Asymmetry

by A. G. Claymore

  She walked over to the officer, who was dressed in the uniform of the city’s security force. “What is it, Officer…?”

  “Keene, ma’am.” He darted a quick, meaningful glance at the bustle going on in the ops center. “This is… delicate, ma’am. Best we step outside, where there are fewer ears, if you take my meaning.”

  Hallie blew out a breath between half close lips. “As long as it’s quick,” she told him. “Our lord and lady are landing as we speak.”

  She followed him outside where two burly security officers held a small man between them, his hands together behind his back. The corridor was otherwise empty. “Quickly, please,” she said. “I don’t have much time.”

  The small man grinned. That was when she should have run or screamed but the window of opportunity was too short and she was momentarily startled by his sudden expression. She was just too drained to process the multiple streams of possible futures.

  The two large guards let go of the man and he stepped toward her, bringing his hands from behind his back to jab a small flechette pistol into her abdomen. “Not a sound,” he hissed. “Not a squeak!”

  A bag slid over her vision from behind and rough, strong hands grabbed her, dragging her forward toward the door that had been behind the erstwhile prisoner. She heard the door hiss open and then close behind her.

  “Quickly!” Keene’s voice hissed. “I don’t want to end up trapped here if it runs out of power!”

  She was shoved roughly, stumbling forward into a shock of cold air and unexpected noise. Despite the cold, she was sweating, every fiber of her being keyed up for fight or flight.

  The bag was yanked off and she found herself staring at a massive cityscape. Towers bigger than the Solomon arcology spread as far as the eye could see and they were all linked at various levels.

  “Hello, niece!”

  Her gaze shifted closer. Nell stood there smirking. Next to her was another Midgaard, well dressed in expensive cloth and sneering at her. Even if he hadn’t just had her kidnapped, she would have disliked him on sight. His demeanor had an all-or-nothing cast to it. This was a man who was either at your feet or at your throat, depending on the situation.

  “Miss Fletcher,” he drawled. “You would do well to keep in mind that there is no escape.”

  Fight, then, she thought, if flight is out of the picture.

  “You will find that Valdemar is a gracious host if you…” and here his eyes roamed deliberately up and down her form, “… know how to be accommodating.”

  That was how she placed him. Valdemar had been a scheming hauld who used his ships to win votes rather than battles. He’d tried to seize Lothbrok’s property at the Allthing and ended up losing almost all he had.

  He had the annoying habit of speaking about himself in the third person.

  “So,” she said flatly, “this Valdemold, whom you serve, likes to seize young women and abuse them? Is that why he sends his eunuch to greet me? Doesn’t trust his regular goons to keep their hands off the merchandise?”

  Valdemar’s face contorted with rage. “Eunuch?” He stepped forward to deliver a vicious backhand to her face but she already knew exactly how he would react even before she provoked him. She ducked under his elbow darting forward to grasp his unarmored testicles.

  She’d been trained alongside Viggo and his other friends, mostly to provide him with a cadre of able, trustworthy helpers when he eventually took up the lordship of 3428. There were a lot of special, one-of-a-kind type instructors but the one thing they constantly drilled in was fighting dirty.

  It took a surprising amount of pressure to rupture a humanoid’s testicles. She squeezed hard, one hand inside the other, and pulled down hard.

  Valdemar let out a piercing shriek, trying to wrap his body around the agony at his center but Hallie’s body was in the way.

  She grunted, interlocking her fingers and forcing her hands together and she felt something give. Valdemar fell like a sack, his brain finally giving up on trying to process the abusive signals flooding in and shutting down.

  Nell was already moving backward, seeing now that she was the next target. She was yelling for the guards to stop Hallie but they weren’t from 3428. Without Nell’s advance vision, they weren’t ready to stop the angry young woman.

  Hallie batted her aunt’s warding arms aside and managed to land a punch on her throat before the goons managed to get their hands on her. She slammed a foot down on the right-hand man’s instep and he let go, grunting in pain.

  She pivoted around, loosening the left-hand man’s grip almost enough to break free but then there was the sound of a shot, followed by the arcing of a damaged power unit.

  A blow to the back of the head stunned her while she was concentrating on breaking loose and she fell flat on her face.

  “You idiot!” one of the goons growled. “Boss isn’t gonna be happy. Eirar only ever had three of those things!”

  “And the boss only had one hostage,” a voice retorted. “You’ve never dealt with a precog, have you? She can sense direct threats to herself but not to a piece of tech she doesn’t even know about. I made sure she wouldn’t get away before I took my chances helping your sorry ass.”

  The last thing Hallie heard as her senses faded was the gratifying sound of her aunt choking.

  Catching the Scent

  Control Room – Solomon Arco

  Viggo turned as the door opened. Barry came striding back in, far more purposeful than one would expect, seeing as he’d just left to start the search a few heartbeats before. He nodded at Rick and Freya, who were standing to the side with Tim, Gabiola and Arsh.

  He walked to Viggo and held something out to him.

  Viggo took the smoking lump of hissing panels and coils. “What the hells is this?”

  “Don’t know,” Barry admitted, “but we smelled it as soon as we stepped out the door to start the search. It was in a room across the hall.”

  Viggo wanted to scream and hurl the thing at a wall but he knew it wouldn’t help anything. In fact, he knew that a leader prone to outbursts of violent anger usually led people who were too afraid to volunteer ideas or information.

  His grip tightened on the object. Forget the fornicating lessons! He was just about to wind up for a satisfying throw when the object was snatched from his hands.

  “Helvete!” Gabiola exclaimed, holding the thing up. She glanced back at Rick and Freya. “We thought the only ones were destroyed!”

  “What is it, Aunt?” Viggo chose the honorific on the fly. This was his mother’s mentor, after all. Even with his fiancée missing – especially with her missing – it was best to show respect to those who tried to help.

  It was hard to keep that in mind, though, and the strain was taking its toll. He was on the verge of repeating the question in a sharper tone when she finally shook herself out of her moment of recollection.

  “The only person known to have had these things was a filthy drittsekk named Eirar. I was a pipefitter on the Volund when he used one to send a boarding party into our engineering room. We moved it so they’d run straight into the nav-shield instead.

  “He served Liev Blieker. Both are dead.”

  She hefted the thing in front of Viggo. “Your sweetheart isn’t on this world anymore, young lord.”

  “We need to move quickly!” Viggo said, adrenaline coursing. “What’s the range on these things?” He turned to shout an order for Ops to bring up a system map in the central holo but a hand on his shoulder turned him back.

  “Caution, Lord,” Gabiola said gently. She tilted her head. “The problem with a hostage situation is… if they see you coming…” she trailed off meaningfully.

  “But we can’t just sit here!” Rick exploded.

  “And yet…” Gabiola turned to him. “…You have to, at least until we know where force might be needed.

  “All of you are too close to her, too recognizable. What this needs is someone who knows how to run silent, how to slip int
o places unnoticed. Someone that everyone has forgotten about, decades ago.” She smiled at Freya. “Almost everyone.”

  “Every advantage is also a weakness, Gabs,” Freya replied. “Are you sure you can pull off covert work, after all this time locked up on Rykeria?”

  Gabiola smiled. “Especially after all that time!” She cocked a thumb over her shoulder at Arsh, her Akkadian lover. “We’ve got a presence on every world in the Alliance and half the planets in the Republic.”

  Freya cocked her head. “We?”

  “LRG’s been doing fine under you. I’ve been going through the records on the way here,” Gabiola told her. “The Group’s been yours for a long time now and, anyway, I’m practically a member of the Syndicate now.”

  “You’ll need a ship,” Viggo said, eager to get things moving.

  She faced him again. “It would be faster than swimming. This is really the world where spice-wood comes from?”

  Viggo nodded, bemused by the sudden non sequitur.

  “Well,” she continued, “I’d love a Hussar-class, of course, but they’re too obvious, under the circumstances. I saw some nice freighters under guard up there, though. I assume the strongest-scented wood commands the best price when it gets to market, just like the old Imperial days?”

  He nodded again, understanding now. “I have some hyper-fast-freighters in impound. Their owners backed the uprising. Not as maneuverable as a Hussar but faster on a straight run. Take your pick.”

  “Good!” She put both hands on his shoulders. “Don’t lose hope. Those drittsekker may think they’re safe from the Alliance but there’s no way they can hide from us. We’ll find her.”

  She stood there for a long time, staring into Viggo’s eyes from a half pace away. Years in solitary had evidently stripped away old habits of interpersonal behavior. It was unsettling enough for Viggo to miss any precognition of her next words and she caught him by surprise, just as he was about to clear his throat and wish her the gods’ speed.

  “You’ve done well so far,” she told him. “You knew enough to run, when it was your only good option, and you timed your return well enough, though I think there’s more to that particular story than you’re letting on.” Here she glanced at Rick.

  “You got back inside Solomon, found the right people to trust and threw the dice. It worked but now you need to learn an even tougher lesson.”

  Barry grunted, drawing their attention. She nodded to him, so he explained himself. “She means you need to learn how to sit on your ass while others go out and risk their necks on your behalf.”

  “How heroic,” Viggo muttered helplessly.

  Barry shrugged, gesturing at Gabiola and Viggo’s parents. “Welcome to the club, Viggs.”

  “Don’t worry, young lord,” Gabiola said, finally taking her hands from his shoulders, “we’ll find her.”

  She turned and walked toward a door, Arsh falling in beside her. They marched out of the room and the door snapped shut behind them.

  Viggo frowned. He turned to say something to his parents but stopped as the door opened again.

  “You bacrauten might have told me I was walking into a storage room!” Gabiola rolled her eyes. She held up a finger, looking around the room to orient herself, then nodded.

  She pointed the finger at Viggo on the way past.

  “We’ll bring her home!”

  Blooper Reel

  Weirfall She smiled. “That’s not the kind of excitement I’m offering, you old goat!”

  He laughed. “Not so old I can’t bend you over my knee for your insolence!”

  {Freya} 'OMG!Am I really supposed to let that go? I mean, it sounds like the dirty old bastard is still trying to hit on someone a fraction of his age. I mean, space-phrasing, right?'

  {Odin} 'Your character is in her sixties...'

  {Claymore} 'Knock it off, you numbskulls! 'Odin' needs to be in the Philippines for a new Wachter title by the 23rd.'

  Pillow talk “There’s a market for it,” June added. “I’d be more than happy to use it in a promotional video.”

  “I think we’re done here!” Odin said forcefully.

  {Fenris} 'I could stand to hear a little more about this video...'

  {June} Laughs. 'We could use that...'

  {Claymore} Shakes head regretfully. 'Can't. Fenris wouldn't say that in front of you guys.'

  Rykeria prison entrance The word ‘eternals’ quickly emerged from the buzz of voices. Clearly, there were guards here with a side-hustle in keeping certain inmates informed.

  The result was the usual mix of awe and resentment. Some stared at the two prisoners who might actually out live the prison.

  And one idiot fumbled to mute his ringing cellphone...

  {Claymore} 'I could almost use a ringing tone as a normal prison sound, Zababa, if it was a standard ring and not freaking 'Uptown Girls'! Take the battery out and hand it over.'

  {Zababa} Hands over phone battery. 'I’m still doing a character in Humanity, though, right?'

  {Claymore} 'Sure, as long as you leave the phone in your trailer.'

  {Zababa} ‘I’ll be glad to stop wearing this animatronic suit. Smells like farts in here…'

  {Claymore} ‘Who’s fault is that? They have more than just chili at the craft table.’

  Odin/Zababa shuttle-fight Zababa stumbled but he was a wide creature and that seemed to give him exceptional balance. He recovered and resumed his advance on Odin.

  Full stop, bow up. He ordered.

  Balance or not, Zababa could do nothing about the small vessel coming to a relatively quick halt from roughly a hundred kilometers per hour. He slammed into the cargo bay’s forward bulkhead and then... fell to the deck and lay there...

  {Zababa} Chuckles... 'The set was supposed to tilt...' Begins to pull himself aft with his hands and feet as Odin laughs...

  {Author} That's all for the bloopers. Honestly, I thought we'd have a lot more problems with the imaginary special effects...

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