“Once they arrive, I’ll open a time gate back to our century,” Dylan told us. “I’m very sorry that this turned out the way it did.”
“What did you do with the bodies?” Anya asked her.
“I gave them all a proper burial,” Dylan answered. “It seemed the least I could do.”
Stormchild affixed her with a piercing look, his ice-blue eyes seeming to bore into her. “How are you responsible for this? You were captured by Sirius. You had no say in what your ‘ship did in response.”
“In a manner of speaking, no. But when she brought me back, she also downloaded her persona to me. I’m me, but I’m also a bit of her as well. So part of me is responsible—or at least feels that way.” Dylan sighed. “I can’t even say how long it’s going to take to come to terms with what has happened—how I’ve changed. Doubtless my career with Fleet is over. I’ll never pilot another mageship. I’ll be lucky to retain my license at all and I’ll have to register myself as a preternatural with the Adjuster’s Office.”
“And dodge the media,” Rio snorted. She knew all about that, herself. She wasn’t a big fan of the Fourth Estate. She’d made no secret of that fact. “They’re really going to want to know what happened.”
Dylan nodded morosely. “And dodge the media. I can’t—I don’t want to—get stuck trying to explain all this to them.”
“Then don’t,” Rio replied. “I never explain anything to them. Of course, this doesn’t prevent them from postulating their own version of events, but I leave them to it. I don’t really care what anyone thinks.”
Anya came over and took my hand, leaning against me as if in need of support. I knew the feeling. Her face was stained with soot and the dried tracks of her tears and she looked as sad as she had when we’d first glimpsed her in the mirror all those months ago. I ran my fingers through her hair.
“Must be nice,” Dylan replied to Rio. “But I’ve never managed that degree of self-possession. It sounds as if you were that way even before you became a vamp.”
Rio shrugged. “It’s who I’ve always been. Becoming a vampire didn’t change that.”
“Some things never change,” Stormchild observed dryly, shooting an exaggerated wink in her direction.
She smiled thinly and nodded to him. “When you’re right, you’re right.”
Bigby and Kaleel arrived a few minutes later and Dylan did her thing. In a swirl of light and warmth, we were instantly transported back to the Lounge. I was glad to note the place was empty and still in one piece. I’d actually been worried about it. Just about everyone dispersed at that point, leaving only me, Anya and Dylan.
I sent Anya up to the shower to get cleaned up, then aimed a level gaze at Dylan. “We paid a high price for your victory,” I told her.
She inclined her head in acknowledgment. “I’m truly sorry, Jack. I didn’t know your friends, I realize. But it’s never easy to lose them.”
It was then I realized that she too had lost someone important to her. The pilot and mageship bond is legendary and the loss of such an intimate partner had to be a wrenching experience. “It’s not your fault, Dylan, even though it may feel like it is. It wasn’t in your power to prevent any of it. I know that’s a small consolation, but, well, that’s all I’ve got for you.”
“Yeah. I know. Listen, Jack…I’ve got some things I need to do. Resign my Fleet commission, for one. And go talk to the Adjuster. Would I be welcome here if I chose to return at some point?”
I smiled at her. It wasn’t easy to do. I didn’t feel much like smiling right then. But she needed to see it, needed to know she’d be welcome. “I’d like that, Dylan.”
She returned my smile in much the same way it had been delivered to her. Fragile and revealing a great depth of sadness. “See you then.”
She vanished.
I sat down with my transcriber and recorded this record of the events for posterity, deciding at that very moment it would be a long time before I recorded another word. I was done with it for the time being. I needed time to grieve, and to heal.
It wasn’t going to be easy. I’d put on a brave, strong face for Anya’s benefit, but the place would seem empty without Kevin in it. Far, far too empty.
I was surprised when Boneyard came through the front door. He stood at the lower end of the ramp. “We going to be open tonight, boss?” he asked.
I considered for a minute, then nodded. “Yeah. I don’t see any reason why not.”
He grinned back at me, but it seemed somehow half-hearted. “Me either. Remember what Spider Robinson said in his books about joy and pain, right?”
“Exactly,” I answered. “We’re a family, Bone. And we need each other. Now more than ever.”
“My thoughts exactly, boss. See you tonight.” And with that, he was gone.
Act III
Future, Again
Episode I: Nobody’s Child
It’s very early in the morning. I’m an early riser, so it’s easy enough for me to sit down and use my adopted father’s transcriber to record my thoughts with no one the wiser.
My name is Anya and I’m over 200 years old. You wouldn’t know it to look at me. I look as though I’m in my early teens. I spent the majority of my life trapped within the Dimension of Mirrors, a place where time has no meaning. I emerged late last year with the assistance of the dark immortal, Hades, and my new family here at the Magitech Lounge.
I’m mourning the loss of a member of that family right now. The impact has been so deeply felt that Jack, my adopted father, has temporarily (hopefully) walked away from the transcriber and his journaling. At one time he was strongly motivated to get others to participate. He wanted it to be a testament to the whole group, not just his own thoughts and feelings.
Now I figure it’s my turn. I have the funny feeling that Jack wouldn’t be too pleased to find me doing this. Don’t ask me why. When I was young the therapists would have said it would be good for my state of mind, help me deal with my feelings surrounding what happened. These days, who knows?
I think it’s damn therapeutic, and I’m going to keep doing it.
This account begins about two days after we returned from 1987.
I was awakened very early in the morning by the sound of loud verbal disagreement, an argument between Jack and a voice I couldn’t quite place. It was male and came to my ears as terribly threatening. Jack’s return fire sounded no less angry. He wasn’t giving an inch.
I couldn’t make out any words, so I crept out of bed and went to the door of my room, easing it open and edging into the hall.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Jack raise his voice, so his strident tones were quite surprising. “You don’t have the right!” he barked.
“Her disposition is not up to you, Jack,” the other voice replied. “Until we can absolutely verify her origins, she is to be considered a potential threat to the Confederation. It’s as simple as that.”
Were they talking about Dylan? I crept closer to the stairs, trying to ease myself down the steps to peer around the banister and identify this stranger who dared to threaten Jack.
“She’s just a kid!”
“You can’t have it both ways, Jack. Either she’s a child, which puts her under the jurisdiction of social services, or she’s an adult, which means she needs to be evaluated by us to determine if she is a threat.”
At that moment I realized that they weren’t talking about Dylan after all. They were talking about me. Feeling a surge of anger, I gave up trying to remain unnoticed and simply bounded down the stairs, turning a fiery stare upon both men standing in the empty bar.
I’d almost expected to find the Adjuster himself on the scene, but I didn’t recognize the man who stood there. He looked like several hundred miles of hard road. He was about the same size as Jack—maybe six-two or three—and probably weighed in the low two hundreds. His black hair, shaggy and unkempt, partially obscured his eyes. It conveyed to me the vaguest impression of one of those Old English
sheep dogs, the kind that look as though they can’t possibly see what’s going on around them.
He was also brutally torn up, one side of his face white and puckered into a terrible mass of scar tissue. He didn’t even have the fortune to look as though he’d been in a fight with a dangerously large cat. No, this scar looked as though something had simply taken a bite out of his face.
The weird thing about it was that in this day and age, with technological and magical healing techniques widely available, few people would choose to wear such a disfigurement. The fact that he did suggested he considered it a point of pride, not disgrace.
“If I’m going to be the subject of a fight that wakes me up, the least you could do is include me in it,” I said icily as I looked from one to the other of them. “Who is this guy?” I added, in a query to Jack.
“His name is Gerald Montague,” Jack replied quietly. “He works for Confed Military Intelligence.”
I decided not to comment on the classic oxymoron. “What do you want, Gerald?” I asked him pointedly.
“We,” he began, his voice leaning over the border of disdainful into contemptuous, “need to know exactly who you are and where you came from.”
“I thought Jack already covered that territory with the Adjuster’s Office.”
“We’re not associated with the AO,” he told me dismissively. “We work independently.”
“Well, then, that’s your problem right there. Go talk to Deryk Shea and leave Jack out of it.”
Personally I considered this to be the most reasonable course of action. The Adjuster’s Office had cleared me, gave me nominal Confed citizen status, and put me under Jack’s temporary guardianship. The whole thing had been arranged by the Adjuster personally.
“I think you fail to understand what we’re doing,” he said with a dramatic sigh. “MI is revoking your AO credentials. Until we vet you and are assured that you pose no threat to the Confed, you have no legal status here whatsoever.”
“Can they do that?” I asked Jack. “Just blow off the Adjuster’s decision?”
“Apparently they think they can,” he said in response. He leveled a sharp look at the MI agent. “I haven’t yet bothered to disabuse this one of the notion.”
He was only being partially humorous, I knew. At the core of his dry comment there lay hidden a sharp-edged stone of simple truth. He wouldn’t back down from shielding any member of his chosen family, but he was particularly protective of me. As were the rest of the Lounge regulars.
Jack may have been the only normal human on Earth with the resources to back off the Confed military machine, at least temporarily. The Lounge was one of the largest independent consortiums of preternaturals and paranormals in the Confederation.
Even the mageships owed him, and us, and they knew it. Our sacrifices had prevented the Confed as a whole from learning that one of their number had gone rogue, and another had sacrificed itself to prevent any more fallout than what had already come out of it.
Deryk Shea knew what had happened, but we’d been asked not to tell the Confed Fleet or any of the Confed politicos anything beyond what was absolutely unavoidable.
So far, it had all been avoidable.
I had the feeling that this was an attempt to tighten the thumbscrews, to get us to reveal what had happened. How they knew we knew, we couldn’t begin to guess. Most likely one of their clairvoyants had dredged up some of it, enough to realize we knew something that they wanted to know. And like any military intelligence outfit, they didn’t like being kept in the dark. This was their way of driving the point home in such a way we couldn’t avoid recognizing their intent. Basically telling us “play ball, or we’ll screw you hard enough to make you bleed.”
Have I shocked you, dear reader? I hardly sound like a twelve year old anymore, do I? Imagine the reaction I get when I say that sort of thing out loud. Normals don’t get me at all. Let me make this perfectly clear—I am not what I appear to be. And I’m okay with that.
I’d had about as much of this bullying as I was going to tolerate. I stalked up to the MI agent and smiled as sweetly as I could manage. “What do you want from me?”
“Dammit, Anya,” Jack growled, but I silenced him with a frosty glare. I didn’t need him fighting my battles for me. I could deal with this joker myself.
I poked him in the chest with a forefinger. “As long as Shea says I’m a citizen, I’m a citizen. And I don’t think you really want to start a fight between the AO and your outfit. Or am I wrong? You have anything to back up your claim of authority in this matter, or are we just supposed to buy it because you say so?”
I had the distinct impression I’d really thrown him a curve ball. He knew intellectually that I wasn’t really twelve years old, but faced with me in the flesh, he was having problems making the connection between his expectations and the reality presented to him.
So, like most low-level government hacks, he compensated with pure bluster. “We’re taking you into custody until we get this all sorted out.”
“Bullshit. I’m not going anywhere. You’ll need an army to pry me out of here and, y’know, I don’t think you have one.” My smile broadened into a grin. “But I do.”
I was reminded of all the old cartoons I used to watch, back in the old days. When a cartoon character gets really pissed off, steam shoots out his ears. I could see that happening to this guy. I nearly burst out laughing at the sudden mental image of this guy blowing smoke out his ears.
Even Jack seemed a bit shocked at my response. I couldn’t really blame him. This was the first time he’d really had the chance to see what I was made of.
When I first came out of the mirror I’d been disoriented and suffering from serious culture shock. I’d entered the Dimension of Mirrors in 2006, and spent over two hundred years observing other people’s lives. Believe me, you’d be disoriented too.
But several months of tutelage from Kevin and Hades had brought me into the twenty-third century. Finally. Our little trip to 1987, and the resulting carnage, had made me take stock in who and what I am. I’m a bit of a miracle, someone who shouldn’t even be here. A girl out of time.
I’d had enough screwed up stuff happen to me. From here on out, no one was going to bully me. I didn’t care if they had the whole Confederation of Human Worlds backing their play. Not that this guy did. He just wanted us to think he did.
“Do you have a warrant?” I asked him. “A judicial authorization to take me into custody? No? Then, if I may, I’d like to suggest you go fuck yourself.”
Oh, he didn’t like that at all. If he wasn’t a parahuman and pretty much immune to that sort of thing, he would’ve probably had a stroke on the spot. He reached out to grab me but I ducked away. Jack stepped between us, placing his hand on Montague’s chest.
“You heard her, buddy. Hands off.”
Montague shoved him. Hard. Jack stumbled back and managed to keep from falling by grabbing one of the bar stools. He pulled himself up and glared.
“Don’t do that again.” The voice sliced through the sudden silence. We all looked toward the door and saw the woman standing there. I was a bit surprised, but neither of the two men seemed to be.
“Captain Dylan Shepherd.” Montague said with a cool smile. “It’s so nice to see you again.”
“So all of this was for my benefit, Montague? Quite unnecessary, I assure you.”
“You resigned your commission and disappeared. How else was I supposed to find you?”
“Wait a minute,” Jack growled. “You came here threatening us because you were looking for her?”
“Colonel Montague has a habit of being a tad…overzealous,” Dylan said, as she strode up the ramp and approached. “Rules and regs have their place—but only when he says they do. Isn’t that right, Gerald?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She stopped about five feet away from him, her gaze nothing short of contemptuous as she dragged it over him. “What’s it been…ten years?”
“Something li
ke that.”
“You don’t need to worry. He doesn’t have any authority over either of you. In fact, he’s dangerously close to a court martial as it is. This little incident will probably push him over the edge. He’s been running a rogue element within Military Intelligence for the last fifteen years—now I believe his chickens are coming home to roost.”
“You don’t have any evidence, Shepherd.” He dismissed her claim with a casual wave of his hand.
“I wouldn’t make any bets on that, Montague. You’re done. And if you didn’t already know that, you wouldn’t be here.”
His hand slid into his jacket and came out with a big gun, which he pointed at her. “Yeah…I got a call from General Wilson. You’ve managed to turn them all against me.”
“Turn them against you? I didn’t have to do anything. I just provided them with an unencrypted version of the code you injected into Ranger. There are some very important people who’d like very much to ask what the hell you thought you were doing.”
“What good are fucking pacifist war machines?” he snarled, jabbing the gun at her. I quailed, seeing his finger whitening on the firing stud.
“Mageships aren’t war machines, Gerald. They were never meant to be. They’re protectors. You caused Ranger to go rogue, and the blood of all those innocents is on your hands.”
She’d gone to Fleet after all. Once she had the evidence she needed against this man—the one she held responsible for what had happened.
“We have to take the fight to the enemy! We have to fight them out there so we don’t have to fight them here again!”
“Yes, yes. We’ve heard all of that before. But the fact is, there are already people out there taking the fight to them. That’s not our job.
“What you did weakened the Confederation. It cost us two mageships. Those ships were designed and commissioned to defend Earth Prime and the Confederation of Human Worlds. Not to “take the fight to the enemy”. And you damn well knew it.”
Tales from the Magitech Lounge Page 20