by Aeryn Leigh
The last brass housing clicked tight into place.
He walked around the wooden mounts holding the telescope, to the viewing eye. In the small, reflected adjustment mirror, he could see the moon, a little fuzzy. "Lucius," he called out, "a hand with the focusing rings?"
Lucius climbed up the small ladder onto the platform. "Which one?"
"The third ring, please." He stooped over, craning his neck forward and with one hand over his left eye, nestled the right side of his face snugly into the viewing cup. The huge reflection of the moon stared at him. Still completely out of focus. "Lucius, just twist three notches clockwise please?"
A tiny bit better. "The next fourth ring, could you twist that one notch anti-clockwise." The moon was that big it filled the entire eyepiece. Half circles, the splattering of craters, all still blurry. "One more notch anti clockwise," said Dan. Through the eyepiece pressed against his cheek he could feel the mechanical vibration as brass metalwork clicked into place.
Clarity. The craters and lunar plains swam crisply into view. He reached down, and spun the cast iron handle, and spiral gears coated with crude grease inched the telescope around on its axis.
Daniel's heart thumped. This was it. At last they’d be able to see clearly what those strange markings were on the moon, every full moon. "Martians," Mick had said when they’d discussed it one morning around the breakfast table months earlier. "Giant space lizards!" exclaimed Amelia, getting onboard with the excitement, if not the spirit. Martian canals. Both Daniel and Andrew knew the water canals of Mars were just figments of imagination and over-imaginative pulp science-fiction writers. Modern astronomy had proved it so. Now, after all his time, finally they might have a clearer answer as to how in God's hell did they get here? Who brought them here? How?
Why?
He saw the faint beginning of a straight line. His heart hammered, the words catching in his throat. He spun the helical gear a few rotations more. A wall. A thick wall with what looked like gun turrets. A wall with gun turrets on the moon. Tiny craters lined even that, the construction dimpled with micro crater impacts. How old was that? .Another quarter turn. Daniel ripped his head away, looked up at the moon above, then slammed his head forward again, right into the eyecup, not noticing the outside ridges pressing so hard against his facial muscles it hurt. In the interior courtyard, past rows upon rows of rocketships and spacecraft parked neatly aligned, an arena. In a grand coliseum, for that what it could only be, was a festival, a vast collection of armoured figures, spacemen wearing spacesuits, creatures with five arms, three arms, six legs, two legs, all carrying colourful flags and banners and weapons, all milling around a simply enormous three-dimensional projection beamed right into the middle of the arena.
The projection changed, zooming down, to show a black man, in a simple brown tunic and linen pants, standing on a wooden platform, next to a iron and brass telescope, looking up at the heavens. Daniel very slowly, very carefully, lifted up his right hand and through the optic sight saw the figure’s right hand do the same. He waved. It waved. Daniel could not breathe. He tried, but the air would just not come out.
Next to the projection, two armoured figures started fighting in the arena, sparks flying as weapons clashed, then one fell to the ground, arms raised in surrender. Yielding. The victor helped the fallen being up. Something flashed red. The display instantly changed.
From swirling tendrils of blue they coalesced into bright blue words.
English words.
We.
Love.
Skippy!
He felt a hand on his shoulder, heard the words.
"Daniel. What is it? What do you see?"
With some supreme effort of being he pulled himself away. "Look," he stammered, into the worried face of General Marietta right next to him. "Look."
General Marietta crouched down, and looked into the viewfinder. "Incredible," she said. "Who would have imagined you could see the craters on the surface of the moon with such glorious detail. You have quite outdone yourself, Daniel."
"But the fortifications! The arena! Can't you see them?!"
"No?" said Marietta, lifting up. Lucius joined her, both with worried expressions.
"Here! They’re right there!" He nudged Lucius aside, and stuck his head back onto the viewfinder. The arena began to shimmer, becoming more translucent, nothing but craters and moon dust. Saw creatures waving at him as they flickered out. He blinked. The surface of the moon was yet again, boring, normal, full of impact craters. In the last fraction of a second, two heartbeats before Daniel started screaming, the moon winked.
Chapter One Hundred One
A Familiar Visitor
Amelia opened her eyes, and blinked. Fang still snored, and Zia purred, both oblivious to the small blue sphere, dancing in the middle of the dark room. The smell of air after a massive storm on a hot, summer's day.
A familiar smell.
Amelia bolted upright, and the animals awoke, as the sphere coalesced and grew larger. She threw the covers off and jumped off the bed and stood in front of the forming figure of swirling blue spirals.
The figure of her mother.
Fang started barking in excitement, leaping right up, and went straight through it, hairs upright. His barks increased tenfold as his mother joined the baying, making enough sound to raise the dead from the other end of the mansion.
"I'm sorry Amelia for leaving you. Again. If you are seeing this, I've got this verdammt thing to work but not sure for how long."
Ella's arm reached outward, palm upward. Amelia moved to touch it, and her hand crackled the closer she got. She kept her hand the merest fraction above her mother's blue limb, static electricity crackling as the tears flowed down her face and she heard the words I love you. I'm coming for you when the Valkjur re —
Ella disappeared in a single momentary flash. Marietta burst into the room with her armed guard and Volfango and Skippy behind and found the child wiping away tears. Smiling, eyes bright.
"Every thing's going to be OK, Marietta. Everything will be OK." And hugged her.
<<<>>>
Author’s Note & Info
Hello! If you liked my story, then please check out the next in my series, Odin's Warriors: Königstiger!
To receive an exclusive novella, which explains some of the back story in Hellsbaene, please join my mailing list below:
www.aerynleigh.combookclub
Because it's easier to beg forgiveness than ask for permission, reviews matter a lot for Indie writers, especially new authors. Could you please? Thank you!
The Real Author's Note
Hi! Immediately after I finished Hellsbaene, before I even sent it off to my editor, I was already thinking about the next book. What happens next? Our band of heroes just helped win the Battle of Harmony Day, yet the Inquisition lay waiting, casting a great shadow of the very future of Republic.
So here’s the thing about ideas, great ideas that explode like a supernova in our creative souls — the morning after. The hangover. The reality of what happened last night, is now history, unchangeable. So what happens next? I had all the ideas, grand epic over-arching themes, floating around in my head writing Hellsbaene, enough to fill five, six, ten books, but like when you wake from a dream, the harder you try to remember them, the more the slip from your grasp.
So one of the benefits of old age (I can’t believe I just typed that) and experience, is the hopefully leaned ability to learn from them. I didn’t pursue, I let them float around, making them come to me. You want to be in my universe little awesome idea? Well form an orderly bloody queue!
Painkiller was born, in those ethereal moments between sleep and full consciousness, about a week after I sent Hellsbaene off. The whole book came to me in a single coherent flash, ten minutes later, I got up and wrote it down.
Where Eagles Dare meets Starship Troopers, two of my favourite movies (and books), mixed in with all the ideas already germinating from the Odin’s Warriors univer
se.
Plus, I utterly adore Judas Priest’s Painkiller, especially on a big stereo. Wow that drumming! And so, it all came together.
Painkiller. And riffing off that, some of the themes I alluded to in Hellsbaene, sowing those seeds, could at last blossom. But of course, nothing ever goes to plan.
No one wakes up in the morning, and decides for themselves they’re going to become a drug addict (unless you’re born to one), or die at their desk on a Monday morning being a incurable workaholic. Like everything involved in being human, it proceeds in stages, telling lies to yourself, that you’ve got it under control, you can stop any moment you want.
I bet no human ever on their death bed, in their final moments, wished they’d spent more time at the office.
Ella may have been transported to another world, her daughter safe at last, her main obstacles gone (or so she tells herself), yet the underlying problems remained. Laurie and the others from Earth, being blokes, turn to alcohol to cope, and find the Black Dog of depression is never far away.
As Pink Floyd sung, you can run and run from the sun, trying to catch up with it, but it's sinking, racing around to come up behind you again. But now you're older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death. You can’t outrun your own fear. The only thing you can do, that any of us can do, is turn around, plant our feet amongst the man-killing spears, and face our enemy, our fears, and turn the brightest light we have upon them, even as our stomachs fall into the abyss, as our brain screams for us to flee.
When Ella is in the tunnel, lost, on the verge of insanity, she had her own reckoning, where her life only rotates on a single coin, culminating in being stuck inside the power armour, she reaches that point, where the pain to remain in the shell, is more painful that stepping forth into the unknown.
The one thing I’ve learnt, as always, the hard way — is there any other way? — is that courage is not the absence of fear, but being so damned fucking shit scared, you do it anyway, despite it, a great big Fuck You to the pain, and the terror.
And even if you win, you get to do it all again tomorrow.
I am an optimist, I swear.
Again, thanks for reading my second book! I really hope you enjoyed it! If you have any questions, feedback, or things you’d like to see, send me an email? I’ll reply to each one.
Oh, and never give up, because you are awesome. If I can do it, you certainly can.
x Aeryn Leigh
Melbourne, Australia
Earth, Sol System
Milky Way, Backwater of the Universe.
www.aerynleigh.com
[email protected]