by S E Zbasnik
Despite the “helpful” indexes on how to interact with various species listing the dwarves as “easily confrontational, prone to fits of excessive violence if their ale is disturbed” Variel found that as accurate as “humans: mostly harmless.” But every now and then she’d meet a dwarf in the professional sector…
“I got that,” she answered the dwarf, lifting her right hand. The borrowed PALM chip buzzed, still running on backup power and probably getting enough of a boost from the MGC thick inside their bubble. She managed to call up a menu, jamming into her hand with her bent finger a couple times, and flicked through.
“It’ll never work,” the dwarf said, as she rose to her tiptoes to try and watch over Variel’s shoulder. “Even if you get a signal, it’ll dissipate before breaking the barrier.”
“Uh huh.”
“That’s kind of the point of jails,” the dwarf continued.
“Right.”
“To keep the people inside, you know, inside it.”
“Makes sense,” Variel responded as her fingers poked though a screen cannibalized from a popular recipe sorting software.
“You are not listening to a word I say, are you?”
The captain’s fingers poked upon one last holographic projection and she finally turned to the dwarf, “Nope.”
Jangling with the air, the bubble of unreality twisted, the time dilation increasing. The corporeals in the bubble gasped as they instinctively took quick breaths to make up for the lost five to ten minutes rushing into their systems. As the final ghosts of the past massacre faded from view, the jail cell descended. Variel reached out to where the barrier had been and her hand passed through what counted as normal space.
The dwarf’s cracked lips parted in shock, “How in the, how the fuck did you do that?”
Cracking open the helmet, Variel took in the recycled air of the station that wasn’t tinged with her own sweat and the leeching plastic smell. Cradling the cursed thing, she smiled at the dwarf. As the patronizing lip curl of her people answered the captain’s smile, Variel waved her hand up and said, “There had to be a code to break the bubble inside their comms if one of their own wandered in.”
“Why?”
She blinked slowly and then gestured around at the stripped bare operation two people laid waste to, “Would you trust them without a babysitter?”
The meticulously shaved eyebrows of the dwarf met and she muttered an, “oh.”
Taliesin lightly touched her upper arm and leaned in to ask, “And you knew of this before we began?”
“I highly suspected,” she whispered back. “There was one, maybe two minutes of juice left in that thing. Hunting for it before would have been a waste of resources.”
The elf sighed, putting his full exasperation into, “You are a wonder.”
“Is this a good or bad time to ask you to fill out a customer survey about your time aboard the Elation-Cru?” Exhaustion couldn’t damp down the sparkle of adrenaline in her eyes. Taliesin laughed despite dropping his head down to hide it.
Slowly, the non-corporeals stretched their appendages or cilia as their bonds broke. Reaching through a dimension most of the universe never saw, a few shimmered in and out of where the eye could follow. The Moroi popped back in beside Variel. Her black tendrils whipped through the air by a breeze no one in the three dimensions could feel. The shifting shadows of her face lightened to a white and the human got the feeling the Moroi was bowing to her. She tried to return the favor, dropping her head.
Variel turned back to the others; merchants, customers, average good old middle class folk pulled into something they lived happily in ignorance of, and opened her mouth. A voice crackled from her hand, “I see we have a problem here.”
Even as her head whipped around, looking for the lone survivor of the spring cleaning, she yanked off her borrowed gauntlet and smashed the heel of her shoe into it. Cheap bits of black plastic gripped into the rubber. Taliesin tried to find a face hiding in the wind swept stage area, but nothing moved. He cast one eye towards Variel and half raised a shoulder, his official assessment. “A ghosting voice?”
“An interesting maneuver, but it will not work,” the female voice boomed through the speaker system embedded in the walls. Variel aimed her gun towards the source but came up empty.
“Who are you?” she shouted to thin air.
The voice paused, “You already know that. My name means little in the scheme of the universe. The more pressing question is what human turns on her own?”
“The kind that doesn’t like being shot at,” Variel muttered, feeling like she was trapped in a diorama. Any minute a kid was going to press the button and her arms would flail wildly to much amusement. Sin placed his hand on her shoulder and, with one burnt finger, pointed towards a small pinprick of light. She motioned her head down to signal she saw it.
“What do you want?” Variel shouted, as she tried to find another pinprick hidden inside the haystack of NC walling. Light filtered through pass walls, allowing those of a less body confining nature to travel unimpeded.
“I am wondering much the same.”
“Maybe ya should have figured that out before you started on the whole slaughtering people path. Perhaps you’re just hungry,” Variel quipped, her mouth operating on its own without the brain.
“You could prove very useful, comrade,” the voice said. As the final syllable echoed through the promenade a crack broke from the gun, then another three. Two cameras exploded in incriminating shrapnel inside their burrows.
“You have no idea,” Variel answered, before her ears heard the quiet zoom of a camera. She fired thrice, making certain it was dead.
Taliesin stood rigid, still hunting for someone hiding in the shadows, “That was…”
“Weird,” Variel slipped the gun over her shoulder, wishing she’d stolen a few more battery packs before sending them all outside. “Okay, people, while I’d love to sit around basking in the accolades, we seem to have a tiny surveillance problem and the enemy knows where we are. You’re gonna need a safe house. Does anyone here know the Pistil & Stamen?”
Heads turned down, none wanting to admit where the pleasure palace was. A few plumes of embarrassment rose across faces, the Moroi turning a golden yellow. “Ah, ya entrance carvers,” the dwarf muttered. “I know where it is. But they sent another five soldiers after there to take care of the place, remember?”
Variel asked Sin, “You think we left them enough munitions for five mercs?”
“I would calculate at least fifty, if the Madam is in the wrong mood.”
“But send in a few NCs first,” Variel added, pointing towards the recovering forms, “they might try and shoot anything climbing over the barricade. Got it?”
Her question seemed to sail over the heads coming to accept their brush with death coalescing around them. It was a bit much for a steel nosed soldier, for the civilians their mouths gawped like mermaids.
“I suspect now would be the time for one of those heroic speeches,” Taliesin whispered to her.
“Right, okay,” Variel clapped her hands to get their attention. “You’re not dead. Focus on that and you’ll stay alive. Because dying is bad. Now, head out!”
Variel didn’t see the eye roll, but the dwarf hooked her arm around the shaken goblin and gestured to the others, “Come. Moroi, you out front, and if ya find anyone to drain on the way, don’t hesitate to feast.”
As the horde walked towards the way they’d come, Variel checked the battery and tried to raise the forgotten map, “Orn and Brena should be past that platform…What?”
“‘Dying is bad?’” Taliesin quoted.
Variel slid the helmet back on, uncertain what they’d find on the last leg of their journey to hell. As she slipped the gun to rest across her hands she said, “It ain’t like we all got ‘Heroic speech classes.’ That’s what poets hundreds of years after the battle are for.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The walls were not closin
g in. They were staying perfectly situated exactly ten crons away and not sliding inward. There was almost no chance they’d suddenly collapse and crush until death came. He was still working through the fear that the narrow twists and turns would pin him, and he’d melt into a skeleton below a “Frickle’s Foodshack,” but it was progress since they entered the maintenance shaft what felt three weeks earlier. The woman in front of him did not suffer the same phobia.
“Another five feet, then abrupt drop off,” Ferra’s voice reverberated through the metal tube bouncing back to Monde’s already swollen nodes. Orcs weren’t designed for tight places with echo chambers. He wouldn’t have expected elves to be either, but she seemed to be bouncing along as if they were crawling to a missed meeting instead of their possible death at the hands of a mysterious technology.
“When you say abrupt drop off…” Monde began.
“It’s no problem, a foot. You won’t even notice.”
“You said this last time and I nearly fractured my wrist.”
He ignored the small chuckle as she crawled forward. “Nonsense, I said it was a two-foot drop. It just was for a pair of very large feet.”
“You’re enjoying this?” the terror ringed each of his words as they bounced back to Monde somehow louder than after leaving his mouth.
“You’re not?”
As Monde limped forward on a tender wrist, his sleeve snagged on another jagged piece of flooring, unraveling a very expensive… Well, relatively expensive shirt. He wasn’t likely to be anywhere near an Orc outlet store anytime soon to purchase another. Rising to combat the snag, his horn smashed into the low ceiling and he cursed as a female would. “How do gnomes work in here?”
“They walk through,” Ferra said as if she were explaining a sunrise to him.
“Even gnomes are not this vertically challenged.”
“Then they duck. I never ask a quatro to explain anything. Come on, here’s the drop off,” she — in her tiny elven body — managed to swing her legs around and land softly on her feet. Monde tried to overhear how far of a drop it really was, but her shuffling overtook the echoes, drowning it all in white noise. “It’s not bad.”
“For a tiny one, yes,” he muttered. How in the nine layers of the soul does the tall elf manage this? With her short legs, and minuscule torso it was no wonder Ferra moved through the grating like a limbless reptile. But the over six foot tall assassin seemed to prefer it to walking the decks like a normal sapient. Perhaps elves could dislocate their limbs at will? It was something else for him to look into, assuming they weren’t sentenced forever to plumb this purgatory.
Unable to pivot the way Ferra could, Monde crawled towards the gap, pulling himself over top it until his head bumped against the blockage. A lone light glittered from below but it could be decks or even miles away. Everything fed back into everything. It was like trying to judge distance on a planet by starlight. Go until you’re under that star, or it’s daylight and all the stars are gone. That’s good too. Slowly, he twisted like a rotisserie bird until his back faced the hole. Saying a mantra he repeated every hour before a test, Monde gripped onto the lip and slid his ass over the edge.
His rear struck metal before he realized he’d fallen, his legs still dangling above his head. As he checked for any broken parts, he shifted his legs down below him. Eventually, he got back into a fetal position and looked into the pink eyes of the elf, overflowing with bemusement. “Do not speak,” he said, as he pulled his knee forward. A rip echoed from behind and he froze. He tried to work his fingers back to his knee, but it was as unreachable as his home. Dropping his flat forehead to the grating, he sighed and yanked his knee forward. The rip crescendoed and metal bit into the exposed flesh where pants used to be, but he was free.
“Well doc, at least ya ain’t wearing a dress,” Ferra said as she flipped around taking back the lead she’d never surrender.
“A dress would not have snagged so effectively,” he mumbled.
“No, but you’d have one hell of a breeze on your nethers from the air cycler.” In response to her jab, the familiar tch tch tch started. Monde grumbled, but as the final tch echoed, the air sputtered and only rumpled the back of his shirt, exposing an ill thought marking from his youth.
“That was not so…” the rest of his sentence was blasted in the freezing winds rattling his body forward as the ventilation system kicked into overdrive. “Ffferra!” he chattered through frozen teeth but it didn’t reach her. She clung to life, her smaller mass an easier target for the hurricane like winds picking up steam from behind. The orc provided a buffer, but some still got around.
Her feet began to lift from the ground, levitating a few inches. Then she’d slam them down with all her power, only to have the wind insist that she’d really enjoy the powers of flight. “—Itshitshitshitshit,” echoed through the chamber. Monde reached a hand out and grabbed both of her ankles together, then he dropped his whole body, taking Ferra with him.
“I think it’s slowing!” he shouted into the turret of wind, but either the engineer didn’t hear him or wasn’t able to respond. Her head chitin whipped about like a shredded flag, blanketing her head. Just as Monde was afraid he’d lose his tenuous grasp upon her ankles, the tch tch tch began and the wind tapered off. Frozen air still bit into his flesh at speeds that should be illegal, but there was no longer a fear of the pair of them going airborne.
Ferra batted at the mess upon her head, twisting it around her hand and then jamming a micro screwdriver through the knot. “Thanks.”
“It was my pleasure,” Monde answered.
“Just, don’t tell Orn,” she said, any humor dried from her statement.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Good. He loves his little conspiracies so…” She did not elaborate but Monde blushed at the thought of the dwarf thinking he’d make any attempt upon the tiny elf. “Come on, it’s not much further now,” she said and returned to their death march.
“This is when I would complain of you already stating that fact…” Monde began, ignoring the jagged prick of metal tugging at his bare flesh.
“If I’d actually said it before,” Ferra responded. “I’ve lived with Orn for,” she paused as she tried to slot how many ‘surprise anniversary gifts’ there’d been. After the “baby kobold” in the shower and the melted quarter sized replica of a chocolate Orn smeared across her engines it had to have been…“six years,” she finished.
“One learns all the tricks from that, I suppose,” Monde answered.
“Or vice versa,” Ferra grinned in the emergency light when her tracker lit up like mad. “Hello, my beauty.”
“What? More duct rats?” Monde shrieked as he tried to pat down his sides, hunting for the tiny things.
“Nope, another micro pinch opened almost directly above our heads,” she said and gazed upwards as if she could see through the floor’s ceiling.
“I hope you have a plan,” Monde muttered, twisting back and forth like he could wedge more room for himself.
“Something like that,” Ferra said as she extracted out a sphere with a lot of warning stickers plastered around the handle. Twisting the yellow shaft, a blue flame burst from the end. At only an inch long, it seemed a bit excessive to have a “Danger” sign in nearly every acknowledged galactic language…and one apple sticker. Then she tapped the red button on the end, and the blue flame grew from one inch to five, then ten. She stopped somewhere in the foot range and cranked the yellow handle further left. The blue flame shifted in colors growing more violet until it vanished from the visible spectrum.
Ferra put her finger to her lips as if Monde wanted to say anything other than “meep” from whatever weapon of mass destruction she held. Sliding forward on her hands, her eyes watched the tracker as the other held the weapon upright so it wasn’t about to destroy everything directly above them. Beep, she slid forward, beep, a bit more, beep, beep. Ferra stopped and turned around.
Sliding the tracker into her
apron pocket, she rose to her knees. With all her disturbing elven strength, she forced the invisible flame through what should have been impenetrable metal. Molten chunks dribbled from above like metallic snow, cooling as soon as they hit the floor into tiny piles shaped like something rather rude. It was a shame Orn was not here, he’d quite enjoy it.
As Ferra sliced through the sides of her box, she paused and realized the short sidedness of her not-plan. With the blade still poised inside the ceiling she waved to Monde, “Get over here!”
“What?”
“Get behind me, now!” she hissed as if she was blaming him for the oversight.
The doctor looked up, then back to the elf and the matters of the laws of physics entered into his head. It wasn’t a study doctors mattered with much unless a scalpel and dart board were involved, but some things were universal. He scrambled to his knees and crawled as quickly as a baby after the one dangerous toy in the house. When his horn stopped a few inches from Ferra’s body, he paused, and strained his neck to look up at the sparking and very unstable deck directly above him. Her body was clogging the way.
“Go around,” she waved as if that were possible.
Steeling his nerves, he said, “Right, okay. Please don’t get fresh or anything,” and began to slide his form beside her. Ferra’s eyes rolled but she didn’t answer, the footsteps were increasing. There wasn’t any time to lay the charges.
Hands and legs merged with torsos and heads as Monde squeezed his vast frame around her rigid body. For a moment, his knee collapsed into her arm and she almost lost her grip on the torch — which would have sent it careening through gods knew how many decks before exiting out into space. That’d be a fun one to explain to the commission board.
As Monde pulled his knee up to his chin, he half rolled away grateful that Orn wasn’t there. A rattling broke from above and Ferra scooted away, her backside ramming into the orc’s face. Very, very grateful there was no dwarf here. Already planning a shrine to the goddess of luck for that.