.

  My brother Scott continues his support of my writing habit, while helping control my bad writing habits.

  Finally, I have to thank my wife and daughters for putting up with my odd thoughts and odder writing habits. Dad’s not crazy girls, but it’s better for everyone if he gets the stories out of his head and into written words.

  For more information visit the author at: www.johnconroe.com