“You’re not a god. Move along.”
“You can go quietly, or we can make you go,” the other added. Neither looked smart enough to say their lines, so it was probably scripted.
Mauro’s voice entered his mind unbidden. “When someone asks if you are a God, you say…”
“Of course not.” He didn’t wait to hear what the dwarf was about to say. His face now wore his best indignant expression. “Very intelligent of you to have observed it. I should put a good word in with your superiors. What was your name again?”
“Duh…” The first bouncer looked really confused. His partner didn’t look smart enough to be confused.
“Very good, very good.” Simon continued. “Now my good Mr. Duh, please step aside. I’m sure we’re expected.”
“Um…” bouncer one didn’t move and Simon nearly walked into him as he pressed forward.
“Is there a problem, sir?” he asked.
“Um…” the bouncer continued. The script was obviously broken now and neither knew how to respond. Bouncer, the first, got what little wits the two possessed around him first. “Do I know you?”
“No, my good man. I’ve never seen you before in my life. But since I’m not a god and neither are my companions, it should be very obvious that we have important business here.”
Somehow they found their script again. “You’re not a god. Move along.”
“You can go quietly, or we can make you go.”
Blast, Simon thought to himself, it almost worked. Fortunately, there was always a backup plan, always something to pull from his sleeve. The uncomfortable shuffling started up again behind him. Oh, how little faith they had in him at times. Simon decided to see if he could make them even more uncomfortable, just for the sport of it.
But what to pull from his sleeve this time? Ah, he realized suddenly… his sleeve. Pulling his calling card from his right sleeve as he grasped the edge of his cape with his right hand and presented the card with his left, he made a deep bow with a flourish. The gorilla took the proffered card without comment.
If this didn’t make his group uncomfortable, then nothing would. “You might not have met me before, but surely you have heard of me. I am Sir Simon Francis of the province of Vesve and we,” he made a sweeping motion towards his companions. “are the entertainment.”
Simon managed to accomplish what he did through pure deceit. She wasn’t good enough at deception to do what he did. Or was she? She’d won all her minor battles so far by deceit.
“My lady?” Tess interrupted her thoughts. “We probably shouldn’t stay here much longer.”
The smoke from the explosions had died down noticeably, although she guessed it would be days before the smoldering bits of forest died down, or at least until the next rain shower. “Yes, have the troops pack up, only this time,” she added cautiously, “I want you, Ginger, Ghenis, Chass, Doc and myself in the same vehicle. We have some planning to do.”
The meeting hadn’t produced anything. She was beginning to miss Simon, and that was frightening. “I don’t think a single behemoth would be a problem, would it?” Tess was saying.
“It depends on many factors,” Ghenis said slowly. He had been the most thoughtful of the group and as such, had said the least. Tess was all for a simple frontal assault and the rest were reasonabley sure that wouldn’t work. Even Ginger was hesitant. “The biggest factor is that our opponent would have to still be leaving their tanks unlocked.”
“Why wouldn’t they?” Tess asked.
Ghenis had been about to respond, but Sajani interrupted him. “It might have been a fluke that the one we saw had its hatch open or they might have learned from the one mistake, but…”
“No one knows how we took it…” Tess broke in.
“…but,” Sajani continued forcefully, “we have no way of counting on that. I’d snuck around behind the thing and happened to notice it on the way. I was hoping for an opening, but it was luck that there was one. We can’t keep banking on luck.”
A timid voice came from the front of the vehicle. It was Onha, who was driving. “Do they lock them at night?”
“What do you mean?” Ghenis asked.
“Well, they can’t live in there all the time.” She offered. “They’d have to come out to eat and stuff.”
Ghenis and Sajani both began nodding together. “We’d have to get past their perimeter, but there are some who can be very sneaky if they want to be.” Sajani added.
Tess caught on to what they were saying, “We know where to place the satchel charge. Someone like Chass could probably get it there fairly easy.”
“But,” Sajani said carefully, “how do we get them back out once the charges detonate?”
There was a moment of silence that seemed to honor the demise of what had been a good plan. Then Ginger spoke. “Leave that to me.” He said with a smile. “I know exactly what we need to do.”
General Sestus went through his stack of daily intelligence reports. Without the help of some of the Terahn natives, it would have been impossible to gather any information. His people had relied on a certain level of technology on their world and these natives were too primitive to track without real people listening with their own ears.
The report from Vharkylia had some possibilities. He would want more time to think about it. His first similar attempt had failed, but a new possibility from these reports was a little more promising.
He was glad to see that the wreckage from the convoy Sajani had looted had been positively identified. Unfortunately, it looked like she wasn’t there when the air strike arrived, but that was fine. He’d put some fear into her he was sure.
Reports from the soldiers of that convoy said that the behemoth had been lured away from the camp. While the behemoth crew had never returned, she had allowed the rest of the supply convoy to leave, sans weapons, food, and equipment. Sajani seemed to suffer from the same delusion that many of the other natives did: that war was to be fair. He could reequip those soldiers for now. Had it been his decision, he’d have had them executed.
And speaking of the wolf’s different way of thinking, why had she allowed the behemoth to be struck down? She’d used it against the convoy, but then left it to be destroyed. That he wouldn’t have done. Behemoths were impossible to replace. They were still working on building up an infrastructure that would allow them to manufacture their more delicate technology. They couldn’t even reproduce proper rifles yet. And, their top scientists warned, might not ever be able to. It took equipment to make the equipment that made the equipment and so on and so forth.
His mind wandered back to the report from Vharkylia. It would take incredible timing and, he hated to admit it, luck, to be able to pull off what he was thinking, but it might be the perfect way to deal with his problems with the Copper Wolf. The problem was, Sestus hated relying on luck. If a battle relied on luck, then it shouldn’t be fought. If the difference between victory and defeat were to be something as mundane as the throw of a die, then there was no point in advancing.
Many of his underlings liked to play games of chance, but to him chance was a game best left untouched. In most cases, he chose not to play. But the prize was too great on this one. The redeeming part too, was that it cost little to play the game in this case, and at worst, he’d lose a few soldiers, nothing more.
Chapter Seven:
The Engine
The dwarven engine (usually referred to as The Great Engine), was (and still is) the largest machine in the world. It wasn’t finished when Simon was visiting, but it had almost complete control over the dwarven capital of Kranestalan and a good distance outside of it. Construction had started about five years ago and if all stayed on schedule, it would have complete control over the Western Continent in another nineteen. The steam driven difference engine wasn’t self-aware in the literal sense, but it was aware of just about everything else that happened in its realm of influence. It followed the movements of everything and everyone that entered
or left its area. It could seal off doors to deny access to any building and could even administer a gas that would knock out the inhabitants in any given area—in case someone was at risk of getting hurt or of an attack from outside.
It made most dwarves feel safe and those who didn’t find it that way were welcome to leave. The gnomes of the city despised it and felt like it was being constructed specifically to limit them. Most visitors paid it no mind, since they had nothing to fear from its omniscient presence. Simon feared it.
Not the kind of irrational or magical fear that stripped those in possession of it of logical thought, Simon’s fear was of the variety that one feels just prior to something uncomfortable happening a second time or maybe a third time in his case. It was the kind of fear that made him feel out of sorts and a little more likely to make a small mistake, but it was something that he had a handle on. He still had control—or at least that’s what he kept telling himself.
His brow furrowed slightly in concentration and his tongue poked out the side of his mouth as he worked. It was impossible to create a punch card on one’s own from scratch. The engine read down to approximately a millimeter and most holes were about that size in diameter. The trick was figuring out what holes would allow you to go where. The card he’d pickpocketed from the guard would alert the engine if it’s original owner left the area before her shift was up and summon another guard immediately to replace her. So, what he had to do was try to produce the holes in his own card that would allow him to go where he needed. It meant obtaining a new card to tell the machine that his status had changed and then changing his own card to match.
He was working backwards and changing his own card first. That would get him through one door and while the engine figured out whether that was supposed to have happened or not, he’d be able to steal the second card he needed. The con artist wasn’t much of a difference engineer, but he was smart. He knew that the holes at the top of the card gave the name and IDN (Identification Number) of the card holder. The reason he knew that was because the card very helpfully labeled it for him. From prior visits, he’d learned that a set of lines about halfway down the card (he measured it with a small tape measure) gave local access parameters. All of this was somewhat basic. The hard part—the part that was demanding all of his attention at the moment—was moving the punch holes to exactly where they needed to be.
Finished at last, he cast a spell to alter his appearance. Since he didn’t dare trust himself to the nuances of dwarven appearance, and he didn’t want to risk looking like someone who was actually from around there, he took on the looks of his old dwarf traveling companion, Mauro—complete with jangling metal and stone necklaces and a slightly grubby beard that made it look like he’d been burrowing in dirt recently. He altered the beard and hair color slightly so that the normally blonde locks were flecked with the beginnings of gray. If Simon had desired a more exact appearance, he’d have made it look like there was dirt under his fingernails, but he stopped short of that. He’d never allow dirt under his own nails.
It didn’t take much to place the guard’s card back on her as he passed. She must have been nearing the end of her shift, because she looked mostly asleep. Up a small flight of stairs from there and around another corner, he came to a heavy steel door. A large dwarven letter was etched deeply into it, marking it as having restricted access. Next to it was a box with a slot on top, into which Simon carefully placed his newly modified punch card. A hiss of steam was released safely from the top of the door and it slid into the side wall to allow entrance.
To someone watching nearby, it would have looked like the door had been replaced with something akin to a mirror, except for the white-haired gnome on one side of the doorway. The gnome got a shocked look on his face and said, in the high-pitched voice of his kind, “Amazing.”
The clothing of the two dwarves was totally different—the dwarf on the other side of the door was dressed in an immaculate black suit made with straight lines that seemed to cut into its wearer—indeed, from the look on his face, they must have, for he did look very uncomfortable just before a look of total shock crossed his face. It was the face that stopped Simon very short and almost left him speechless. It was Mauro’s face, the face that he was now disguised as.
A few hours before, Mauro was busy preparing himself for yet another job interview. It would be his second in as many days. It wasn’t that he was short of money. He was a bit of a miser, so the money he’d earned from his previous travels made it easy to survive for many more years to come, if he so chose, but he couldn’t bear the feeling of uselessness that came over him if he wasn’t engaged in something more than eating and sleeping. Reading was right out. Study didn’t even occur to him. He’d have rather been slowly boiled in one of the large smelting buckets he’d seen at the forge where he’d last applied.
But magic was his only trade skill as well as his only interest. There were plenty of jobs for a skilled stone singer like himself, but they mostly centered around academia. After three short attempts in that field, he’d resigned himself to looking for other work. Even with Simon talking fast to his superiors at the Vidava University, he’d been unable to keep that post. He felt like he was too old to be traveling and too young to be sitting still. Or maybe it was just that he was too rich to be traveling. Or maybe too bored? Too settled? He just didn’t feel like he wanted that active of a life any more. Of his old traveling companions, only Simon seemed to be still going at it in that kind of life.
This job promised to be different. It was a maintenance job of sorts. He’d be travelling around to the new areas where the engine was being built and add the needed runes and cast the needed spells. He’d also be going back and fixing areas that might need to be fixed. The dwarves he’d met so far didn’t have much of a dress code, so he could be himself—once he was hired. He’d been advised to dress well for his interview. The black suit with sharp lines and the awful high collared shirt lay on his bed, pressed and ready for wearing. He put them on reluctantly and brushed his beard and hair quickly before walking out the door of his inn room, taking a moment to place his punch card into the box nearby to ensure that the room was paid for.
He rode the steam train to the part of the capital where his interview was—the Engine having already given him clearance to pass every door he’d need to enter for his travels. The trip was short. It made him wish that the tubes had already been installed throughout the dwarven kingdoms. The trip to the capital had taken three days before it hooked up to a line that went almost right to the door of the inn where he was staying. From what Mauro had heard so far, not only would the tubes be going that far and further, he’d also be able to make a reservation at the inn from any city in the realm. He was still bristling at the extra silver the innkeeper had charged him for not making a reservation in advance.
The train station was crowded with a horde of young gnomes, apparently going somewhere as part of a school activity. Gnomes were becoming a standard feature on the Western Continent. It’d only been seven years since the first ones showed up and they were, for a reason known only to Emperor Eduardo and Empress Rosa, not allowed to leave the capital. Mauro managed to squeeze past the unruly bunch and out of the train station. The interview was very close by, so it didn’t take long to get there.
The door of the building was heavier than usual and marked very clearly as restricted, but his card opened the door. Once he passed inside, everything changed.
Instead of the usual solid, comforting, and slightly rounded stone walls of most of the dwarven kingdoms, this area was all straight lines and wood paneling. If it had been black wood, instead of the mahogany it was, it would have matched his suit for stiffness and straightness. There was a dwarf sitting behind a desk nearby and Mauro approached him cautiously.
“Mauro Theustone?” the dwarf said politely.
“Yes.” Mauro responded.
“Down this hall. Second door on the right,” he said gesturing down one of t
he three hallways that led off from the entrance. “You’re expected.”
“Really?” Mauro responded sarcastically under his breath. “I hadn’t noticed.” The receptionist didn’t hear him.
Opening the afore mentioned (also mahogany and not steam powered) door, Mauro entered a small office space presumably taken up by a desk, a chair, and massive amounts of paper and punch cards that hid everything else. Aside from the papers and possible furniture, there were two other people in the room—a dwarf with rather short white hair and a gnome with hair that matched the dwarf’s. Of the two, surprisingly enough, the dwarf was the shorter. It wasn’t that the gnome was large for his kind—instead it was that the dwarf was extremely short for her kind, although still stockier than the gnome.
The dwarf approached Mauro and shook his hand firmly once. “Mauro Theustone. It is indeed a pleasure to meet you.”
“He looks almost like my sister described him.” the gnome said excitedly, causing Mauro to look quizzically at him.
“Do I know you?” Mauro asked. The gnome didn’t look familiar to him at all.
“You met my sister Filla last year at Kranestalan University. She helped you test some of your students.”
“Oh.” Mauro responded flatly. He didn’t want to elaborate on one of the incidents that led to him leaving his post there. He hoped the gnome hadn’t said anything about it and already ruined his chance of working here.
“’name’s Penya.” The other dwarf said laughing slightly. “I look forward to working with you.”
Her comment caught Mauro slightly off guard. “Working with you?” he asked.
“Yes,” the older dwarf responded without a pause. “I’ll be showing you the tracks for the first few weeks on the job.”
“Job?” Mauro said flatly.
Penya didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, if you’re half as good as this gnome says you are, it will be a lot of fun working with you.”
Wolf's Pawn (Sajani Tails Book 1) Page 14