Goddess of the Moon (Young Ancients: Tiera)

by P. S. Power

  The man started to nod, then stopped.

  "Lethal?"

  Now she smiled for real, and started to walk back to the little craft, since it hadn't been moved at all. It was just a tiny rectangle at the moment, big enough for the two of them, one sitting in front of the other. She climbed in the front seat without asking, since it was literally hers. Not a thing she made, or even owned, but the one that her brother Tim had given her to use.

  "If you increase the force enough. I figured it might not hurt to have a control on that too, since I built it into the thing anyway. It isn't as complete as Tor's weapons, but-"

  She stopped, not knowing what to say next. The fact was, she wasn't as good as he was and might never be. This was her first build though, and was decently complex as far as that kind of thing went, so she decided to be proud of the effort. All her constant meditation had really helped that way. She hadn't had any real lessons or anything even. Not in magic.

  The Weapons Master grunted and climbed into the softly padded seat behind her. It wasn't real, so she'd made the seats cushy and form fitting, so that their butts wouldn't fall asleep on long flights. She could have made the thing bigger, but crippled or not, the Others, the enemy, still could watch them from space. Half of their network being up was still half, after all. Small things were easier to hide, so that was what she'd used for the mission.

  There was an inhalation, from behind her and the man spoke softly.

  "Mental feedback controls, power level selection... I agree that it could use more functions, Implosion, immolation, an air choke would be handy as well, but that's a good starting place. I don't suppose you have an extra I could examine?"

  Tiera nodded, knowing that it would show over the back of her seat, and took off, as soon as the side door was closed by Kolb.

  "I do. In fact I have one for everyone in our section at school, if you think they're good enough to bother with. This was the first field test. I mean, in combat. I tested it, of course, I'm not stupid after all, but it seemed to work well for me. It does take a bit of focus to use, but not that much. Enough that no one will accidently cause it to go off in the shower or anything." She handed the white bit of glass like stone back, going over her shoulder. "Notice the handy ring at the end? It's so we can put it on chain or string and wear it while in the bath."

  Because going unarmed right now was stupid, but it was hard to hold on to things in the shower. Soap made things like that awkward.

  "Good thinking, I'll test it as soon as we get back to Lairdgren. If it works out, I'd like the combat group to be given a chance to work with it. We won't just hand them out to everyone yet. I know, it seems like we should all be armed, all the time, but the truth is, that will end up with more death than any possible attacks on the school would, most likely."

  Tiera didn't know if she agreed really, but nodded. It wasn't her call, after all. She was a Countess now, true, and could carry what she wanted, as long as the King himself didn't insist otherwise, but she tried not to stand on that at the school. It made it too hard for the Instructors to teach, if people did that all the time.

  There were more than one or two high ranking nobles at the school after all, and you couldn't functionally spank them. Not really. It was technically in the rules that students could be beaten by any of the school staff, if they felt the need. In the commons. That part was put in on purpose. Abuse happened in private, but most wouldn't overstep if others were there to watch. Not too much. Still, a person with enough power was dangerous, when it came down to it. Armies could be marched on the place, if say, a Baron was insulted too much to bear.

  That meant most of the nobles that misbehaved too much were simply asked to leave. It was the tradition that they simply go and not attack anyone over it, if that happened. As far as she knew that was what took place too. She'd seen a few people be asked to exit that way so far, and had nearly been put out herself once, so it was a real enough thing.

  Kolb was in charge of that though. What weapons the kids got to carry around, and given his age, it made sense that he might be just a bit better at his job than she was. If he said they didn't need that kind of thing, war or not, then he was likely correct.

  Still, she wasn't parting with her own. Putting her hand back, she took it from over the seat, and tucked it away in a ready pocket that was near the front of her brown student uniform. She hadn't bothered to change when they'd left. Kolb had gone in fighting leathers, but that was what he wore most days, too. They were gray and looked hard used, but like her own outfit, were actually made of magic. It was pretty much like the craft they were in. There, but not really. Virtual particles, as Denno Brown and his people liked to say.

  "Straight back there?" Tiera knew that was the plan and didn't really need to stop back in her County really. Not on the way back from killing people like she'd just been doing. Not that their deaths bothered her at all.

  "Right. We both have classes in the morning after all. Say..." There was hesitation in the word, which didn't sound like him at all. It got her to sit up a little and focus on him. She wasn't reading his field, not on purpose, but a little leaked out anyway. He was slightly apprehensive about bringing the current topic up, and it had something to do with...

  Baron Havar.

  That got her to blink, and suppose she was wrong until Kolb spoke.

  "Havar is coming in tonight, with some of his new students. Orphans from Austra mainly. Ten of them. I know that you and he have been a bit estranged of late, but do you think you can swallow that enough to work with him, and the little ones? This is a bit of a treat, for his top performers. I was thinking we'd work out some little training for them, or some such?" He stopped then, knowing why Tiera and Havar had been at odds for a bit. Sort of.

  He thought so anyway, she realized. That he was totally wrong surprised her however.

  She picked it up from his mind with just a bit of focus, without trying really. After all, holding your mind clear was the first step in field reading, and anyone with a bit of focus could learn to do it. She'd been living that way for months, so it pretty much meant it had to happen.

  There it was though, in color and everything, coming from the man. Tiera was very pretty, even now that she'd grown taller, since Tor had ensured that for her, and it was natural enough for Havar to have made a pass at the girl, who was, after all, his favorite student. The Instructors in his section weren't supposed to do that, of course, so naturally Tiera would have rebuffed the fellow, and probably rudely, since she was well known to be a bit of a Doretta. A mean girl that would turn others down for no reason.

  That got her to smirk, and roll her eyes.

  "He didn't make a pass at me." The words came out as if they'd actually been talking about things, and not like her sneaking a peek into his head. "He just has that noble problem, with commoners, and I wasn't very tall before. He thought of me as a pet. Yes, his favorite one, and even Tor figured that he wanted to sleep with me and was just being good, because of his job, but that's the problem, not anything else. If he'd asked for sex, I would have just said yes. Karen would beat me otherwise. I suppose I can work with him. It's no better for me to hate him for being what he is than for him to not see me as a person, because of who I am, is it? Or who I was, anyway."

  There was a pause, as the man considered it all, and then his mind went blank. Even as he spoke.

  "Good. Well, not a problem for you now, as long as you aren't going to blame him for being himself, as you said. You're nearly as tall as he is, so I doubt you'll trigger that part of him anymore, personally. So, you're willing to work with him? I'd like to have one of the children shadow you for a few days, if we aren't out on a mission. Possibly if we are. He's very proud of the ones he's bringing with him. It's part of the real plan. Testing them for positions in various places. They're all young though. Not adults."

  She thought she understood that at least. When the waves had been sent at the other lands, huge killer ones, the Space Fleet h
ad gone to Austra, to save who they could. It hadn't been everyone, since there was limited time, and space. The Austrans had surprised her, even in the reports that came out later. They didn't hold to tight family bonds there, and considered their neighbors to be an obstacle, rather than their close friends, most of the time. Still, when their world was ending, people helped each other, and tens of thousands of adults sacrificed their lives to save what children they could. Ones they didn't even know.

  Tiera wouldn't have ever thought they would have done that. Not those people. If she ever met them, or their ghosts, she'd have to prostrate herself on the ground and apologize for her unworthy thoughts about them. It wasn't a thing she liked doing, apologizing, but those people had earned it, and more.

  That meant there were a lot of orphans left over. Most were still in their homeland, but about a thousand of them had volunteered to leave everything they knew behind, for a chance to help fight the ones that had nearly destroyed half their land. She knew for a fact that at least a few of them were no older than four. Timon had told her about it, so that she'd recommend fostering for them. Their honor was as important as anyone's, but they were really too young to even learn what to do yet. She'd responded by paying for a school for them, in her own county. They were being trained to fight, but also read, write and do mathematics. Speak all the languages too. They didn't have the top instructors in the world, maybe, but everything they might need to know was being taught to them. It was all she could think of for them.

  The strange part had been that Havar had been working with some of them. He really did tend to think of children as not being people at all. Even the noble ones. He...

  She nearly thought that he wasn't a cruel man, but that wasn't the case, was it? He controlled himself in general, and didn't hurt people casually, but he wasn't soft on small people in practice either. It probably meant that, whoever these kids were, they were hard and good fighters, if they hadn't run away from the man after the first lesson or two. She'd seen grown adult warriors avoid working with the man. Almost daily in fact.

  "Fine. I can do that." She didn't love the idea, but she was willing to be put out. After all, she was a Countess now, and even before that, a person. If some orphan would benefit from being around her at all, then that was what she'd do. It was what any adult would do. At least the ones that deserved to hold their heads high in the morning.

  "We'll probably meet them when we get in. It's about six now."

  How the man could tell, she didn't really know. She didn't have a watch on her, since that was asking for it to be broken, what with the fighting and all. Kolb didn't either, but she could tell he looked out the side window. So it had to do with the position of the sun. She tried to memorize that. It was different, since they were still far to the south of the places she was used to. Almost at the very bottom of Noram. In County Rodriguez. Their old Count was sitting in a prison cell, in the King's Palace, having been shown to be working against the man. That, the rebellion, had been put on hold for the most part, she'd heard.

  That didn't get the man free at all however.

  Which was good, since he deserved to die. The man had tortured his own fiancé, Petra Ward. Nearly to death too. Tiera would have ended the man just for that, if she'd caught him. Timon did it instead, which meant the fellow had been tortured in retaliation, and turned over to King Richard for the duration.

  Uncle Richard. After a fashion. She still wasn't totally certain that everyone hadn't been lying to her about that, claiming the Queen was Tor's daughter like they had. Oh, she got the idea, that Tor was basically Count Lairdgren that way, and that Doris, her meditation teacher, had done the work, using his pattern to create Aunt Connie, but Tiera had no real way to know if it was true or just a clever ruse to keep her from slaughtering the King. The man had helped Sandra Morris kill her girlfriend. Oh, not on purpose, but he'd still allowed her to do it, in the end.

  People kept acting like Tiera had forgotten her already, but she hadn't. Her orange eyed friend lived behind her eyes, almost all the time. In all but the deepest trance states, she was there with her. It was only that, the meditation, that kept her from running off and killing the man herself.

  That and, if she could trust Count Lairdgren, Doris and Tor, that the man was her uncle, after a fashion. Family. That meant she had to hold her hand.

  If she could at any rate. She still hated him, and really wanted him to suffer for what he'd done. It probably couldn't happen, she knew, but deep inside, on occasion, she had to struggle for control to stop it from taking place.

  Luckily she liked the rest of the royal family well enough. Aunt Connie was nice, and Cousin Alphonse... That one was a bit embarrassing, since they'd done some things together a few times. She shrugged that thought away. It was Two Bends, backwoods, embarrassing, since he was a technical cousin. Her mother was a clone of her grandmother, and not her father's child at all, biologically, however. That meant that she could sleep with Alphonse, or even his sisters and it was only awkward in her head, thanks to the titles involved. It wasn't really wrong.

  For her. Tor on the other hand had been sleeping with his own daughter and worse, or possibly better, depending on the logic used, Varley, the Princess that was also his granddaughter and daughter, more or less.

  They were so close that way it was practically like having sex with himself.

  The backwoods part of her wanted to scream, go and find him, and hand him a cutter, so he could end his shame. The logical part just shrugged it off, since it hadn't been his fault, if it was real at all. That part was even handling it all fairly nobly. From what she'd heard, Aunt Connie didn't really care that much at all about it, and had wanted to keep Tor as her lover anyway.

  That had come from Tiera's personal spy in the palace. Princess Karina.

  Well, it would be more fair to say that she and the Princess had gossiped a bit. It was still information however, which counted. They actually had a lot in common, the redheaded Princess and Tiera. They both liked to fight and were decent at it, though Karina was still better than she was. They also both liked to listen to music and had similar taste in boys. And girls.

  Tiera sighed and then wondered if she should sleep with her. Cousin, yes, but not really, and one that wouldn't even blink at that being a problem at all, she didn't think. Varley would be a problem, being basically her brother Tor in a dress, but Karina and Alphonse were fine that way. She needed to send them a message and invite them over for a meal or something soon, she decided. One at a time, of course.

  She spent most of the flight back focused on her task of flying, not even bothering to make a restroom or cause the craft to become larger. It left her feeling blank and glassy as they went over Two Bends and then, about fifteen minutes later, landed in the central courtyard of Lairdgren School. It was a good thing that she'd left the craft small she realized, since in the center of the space, clearly putting down right before she did, was a much larger version of the same type of Fast Craft she was in. It was glowing, which helped a lot, since most of the lights had been put out around the school.

  That was habit now. At night you went dark and hid lights if you needed to use them. The word had gone out that lights were easy targets from space. It was true, too. Cities lit up visibly from there and it didn't take a lot of skill to use that to drop things on the people below. The only good part of that being that they, the good guys, had nearly total domination of up there. The Others could get there, of course, but their ships were slow and took a lot of fuel. They didn't have a space station or anything either. There was an old one, but that was being held by the Space Fleet, and had been for months. So was the Moon base. The other one that was. The new one was still being put together by their people.

  Tiera glanced at the craft and worked out that it wasn't Timon, since that would have been glowing silver, if anything. It wasn't Tor either, since he wasn't due back for a few months, so that Tim could try to take Cordes out of his head. She didn't think
that was possible, really, but didn't let herself think about it too much. After all, she knew enough about building to understand that the effort would most likely kill both her brothers. It was...

  She hated to think about it at all, since Tor was good and kind, if a bit strange, but it would be a lot more efficient to simply kill him, than to let Tim die too.

  The last time they'd fought he'd taken her out so fast and hard that she hadn't even been aware of what had happened until later, when Timon described it. Tor had taken both her and Kolb out of action using direct effect magic. That was really hard to do, and he hadn't even been in a combat rage, meaning it was nearly impossible. Except of course, he was Tor, so it wasn't.

  No, if it came to it, she'd simply have to ask Tor to kill himself. That might not work though, if the Ancient entity in his head decided to fight them, or worse, convinced her brother to do it. The whole thing was a giant mess.

  She shook her head and then climbed out of her own vehicle, which was a dull black color still. She normally liked using brighter colors, actually enjoying things like that, and appreciated the glowing green of the other craft, but combat missions weren't a good time for trying to gain style points.

  Just as Kolb hit the ground, and she turned her own ship off, grabbing the amulet it was on and tucking it around her neck, using the leather strap she had for that purpose, the other vessel stopped glowing and she could hear, but not really see, the people seeming to be out of it already.