H.M.A.S Badger ~ Online Æther Ship ~ Member's Wanted

[Alexis Voltaire]

There was a small shop close to the temporary office that sold smokeless and even some black powder weapons, and a few more modern plasma and energy weapons. They also had the longest shooting range in New Purgatory, at the farthest eight hundred yards. Most of the Mad Badger's crew went there to practice since the range on board was currently being used for temporary storage by the repair crews. The old proprietor there knew quite a bit about obscure weapons designs, and had recognized the eagle stamp on Frank's revolver case, oddly enough.

"Ah, yes! This is a Leo-Markiss." He said, putting on his glasses and turning on a bright lamp on the counter. "Haven't seen one in close to ten years, they're a rare thing. That mark is the old one, hasn't been used since '85. It's a custom too, you can see here it hasn't got the wreath crest like the factory-made. Good shooters, and not a one alike, they're all modified originals. Interesting story behind most of 'em. There was a contest, way back in 68, for a number of designs on new weapons, specifics on trigger mechanisms, technical parts of energy shields for the newer type, and so on. These came in from all over, and the ones that they liked, they bought, and a few of the better designers even got hired. The top hundred or so from the different designs won a custom-built of their own specifications. A lot of interesting things came from that, like the .51 Tiger, one of those wildcats they made for jungle-beasts on Venus. Interesting rifle as well," He said, looking up. "I've only seen one other like it. Old Leo made some strange things, though that's probably not the strangest."

"You've seen a rifle like this before?"

"Yeah, about five years ago, ship came through from no-one knows where, doing who knows what, and one of 'em had a rifle almost exactly like that. Never saw that ship or him again, it's that way with most people that come through. Odd bunch, claimed to be looking for old artifacts out on the reefs. Said there were some here, in fact, but I never heard of or saw anything like what they were looking for."

His resonance rifle was still in good working order, although the stock had gotten a few more scratches and rough spots. Frank tried out the revolver he'd gotten as well, it seemed to be a straight shooter, though he couldn't tell very well from the shooting he'd done. The weight of it kept the recoil to a manageable level, and it wasn't bad for a .44, but he hadn't shot a smokeless pistol of any kind since he had left America. He'd spent a lot of time practicing with the dart pistol back in Victoria, mostly for something to do, but it had been very light and had practically no recoil whatsoever. The dart pistol had proved to be more reliable than he would have guessed, but it also had no stopping power against someone wearing even light protection against energy weapons, or just about anything else.

The kick from the smoothbore 28 gauge was just about as bad as he'd expected, and the shot spread wasn't great even at close range. It was essentially designed for a point-blank last-resort shot, though it might have better range, and a huge amount of stopping power, with a solid slug. It wasn't something he really wanted to try out though.

The Mad Badger had been repaired to the point where most of them could return, although not very many people or dragons did yet, since the repairs that were still going on made in next-to impossible to sleep if they happened to be near the spot the crews were working on. The temporary office location was still being used as well, since it was a lot more convenient to work out of than the ship at present.

They had gotten more than enough recruits to take the positions on the Mad Badger, and it looked as though they might have to assign the others to other ships. They had gotten over  new recruits, and the Dragon Corps original size had been 45 pairs. They could take, at most, another forty on board, but after that they would have to start redesigning the decks for more space for the dragons.

He got back to the office near the Aviary a few minutes before the container arrived, and after seeing the amount of paperwork and other things waiting to be done, the sudden bang of the crate appearing was an almost welcome distraction. Almost, when he saw that they had gotten yet more reinforcements for the Dragon Corps.

---

'I'd say so, and it seems like they're getting less and less 'able' to make anything work.' Frank sent to Bailey. 'What do you think Zhan?'

"Aye, it is interesting." Zhan replied with a chuckle to Bailey's comment about the Drene-Vah. 'I would say they were trying to make us think they're idiots, though in this case it might be closer to the truth than they would like. The Drene-Vah have never been on New Purgatory for any length of time. From what I've heard they only tried once, and they ended up losing their whole force and a few experienced spies that way. Unusual, since they have a base on almost every other world or station. They must have had to scramble to get anyone here, who knows where from. They have also lost most of their experienced field operatives that could still be used on Mars and the Iceberg station. The Drene-Vah were preparing for something very big, when the rebellion on Mars started, and almost everyone who is good at infiltrating, and there are many, are already in positions they can't leave. They might have just run out of options for who to send. Coming after us is only a small part of their plans, and so far, from what I have seen, they haven't tried that hard. They do indeed seem to be leading us somewhere, and that may be the reason we are still here to talk about it. Shi-Markia is a very dangerous one, I don't know what she is doing here, but we need to be wary. She can do things, mentally, that are very strange, something almost like mind control, and worse.'

[Alexis Voltaire]

Zhan had been about to head back to the aviary for the night when he caught the mental sound of a dragon's call, coming through badly shielded and half garbled. There was an odd sense of panic with it as well, but no sense of where or who it had come from. He waited a moment, but nothing else came. He asked a few others if they had heard it, but no one else had. He wondered for a moment where it had come from, and was startled by a sudden yell that had come, very obviously, from Bailey.

'Kirza! Get back and find the-'

It was suddenly cut off, and Zhan's calls to Bailey and Kirza received no answer. Others had heard this, though no one knew anything more than he did. There was a confusion of mental speech for a moment as everyone tried to find out what had happened, before Frank and Mercourt yelled for quiet.

'Does anyone know where Bailey is?' Frank asked the others.

'No, he left with Kirza somewhere, I don't know where exactly.' One of the troopers responded. No one else could say had seen them since they left or knew where they had gone.

Zhan had been about to respond, when he felt a sudden mental strike and his vision quickly grew dark. Some force held him quiet, even though he tried to send a panicked thought out. He tried to break it, to escape, but he couldn't do anything...

'It is good to see you again,' Shi-Markia hissed. 'It has been long since we have talked.'

He tried to fight, to keep her away, but it was too late. She easily turned his strike against her back at him, laughing.

'You cannot hold me the way you do others.' He sent, desperate and knowing that she could see it.

'No, Zhan. I do not need to.' She said in a soft whisper. 'You are lucky, for now, that Keri-Tais and others have already laid claim to you. We have one of those you call friends.' She laughed. 'You are a fool, Zhan, to choose them and turn traitor to your own. Aye, and we know what he can do. We also know how to keep him where he belongs. All you need to do is tell me what you know.'

He couldn't have stopped her. all he could do was try to keep from screaming until she sent a mental strike that left him out cold and twitching on the floor.

[MWBailey]

Zhan?Zhan! What happened?" Mercourt rushed in and knelt beside the blue-skinned corporal-dragon, lifted teh great, scarred head and put it on a pillow of wadded-up uniform shirts and rolled-up belts.

"Uhhnnn..." was all that he could get out of Zhan ofr a few minutes; the others, mostly recruit-squad leaders and assistant Drill masters (old hands), crowded in to give assistence if possible. Korza, who had come down from teh Badger's business office to deliver some paperwork, said "That is a strike-fever if I ever saw one.

"D-!"

"What?"

"D-! Dreuhnubbuh....aaaaRRRRAAAGGHH ...sorry... Drene-vah.  They are here and have Commander Bailey and Kirza."Zhan told them who it was and what they had said, and at that point, a new vopice spoke up.

"So, Ol' Bailey's done got 'imself into a pickle, huh? Tell me where or a general thoughtline to follow, ands I might be able to help out."

A score and a half heads of both the human and the draconic sort turned to see a figure that had seemingly sprung from legends of trail drives, cowboys-turned-revolutionaries, aerial men-of-war, pirates and privateers of the air, big meteoritic-iron melee knives, and revolvers blazing away under a scorching sun. In short, a Texan, and not just any Texan, either: Mad Jack Pulsifer, supposedly dead after The Battle of The Arroyo (also called The Grass Fight), standing alive and well and... well, only five feet tall, but THERE, in the Aviary, nonetheless.

"Mad Jack Pulsifer? You're supposed to be dead!" One of the recruits who had come with Mr. Rodney Exclaimed.

"Yeah. Well. Where I come from, Bailey's the one who got killed, and I'm a still a vagabond. Go figure..." Jack rested his hand on his cavalry saber, and eyed the fellow who had spoken, with a mixture of amusement and Jaundice.

It was Rodney who broke the silence, which was beginning to feel deadly, by saying, "So, Mr. Pulsifer. I suppose the Beau Rosin is ready to go? Lets us push on, then!"

"Now just hold your horses, Limey boy, all of us wont fit on board. I can only take maybe ten people at most, and the dragons'll have to ride on deck, there's just not that much room inside."

" how about one small, runty dragon to watch your back and attack from the air if need be? " a voice from the back of the throng spoke up.

The crowd parted to reveal a female dragon who seemed to be a work in miniature, standing only six feet tall, and wearing a harness but no saddle, bearing a khukhuri and a yatagan, and a large-bore blaster rifle cut down to a pistol-gripped carbine. "Mingh-Shrighk's my name, Diminutive-Storm if you must hear the translation. I am small, unable to bear any but a tiny rider, but deadly am I, and some would say my reputation is large enough to take up the slack.  I have killed Drene-Vah from the Moon's Dark side to Earth's poles, and I am at your service, Mr. Pulsifer...

"Just a minute," said Rodney; nettled by the 'Limey Boy' comment, he was less friendly, now. "Aren't you, hmm.. a bit young to be Lt. Commander Bailey's contemporary?"

"heyah...well, time travel will do that for you," Jack said matter-of-factly. "Did I hear somebody mention a Miss Sally? I have a question or two for her, if she's still nearby...

[MWBailey]

"You know Miss Sally, do you,?" Malcolm Rodney was more than slightly suspicious and not just a little jealous; Sally tended to have that effect on the opposite gender, except in the case of someone like Jack, who absolutely hated being ruled over by anyone, especially a pointy-eared blonde battleaxe, no matter how cute she might be*.

"Nobody knows Miss Sally as well as a certain Malcolm Wendell Brantley," Jack responded. "I wouldn't be surprised if the two got hitched someday." He paused, and decided to take the high road if the Cockney Machismo Juggernaut would let him. "Now, as to the rescue party --!"

BUt i wasnot to be, Jack found, as the errant schoolboy in the Number two man of the HMSS Black Suits suddenly let his anger slip loose, and aimed a punch that would fell an ox straight at Jack's lantern jaw. it glanced off when jack ducked, and Jack returned a right hook that knocked Rodney sideways, and then the fight was on in earnest, ending only when Frank pulled his revolver and fired four shots into the turf between the two -- and none too soon, as in the aftermath, Rodney made a show of sheathing a long, thin, wicked-looking dagger back into teh lining of his suit coat, and Jack's saber scraped its way back into its scabbard, from which it was already half-drawn...

Frank told them to calm themselves, not very calmly himself; fighting to control his own anger, He asked Zhan if the late fight, over basically nothing, (and having no really legitimate source of provocation), were the sort of thing the mind-controlling Drene-vah female would do...



------------------------------------
*Not exactly the posterboy for Egalitarian Weekly, is he?

[Alexis Voltaire]

"If you two are going to kill each other, I don't care." Frank said angrily, holstering his revolver. "It'll be one less problem I have worry about. but if you're so intent on helping, either act civil or find somewhere else to finish each other off. We don't have time to waste on your damn bickering right now."

'Could that have been the Drene-Vah?' Frank sent to Zhan. 'You said she can control minds.'

'It is possible,' Zhan replied. 'She can do it long-range, but not to a great degree, unless she already has a mental hold on someone.'

Zhan had gotten to his feet and come out to the aviary field. He was still shivering a bit, and trying not to show it, but he looked more than shaken. He cast a dark look at Jack and Rodney, and said out loud enough for them to hear. "Though she would need little enough control, with the way they act already."

Jack returned his glare, but neither him or Rodney said anything, at least not loud enough for the rest to hear.

"Now before we go rushing off, where is it were supposed to start looking? It's a big rock, and there are lots of places for the Drene-Vah to be holed up." Frank said, a bit more calm but not much. "Is there anything you got about where they might be Zhan?"

"No, they didn't let anything through about the location. Even if they did I wouldn't trust it. But the only place I can think of is Far Rimrock. They got here on a ship, they can't anchor it to the outside or it'd be spotted, and they wouldn't be able to dock it anywhere else. They wouldn't be likely to go far from it, since they might have to get out in a hurry. The tunnels in Far Rimrock are sealed, and more importantly no one checks them regularly. If that's where they are they're probably using the ship as a base of operations, and it would mean they wouldn't have to find another well-hidden, well accessible spot. It's a very good setup, from the standpoint of what they need. That's what I would do, if I were planning this."

"Far Rimrock's tunnels go on for miles, where would you suggest we start?" Rodney said, sounding a bit doubtful.

"The closest to the airlocks, and working in.' Zhan replied. "They'll probably want to be as close as they can to an escape without being obvious. So they would probably chose one of the short branching tunnels near the exits."

"Well that narrows it down some." Frank said, and then sent to the new recruits 'Is there anyone from the base here that knows the tunnels in Far Rimrock?' It was unlikely that anyone did, but it would make it a lot easier if they had someone.

'I know them a bit.' Zhi-Selkio sent back with a slight yawn. 'Worked there a year once. I'll be down in a minute.'

It was decided after some more talk and planning that Jack and the Beau Rosin would go in search of the Drene-Vah ship starting at one end of Far Rimrock, along with Mingh-Shrighk, Zhi-Selkio, a few of the more experienced troopers, and Mercourt, to keep relative peace, if possible, between Jack and Rodney. Frank, Zhan, and Shi-iri would go with Colleen and Korza and a some of the other experienced troopers, and start at the other end of the tunnels. They would be able to go about half as fast as the Beau Rosin, using the small electric-powered transports that ran on the tracks inside the tunnels. They would start on the outermost section, and if they hadn't found anything by the time they met the Beau Rosin, they'd both move one section in and start searching again.

Another force, mostly the new recruits, would wait at the exits of the tunnels, similar to what they had done on Iceberg, to make sure the Drene-Vah didn't sneak out the back way.

Everyone was soon hurrying to get ready and into position, and Frank stopped Zhan for a moment before he headed back to the aviary to get ready.

'What happened, Zhan?' He asked in a concerned tone.

Zhan turned his head and avoided his gaze, showing no particular expression.

'Zhan, if she can do something like that long-range and without warning, we need to know.'

'She can't.' Zhan replied, in an odd tone. He stared quietly into nothingness for a moment. 'She can't unless she already knows them. Has done it before, to them. Back in the Drene-Vah we called it mind-ripping. It... Use it to force information, read memories directly. Fighting makes it worse, it's like throwing yourself on a blade, and you can't help doing it. The Drene-Vah use it because according to tribal law, they cannot physically harm another member of the tribe.' He trembled slightly, and half-bared his teeth almost involuntarily.

'I'm... sorry, Zhan, ... I didn't know.' Frank sent, a bit at a loss for what to say.

'It is all right.' Zhan replied, turning to meet his eyes. 'You do now,' He said softly. 'I hope that you never learn more.'

[MWBailey]

Bailey and Kirza sat aboard a small freighter squirreled away deep within one of the Far Rimrock storage tunnels. they sensed that they were not aboard the Drene-vah operatives' ship, since this vessel did not carry the scent of draconic habitation (mainly sweat and dander, but also the pheromonal airborne residues which, like their human counterparts, tended to adhere to the inner surfaces of life support and air handling apparatus and duct-work, thus giving each ship its own unique "pomade," so to speak.

This freighter smelled, ever so faintly, of bovine and human byproducts. It also smelled faintly of ozone and something else, a sort of psychic scent that hung just on the edge of awareness, tangible yet not, like a suggestion of lightning and fire just behind a nearby rock, unseen but solidly there. iT was centered mainlky around the an odd, star-like symbol scratched into the specially-rusted finish of a nearby bulkhead, and surrounded by Old Draconic symbols. That was what Kirza called them at least, but Bailey also knew them as  Deep Reach Syllabary Syntax, and was able to read them. It was, in essence, a "locking" or "restraining" spell, although calling it a 'spell' was perhaps a bit far-fetched; the words merely created a psionic link with a shield generator somewhere on board and cut off the recipient from everything outside and everything outside from whatever lay inside. Bailey walked over and laid his hand on the "Star of India' symbol. It felt warmer than the surrounding metal, and a spark jumped from his hand to the surfaced just as he muttered an old poetic quotation that the old one in teh Nepali mountains had taught him. There was an audible *POP*!...And suddenly all of teh draconic voices came back, and a voice very like one he had not heard for nearly thirty years.

"Hello, Jack, you magnificent Bastard!"

"Bailey?!" Mad Jack's voice sounded incredulous -- and far too young."So you really can hear 'em too!"

[MWBailey]

the conversations continued as the Beau Rosin, with her new envelope and cavorite apparatus installed, as well as the aether propeller, materialized in the Aviary, causing several people to leap away from the spot in surprise and a certain amount of fear and caution.Mr. Rodney stared at the vessel in what appeared to be a mixture of shock, anger, and no small amount of suspicion.

"If you weren't named by Miss Sally as a "causal node" (whatever 'at is) and your ship beside, I'd clap ya in irons and drag ya off to our catacombs forever! You're THAT Jack Pulsifer, ain't ye? MAD Jack Pulsifer, the toime travellin' meddler! an' a bloody PIRATE!"

"Obviously, the feller in this world who used ta be me was a damn sight worse than I've ever been," Jack said, equably; he'd run up against this same kind of prejudice (for that's what it was, after all, pre-judging one person's character based on another person's actions) before. "I've never been a pirate; I was a pirate hunter, as a matter of fact, and with my ol' buddy Dreyfuss and his ward Irene, and their airship the St. Elmo, we destroyed the entire Pirate fleet of the Former Rear Admiral Tzeda after Dreyf and Irene rescued a peer's kidnapped son from same. if it hadn't been for a freak storm shuntin' me off to a different universe (for so I 'd have to say this one must be), I'd still be there watchin' their back.
-------------------------------------------------
Bailey and Shih-ki-Kirza managed to finally find their way out of the old freighter, but it was a bit of a challenge. Th4e Drene-vah had left many inscriptions behind, and some were devilishly difficult to decipher and neu6tralize. some of them required esoteric knowledge, others a good understanding of circuits and electricity.

The inscriptions were done , as mentioned before, in the old draconic version of Deep Reach syntactical script; constructed, used, and derived from much the same source as modern devanagari, it shared that alphabetic system's use of a connecting overhead line, except that the line extended through the entire inscription and did not stop at the ends of words or even sentences, but rather at graphical representations of  what looked (and functioned) like decision gateways such as some early datascopes used in their programming, but the whole acted as a circuit or series of circuits.

Thus, when Bailey got a bright idea and used his khukhuri to punch a hole in a bulkhead, across several such lines, the light with which that particular circuit was glowing abruptly went out -- to be replaced by a series of sharp reports, each louder than the one preceding, until whole wall panels were exploding into sparks and flames. Abruptly, the main hatchway was revealed amid the acrid smoke and ozone, and they sprinted for the exit thus revealed. Then, Bailey decided it was moot whether they died there or "in mid-flit," so to speak, and he grabbed Kirza's claw, and with no further preamble, flitted to the tunnel outside of the ship, taking note that Kirza was still holding hard onto his hand, and then flitting again a hundred yards away-- just as the freighter's inner hold exploded with a deafening roar the sound echoing through the tunnels all around. The Beau Rosin suddenly appeared before them, three rings of luminescence rotating in different directions around her, and then it set down, the rings vanished, and Jack's and Rodney's voices could be heard calling them to climb aboard, and hurry up...

[Alexis Voltaire]

The complicated diagram was drawn on the smooth dark floor in hundreds of curling lines of script, snaking together like a weaving done by a madman. It was filled with strange markings and connected just to one side of the center with a precisely drawn starlike symbol that reached nearly five feet across.

In the middle of the diagram and inside a clear and well-warded space, stood Shi-Markia.

'This is dangerous, we've never tried something this complicated before.' Zhi-Vah-Tahl said, a bit apprehensive.

'I know what I am doing. The link is strong, and I will have no trouble finding Zhan.'

'What about the disruption? You said-'

'It will not matter. It was a mistake on your part, I have corrected it.' Shi-Markia growled, pointing to a line that had been re-marked. Zhi-Vah-Tahl stood quietly a moment, and then left the room as fast as he respectfully could. Shi-Markia hissed and turned to the drawing on the floor. She slowly drew the final line with a large piece of soft white stone, and connected the two parts of the diagram. There was a loud hum that quickly built to a high-pitched whine, and she looked to the small round symbols near the edges of the diagram. All sixteen of them began to shine brightly, and soon filled the chamber with a green glow. the other lines and scripted words lit in brilliant white and blue and orange, and strange smoke with the luminescence of fire sprang up from five symbols on the very edge of the round diagram. Shi-Markia placed her foreclaws on two snakelike symbols drawn in front of her, and began chanting as the power increased a hundredfold around her, forcing her to close her eyes from the brightness... wind or some other force swirled in a hurricane vortex, and electricity prickled in the air, cracking and releasing in small bright flashes and on symbols in the diagram. This was stretching the power symbol to it's very limits, or the limits that none dared to go beyond. The energy gathered and hung on the edge of collapsing, she could feel the balance point, perfectly still and centered on a razor's edge... a single mistake and it would come crashing down with deadly force. She caught, right on the edge of hearing, Zhi-Vah-Tahl's voice and that of another.

'They've broken the binding, now what do we do?'

'Wait and be quiet, we are trying to do something!'

'But-' it was suddenly lost, and only an instant of shock and fire followed.

Even then, her hold didn't waver, her concentration kept it stable, one needle balanced on the point of another. She chanted the final words, and the energy reached perfect pitch, and hung, almost resonating for a moment like a harpstring. The wavering quickened, faster and finer until it was... gone...

'Te-ar-re Vaziritac dan-Vah!'

There was a crack like thunder, and the floor beneath her splintered and split... the power didn't collapse, or fade, or even speed away. It was simply gone, leaving behind the feeling like a void had been made, and a type of normal-level energy oozed in to fill it.

The light quickly dimmed and was gone. She moved her claws from the hot symbols on the floor and opened her eyes, blinking from the smoke.

But there was something wrong, and it became more apparent as she waited and tracked it. The connection was a little off, not by much, it wouldn't be moved by more than a few feet, but then it suddenly turned aside and felt as though it had slammed into a wall. She tried to pick it up again, even the smallest thread, but it was broken. Nothing remained, and she couldn't even locate it...

[Alexis Voltaire]

Frank was there as the Beau Rosin departed with a bright flash-the ground and anything solid disappeared from around and underneath him, leaving inky nothingness without even gravity-blackness that suddenly and without any apparent warning became so shockingly cold it was like icy water-there was nothingness so momentary it didn't seem to-

There was an almost electrical crack that sounded remarkably like a plasma cannon firing in a very confined space, followed by a strange reverberating metallic hum that faded after a few seconds. Gravity had returned at some point during that time, and Frank and Zhan fell flat on the floor a short distance apart.

'What the... where are we?' Frank asked, a bit dazed from the sudden... whatever it was that had happened.

'How should I know?' Zhan sent back with a groan.

Frank got to his feet, noticing that the floor under his hands was party uneven, deeply cut with curling lines and written words. They both looked around without talking for some time, shivering a bit from the cold, but the feeling of it was fading quickly. The walls of the room that they were in were fairly close, the ceiling was maybe thirty feet above, and the room appeared to be exactly as wide and half again as long. It was lit by... odd shining blue symbols, he realized, looking up. Spiral marks that gave off just enough dusky light to illuminate the whole room, and to be able to make out the symbols carved deep into the solid iridium. The entire room was filled, even the ceiling and floor, with snaking and intertwining lines, all flowing in curves with only a few straight lines. Most seemed to be connected to the deep channel that ran across the ceiling, down the far wall, and split in two around an almost perfectly square entrance to a hallway. Zhan started to trace a line of finely cut script on the floor, and gave up after a few minutes. Zhan shook his head, and regretted doing it half a second later. He was starting to get what would probably turn into a very bad headache from Shi-Markia's strikes.

"I'm not sure where we are. These symbols, they are old draconic... but I can't even read most of them. They're a very stylized form of it, if they aren't Metezoin."

'Shi-iri? Bailey?' Frank sent, and tried to reach any of the others, but received no answer.

"This place has got some sort of... I don't know." Zhan said after a few moments of silence. "It's like a barrier, but... from what I can make out, it's blocking everything, not just thoughts." He looked at the writing on the floor again. "It's even got some sort of warding on the physical here, it's like a barrier to prevent people tunneling into this place, or even finding it."

"Great, that's just great. How did we get here then?"

"I don't know. I think... something must have brought us here, but what it was... Some sort of transport, maybe, like what Bailey can do. But I'm not even sure how it was possible for use to get past this." Zhan ran a claw along a curling line of writing. "This place must be as old as that broken piece of rock they found, if not older."

Frank looked up to the bright blue spirals on the ceiling and upper walls. The light seemed to have grown a tiny bit brighter.

"What do those run off of then?"

Zhan looked up at them. Each of them was connected by one of the thick grooves to the wide channel on the ceiling. But that was just a carving, it wasn't...

"I have no idea."

"Well, we might as well try that hallway, maybe there's a normal way out of here."

Zhan ran a claw back and forth over the lines, muttering to himself, and then turned and followed Frank past the oddly-shaped entrance. The walls of the hallway were straight as a ruler edge and perfectly flat, and were leaned inward just slightly, so that the ceiling was about a foot narrower than the floor on each side. The hallway was lit by small spirals on both sides about every six feet, connecting to a deep groove that ran halfway up the wall and down it's length. The spirals, as they had done back in the room, spread an even glow that left no lighter or darker areas, and cast no shadows whatsoever.

The floor was polished mirror-smooth, and the low blue light gave the disconcerting effect that they were walking through shallow water that was just about to get deeper. The hallway continued for about a hundred yards, before it turned right and unexpectedly came into another, smaller room. This room was only about ten feet high and twenty or so long, and covered with similar spiraling designs, as well as stylized carvings of what looked like plants and animals. There was a door, or what looked like one, but it was made of iridium like the walls, and perfectly smooth and flat with no apparent way to open it.

[MWBailey]

When Pulsifer and Rodney boarded the Beau Rosin, it was not without a bit of tripping-up and other sophomoric monkeyshines, and they both nearly pulled steel on each other again, but then Shingh and five pairs of troopers came aboard, and the two more experienced travellers gave way and entered the forward portion of the cabin , where Jack started the diesel engine.

"The blazes is that racket!?" Rodney said, looking around apprehensively, "and that stink?"

"That's the diesel engine. Surely you people have diesels here? Used to use an alky-hol one-lunger, but I switched over to this," he cocked his thumb over his left shoulder, " back about a year ago. It's loud an' smelly as all hell, but it sure does deliver a lot more power for a lot less weight than a steam powerplant.They're all still experimental, of course, and the fuel is hard to come by out in a place like this, but I've got enough to last awhile and then some."

Rodney thought about the petrol-motor enthusiasts he'd seen in Applegate Green one Sunday years ago, showcasing their inventions and competing to see who could use a flywheel-and-winch to pull a 400-lb. tree trunk - an old, old hemlock that had been brought down in a storm - down from the woods above the town and into the market, without moving the engine and winch more than once. surprisingly powerful for their diminutive size, he had to admit. The winner had been an older fellow with a four-cylinder behemoth that had sounded, now that he thought about it, a lot like the one rumble-clattering away beneath the wheelhouse-cabin's floorboards. 'Ow many cylinders does it 'ave, then?" Rodney said, a little more respect entering his voice.

"Four," Jack responded, and added, "plus gearing to multiply RPM a hundredfold." he said proudly.

"But that's not the impressive bit, Jack said, and gestured to an oddly-parallellogram-ish varnished walnut box on which there seemed to be hung every kind or gearshift, electrical connection, and electrical switch imaginable, and an equally-bewildering array of lights, as well as a weird assemblage of electrodes, pointers, and gimballs on the very top of the monstrosity. "The Chronojammer, augmented with Chronojumper technology. If it can be programmed in, we can go anywhere in Time and space, and leave no damage in the timestream."

The others came in, then, and Jack left the controls to usher them in, and show two of the pairs below the deck and into the hold/engine compartment below. "Do NOT touch the engine or anything connected to it!" he warned, "It's not what you think, and no, you don't know how it works, either!"

He came back up the hatchway, and closed the trapdoor, then crossed to the wheel. Reaching to a toggle lever on the banister that ran the length of the three-window piloting windshield, he yanked it downward, and and the first, outer, set of 3 nested gimballs on the top of the Chronojammer box began to whirl as arcs of greenish energy played along its limb and contacted the other circles. those who looked out the portholes saw a single white-green circle of light suddenly appear and begin to rotate like the outermost gimball, the ship being the focus of its spin.the same for each of the other two gimball circles, each of which began to spin as well in a different direction, even as the outermost then began to also rotate along its edge, meshing with a gear train built into the pedestal upon which the whole rested; at that point, a third ring appeared and spun in a completely different direction from the first two, and there was a loud BANG! that sounded very much like one of teh more explosively-operating energy weapons going off. Jack jumped, consulted his instruments, and muttered, "That shouldn't have happened! It never did that before!"

Within the gimballs, a very tiny representation as of the Beau Rosin appeared, suddenly surrounded on all sides by what looked like graphical representations of flames, and two tiny figures zooming off to Port and disappearing from the scene. Jack shook his head, but then put a copper cap with electrodes running from it to the chronojammer device on his head, and started murmuring "Bailey...Bailey...Bailey..." The scene outside the ship went from vermillion flames and stars to swirling , psychedelic colors that seemed just slightly wrong,... and it got worse from there, until finally they broke away from whatever they were travelling through, and POP!ped out into an iridium-walled tunnel nearby to an old Iron-hulled aether-freighter -- which promptly blew up, the light from the explosion revealing Bailey and Kirza running away from the exploding ship.

"Yep, that's ol' Bailey, all right," Jack said, chuckling, "always blowin' somethin' ta kingdom come..." He joined Rodney and the others in calling Bailey and his companion to the Beau Rosin and went out to help them aboard...

[MWBailey]

Just as Bailey and Kirza climbed aboard the Beau Rosin, there came the sharp CRACK of a deck gun and the tunnel reverberated with that and with the resounding BOOMMM of the shell exploding against the far tunnel wall.

A stentorian voice announced over a loudspeaker, loudly echoing through the tunnel,
BY THE AUTHORITY OF SHERIFF MORRISON AND THE COUNCIL OF NEW PURGATORY, YOU ARE CHARGED TO LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS

YOU WILL CEASE AND DESIST ALL ACTIVITY! LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS AND ALLOW YOUR VESSEL TO BE BOARDED!

The Beau Rosin was already back in its first-ring stage of the Travelling Field; to turn it off now, so soon after switching the chronojammer back on, would cause a circuit to overload that would in turn cause and explosion that could potentially (depending upon the degree of the presence of free Aether) blast Far Rimrock and its tunnels off of New Purgatrory and endanger the rest of the asteroid as well. Jack tried to explain this by loudspeaker, but the authorities on the Enforcer ship responded by threatening to destroy the Beau Rosin, then opened up with a full plasma broadside. teh first-ring field, which had put the Beau out of phase with the rest of New Purgatory, simply let the plasma beams splash against it, the beams having no other effect, as the Beau  was no longer completely in the same dimension as the Enforcer ship. They could still converse, however, and the Beau's weapons could still fire into the Enforcers' dimension; Jack fired an answering burst from teh Gatling gun, and then said ove rhis own loudspeaker,

ARE YA WILLIN[' TO LISTEN NOW? I CAN'T JUST TURN OFF THE FIELD THAT YOU JUST WITNESSED; THE SHIP'LL BLOW UP AND TAKE FAR RIMROCK WITH IT IF I TRY TO DO SO. WE ARE PURSUING A GROUP OF DRENE-VAH WHO HAVE INFILTRATED THIS STATION AND HAVE APPARENTLY TAKEN TWO OF OUR PEOPLE; TWO OTHERS'VE JUST BEEN RESCUED FROM SAME. WE WILL ACCEPT ASSISTANCE. WHAT IS YOUR ANSWER?

[Alexis Voltaire]

"There's probably some way of opening that door that isn't easy to see." Zhan said, moving closer to read the inscriptions around it.

"There had better be." Frank said darkly.

Zhan walked from the doorway to a squared off panel of what looked like more normal horizontal writing beside it. Most of this was easier to read, and seemed to have been written in a different style, and possibly at a later time than the wall-carvings. It was very similar, in fact, to the writing on the broken stone.

" 'Follow as shown by serpent',... odd gap" Zhan muttered. " 'is the one whose brother holds the storm, and bears the rayed sun and star. Who knows this secret enters.' "

Zhan looked at the doorway again, and saw that there were two carved cobras on either side. The one on the left was wrapped around a stylized cloud and jagged lightning bolt, and to the right the other was coiled around a sun disk with wavy lines radiating from it. Both of them had what looked like activators of some sort, in the middle of the storm and the sun disk was the same 'Star of India' symbol he had seen on the back of the stone.

"I think it's here, not much of a riddle though, at least not to someone who could read this." He read what was written out loud. "I think it's that snake with the sun-disk, that's a symbol I saw on the broken stone with the writing..." He paused, and muttered. "I wonder though, this inscription does seem familiar..." He hadn't read it before, that he knew of, and it wasn't on the parts of the stone he'd translated, but it was like something he'd heard lately... heard, like those voices...! He scanned over the inscription again, and it became obvious. The gap was for a missing word, not the end of a line. He looked over to the doorway again, and saw that Frank had moved over to the doorway toward the snake with the sun-disk.

"No, wait it's the-!" Zhan started to say. There was a loud snap and a bright green spark jumped from the star symbol and across almost a foot of air to Frank's outstretched hand. He yelled and pulled it back quickly, moving well away from the wall and swearing under his breath.

"Are you alright!?"

"Yeah... it just surprised me, mostly," Frank said, rubbing a mark on the back of his hand. "Didn't really do anything."

"Yes it did, let me see that." Zhan said worriedly. "This isn't at all normal energy here, it might be anything."

Zhan took Frank's hand lightly in one claw, looking closely at an odd green line that ran along the back and down his wrist. "Looks like just a mark that spark left," Frank said. "it's not even a burn, doesn't..." He stopped as he pulled up his sleeve and was shocked to see that the snaking line ran all the way up to the mark inked on his upper arm. It looked almost as if the current, if it could be called that, had grounded itself on the symbol.  It was shaped like a circle with two sideways V's inside it that almost met at the center, and underneath the circle was a line ending in a downward pointing arrow, with the two lines of the arrowhead spiraled inward at the ends.

"Where did you get that?" Zhan asked, a bit surprised.

"Oh, that, picked it up in the south pacific somewhere." Frank said, and muttered. "I don't know how, exactly, in fact I don't remember..."

"That's odd. It's a warding glyph, or it looks very much like one." Zhan said. "I've seen that symbol before, but I can't recall where. Looks like it stopped that line from going any farther, otherwise who knows what would have happened."

"Well, it doesn't seem to have done much of anything." Frank said, running a hand over the line. It felt numb and tingled slightly, but seemed to be fading. "What were you saying about this writing here?"

"It reads 'Follow as shown by serpent', and there's a gap there, but I'm almost sure it's 'serpent eyes'. It reads exactly like what one of those strange voices said."

"It does sound like that, and it said 'who knows the secret enters', must be more of a riddle that it appears." Frank said, with an odd realization that neither of them had heard any of the voices for some time. "I wonder.. we haven't heard any of them for a while, 'but then we haven't hardly had time to think lately..."

"I don't know, this looks very much like what was written on that stone, the way it's written, I mean." Zhan said, and scanned over the lines. "It might even have been directions, of a sort, for this place... I did see one thing written there that was the same as one we heard, 'First-light, living-force, follow the light of the first', and it was repeated, in fragments. Doesn't make any more sense now, really, but there are others things that do now. There was one mostly intact line that read ' 'Apart', or 'separated', as 'outer' or 'void', take... to depths of by the hall lost...' "

Zhan looked up at the cobras again, and saw that their heads were raised slightly, and that the one with the sun disk appeared to be looking at a smaller star about two feet away, almost invisible in this light since it was carved very lightly. He moved over and placed one claw on it tentatively, and the star grew slightly warmer. Nothing else happened for a few moments, and he was about to move away, when there was the quiet sound of a catch releasing, and the door suddenly slid into the floor and hit the bottom of the space underneath it with a heavy thud. Beyond it was another long hallway, lit similarly to the first, with the two grooves and spirals running along both sides. They followed it, and after about a dozen yards, the floor began to have a gradual downward slope. it wasn't much, but it made it somewhat treacherous since the floor was so slick. The level of the ceiling remained the same, and it gradually raised higher and higher above them as they went down. The groove in either wall ran straight for a few yards, and then followed the downward incline, still lit by spirals, although they were spaced out farther now. There was no change in the evenness of the light, but it was a bit dimmer. The air became colder and a bit damp. After nearly a hundred yards on the slope, with the cieling nearly thirty feet above them, the floor leveled out and opened into another room. This one had, of all things, two deep pools on both sides that appeared to be filled with dark mirror-surfaced water, although it was impossible to see down into them. This room was oddly bare of any carvings, and the grooves ran down into the pool at one end of the room, and came up again at the other. The path that ran in between the square walled pools was only as wide as the hallway, and ended in another after about thirty feet. Above this hallway entrance was the only other thing carved into the walls.

"That's the door inscription I read on the stone, Irasif said-luhk rasrit, Xieix, tirsar khuldias fisari " Zhan said. "I can't make out all of the words, but I think it says 'speak who-enters watchful, Guarding, something chamber of ages', and something about a word to pass the guarding, or guardian, the way it's put together. We should be careful."

Frank nodded, again regretting that he hadn't been holding on to his rifle when they'd been taken here. It was still on the Beau Rosin, wherever she was.

The hallway ran a short distance, barely light enough to see by, and every so often it made a 45 degree left or right turn. On one of the longer stretches, the two grooves branched out into a knotted design that intertwined with two identical and very lifelike carvings of creatures that appeared to be huge mechanical insects.

On the third turn, and about fifty yards past the carvings, they came unexpectedly upon what seemed to have been the scene of a fight several years ago. There were ricochet and starburst marks on the walls and ceiling, and one of the spirals had been damaged and gone dark. Twisted pieces of metal were scattered across the floor, and what appeared to be the packs and gear from an exploring expedition. Farther along the hallway was a bent and broken metal framework, with all sizes of gears and shafts showing through the missing parts. It seemed as though they had found the guardian, or what was left of it, assuming there was only one. It looked more fearsome than the carving had, even it's ruined state.

Frank could only guess that they had found what might have happened to the artifact hunters the storekeeper had mentioned. They had apparently left all or most of their gear here and left in a hurry, after a fight with the 'guardian'. That meant that there was both an exit out of this place, and probably another one of the giant mechanical insects here somewhere. A quick search found no maps or anything else of any use, but as they started down the hall again Frank almost did a double-take when he saw something on the floor next to the metal frame. He stopped and picked it up, it was a rifle exactly identical his own, except that the sling was slightly different, since it had also been added later, and there were a few deep scratches on the stock and some dents on the age-dulled brass scope.

They both stood there in silence for a moment, a bit thunderstruck.

"I heard the storekeeper down at the range say he'd seen this before," Frank said slowly. "when some people came here looking for old artifacts, and he never saw them again... I guess we found what happened to them."

He opened the back and took out the old and probably by now depleted power cell, which fortunately didn't seem to have corroded at the terminals, and replaced it with another from the pouch on his belt. Luckily enough he had that with him, at least. He turned the knob on the action up a small amount, and the rifle started humming, but it was higher-pitched than it should be, and it sounded as though it was out of balance. He quickly turned it the knob down again as the vibrations that ran through the stock started to get worse.

"Sounds like the oscillator's been damaged or out of tune," Frank said. "it'd be dangerous to use it the way it is."

"Do you think it can it be fixed?"

"Probably, but it would need to be taken apart almost all the way just to get to the oscillator assembly, and that might need more than just rebalancing."

After about forty feet and several more turns the hallway opened onto a huge room. The floor below the landing they stood on was more than twenty feet down, and the ceiling was about twice as high above them. The room was much wider than it was long, only thirty feet to the far wall and about a hundred feet on each side. There were two ramps running down to the floor, parallel to the wall that the hallway opened from. There was a long ledge higher up on the far wall, perhaps forty feet above the floor. This room was covered with carvings, both writing and lighted spirals, and two huge star symbols perhaps twenty feet across on the ceiling that the two grooves from the hallway walls connected to. The room was empty, except for a raised platform in the very center, with a small object standing on it.

They went down the lefthand ramp and over to the raised platform. It was about four feet high, and as they approached they could see that the pointed object on it looked very familiar. It was made of a solid piece of metal, and in the shape of a thick disk about six inches across, with four thin points ending in spikes, and four wider points in between them. The middle was open, and inside it was a geometric pattern in thin interconnecting metal. It looked exactly like the Star of India carvings they had seen made into a three dimensional symbol, or rather the carvings were a flat representation of this one.

Frank lifted it up out of the stand fashioned into the platform that one of the points was set in. It felt heavy in his hand, and slightly warm. It became warmer as he held it, and the thin geometric lines began to glow with blue light. It was almost hypnotic, watching the wavering light flow from line to line and begin to spread and grew brighter...

"Wait, listen." Zhan said, and Frank looked away. There was a faint voice, similar to what they had heard before, and as he listened it grew louder.

"I don't even understand a lot of it." Zhan said after a few minutes and a pause in the words. "Something about Chamber of Ages, and the... link? A link to the energy of a whole world, must be that symbol."

Zhan listened as the voice came again. "A pathway, directions... discovered, something foretold, those have... something, maybe rightful, keeping... This isn't clear enough to get anything from."

The voice faded after a while, and then a new one spoke, more clearly this time.

"It was made as clear as it could be" Zhan translated, but they could both tell that the tone of the voice had changed.

Shi-Markia's voice came as she stepped over to the edge of the ledge above them, along with Zhi-Vah-Tahl and another dragon that Zhan vaugly recognized, both of them holding heavy plasma rifles that hummed ominously.

'Now give me that Star.'

[Alexis Voltaire]

'I told you it would work,' Shi-Markia sent to Zhi-Vah-Tahl. 'It is much easier to do when you want to go there, though you made it difficult enough.' Zhi-Vah-Tahl shivered and glared, but said nothing.

Shi-Markia came down lightly to the floor with a few quick wingbeats, and Zhi-Vah-Tahl and the other followed, keeping their plasma rifles aimed at Frank and Zhan.

Zhan thought quickly about what Shi-Markia had said before, that they wanted him alive... 'I don't think they'll want to damage that star.' He sent. 'I might be able-'

'I can guess what you are thinking, Zhan,' Shi-Markia hissed. 'but I can always tell Keri-Tais and Zhi-ni-Dreku that you couldn't be brought back alive.' She turned her eyes to Frank, noticing the rifle. 'In fact, I see no reason to keep either of you alive, if you don't do what I ask. The weapon and the star, now.'

Frank unslung the rifle, glaring at Shi-Markia. They obviously didn't know that he hadn't brought it with him.

Zhan looked toward him out of the corner of his eye. 'It won't work,' He sent shielded. 'but can they get a design off of it?'

'If they try to even turn it on, there won't be anything left to get a design from.'

'Very good.' Shi-Markia laughed, but then looked distracted for a moment, as if she was listening to something shielded. Without warning she sent a strike that he didn't have time to block, and he found himself on the floor a moment later, not sure what had happened. Shi-Markia had grabbed the star before he could do anything, and picked up the rifle.

'You fools never learn.'

There was a bang like thunder and a bright flash, and the three dragons were gone.

The lights began to fade, slowly at first, and then faster until they all winked out in unison, leaving absolute darkness. But something else was gone now too...

'-I told you! I can't get either of them!' Shi-iri's voice came.

'Shi-iri?'

'Frank! Where are you? Is Zhan there?'

'Zhan's here. We're in some sort of ancient place, hallways and rooms cut into the iridium, looks like Metezoin, Zhan said. I have no idea where it is, though.'

[MWBailey]

Back In the Storage Tunnels of Far Rimrock:
The exchange of loudspeaker broadcasts continued for a time, then they finally agreed to meet in the middle of the tunnel, under the guns of both ships.

"So, they were taken by these Drene-Vah interlopers?" Sherriff Morrison himself had been on board the Enforcer cutter Thule's Gate, and was now conducting the Enforcers' end of the "Parlay."

"That's the case in our situation," Bailey said, Kirza sending "Yes, and we are still trying to contact our commanding officer and our metezoin interpreter... She stopped, realizing that Morrison was headblind as a stone, and repeated the same out loud in English.

Morrison stopped and thought. He remembered the stories about the last time the Drene-vah made an incursion into New Purgatory, or tried to do so; they had tried to retain a foothold, a bridgehead,  but were in the end driven out with heavy losses, basically massacred after their shaman-scientists were killed off. Many losses had been suffered on the New Purgatory side as well. A repeat of that debacle was not a pleasant possibility; best to snuff it out before it could get that bad, again...

"Alright. You have our cooperation, but I'll warn ye, You especially, 'Mad Jack,' whether ye be the one who was thought dead, OR another from another dimension, if you're playin' me false, or if ye ever play me false, I'll have yer 'ead on a platter!"

"Sounds fair," said Jack, "and right back at ya." They both spat into their palms, and slapped hands and shook.

"well, now, how can we help? we can't follow you on Thule's...

"I can take two deputies and a portable gun, in addition to the current passenger load, and my ship's weapon complement," said Jack.

"Done! as long as I'm one of 'em," Morrison said.

Mingh-Shrighk said, "Then let us begin our hunt, my friends. Good Hunting to us all."

Then Mingh Sent, when she felt the fleeting presence in the overmind of her lifelong enemy Shi Markia, Do you hear me, mind-blaster? It was I who mind-blasted to death your Mentor and battled all his Drene-vah sorceror brethren to their own deaths. Bloody was that afternoon, I often relish it. Soon, it will be your turn. Mingh-Shrighk remembered, then, The body of her younger sister. Dreadfully, terrifyingly still and unresponsive in her sleeping place. She sent again, I hunt THEE, child-killer! Then she put up her own blocks, shrugging off strikes that would have destroyed most others. My apologies, child-murderer, but you do not know me that well, yet. But I do know thy presence... She sent a strike that was not as powerful as the one that had killed the Mentor, but which still elicited a cry of anguish both telepathic and physical from the Drene-vah sorceress. Wait for it, Shi-Markia. My blades thirst for thy blood. Soon, we will do battle in person!
--------------------------------------------------
Frank, Bailey sent, stay where you are and keep sending; we will come to you. Captain Pulsifer assures us he can get his ship into wherever you happen to be...

It was not long before a weird whirring noise filled the cavernous room where Frank and Zhan waited, and then the outline and finally the entire substance of the Beau Rosin materialized, one light-ring remaining and spinning in place around the ship. It was rather a weird moment, since the room was quite obviously too small to contain the ship's relatively huge bulk -- and yet, there it was!

A voice came over what must have been a loudspeaker, telling them to remain calm and where they were. 'I have ta make a tunnel in th' field so you kin board, gentlemen, " Jack broadcasted.

Before long, a tube of sorts, composed apparently of the same energy that comprised the ring around the ship, extended from the sphere of force, and then the outer end of it flickered and cleared away. "Please walk through the tube and climb aboard, gentlemen," Jack said through the loudspeaker, as the mechanical boarding ramp unfolded itself over the railing of the deck, and Shi-Iri climbed out from the cabin and waved to him, "and come inside the cabin. Time's of th' essence, as my buddy Dreyf'd say..."

Jack was distracted by three dots that seemed to move away from the tiny shape of the Beau Rosin in the green energy-picture inside the gimballs of the "scan-tank" as Brantley had called the device.

HE decided to try a trick he had recently thought of using the sighting apparatus of the scan tank, relative to the direction that the ship's side seemed to be facing in the energy-picture, and slowly manipulated the controls until the broadside of the Beau faced the three-rapidly-fading dots

Commander, were there three individuals plaguing you just now? Yes? Thank you."

"Wha're you plannin'?" Rodney moved over to the scan-tank, as did Morrison. Both had noticed how the device appeared to work.

"Seems to me a little retaliation is in order," Jack said, and then ran out the newly-installed plasma cannons, and loosed both, full power, directly into the nothing-ness of the Space Between. Two long, thin lines streaked out from the tiny shape of the Beau in the scan-tank, and one impacted the three departing dots. A huge chrysanthemum-shaped blossom of green, brighter than the rest of the energy in the picture, and indeed, bright enough to make everyone squint, flashed and then was gone...and then there were only two dots, both of which vanished beyond the outermost limb of the device...

"Di-rect hit!" Jack said, a predatory smirk on his face. Mingh-Shrighk had seen it as well, and a thoughtful, predatory smile slowly filled her features, her teeth showing slightly. "Captain Pulsifer... Can you make the ship move after the remaining dots? it might be useful to know where they went..."

[Alexis Voltaire]

Shi-Markia sent strikes as response to the thoughts from Mingh-Shrighk, growling as they were blocked. She shrieked when Mingh-Shringk responded with one of her own that nearly caused her to loose a hold on the energy she was using. If it had been any normal trip with normal limited energy, she would have. Shi-Markia could see that she couldn't reach the troublesome dragon, so she settled for aiming another strike at Zhan. He blocked it, but she could tell it hadn't been easy.

'Their enemies shall lead them to victory.'  She mocked. 'You remember that one, Zhan, from the legend-tales, wondering what it meant. But you made enemies of the winning side, and you thought all along we didn't know about the star.'

Shi-Markia clutched the pointed star in a tight claw, diving through the nothingness. The star glowed brilliant white, and around her and the others was a crackling, sparking flow of raw energy. They blazed through the coldline like it wasn't even there, and past it. She fixed the spot in her mind, diving for the Swift-on-Wing, and then suddenly turned, just as they were coming near to it.

'Take off,' She sent to the pilot. 'and proceed as planned. Objective is complete. We will meet you on the way.'

'What are you doing!?' Zhi-Vah-Tahl shrieked. He wasn't used to traveling this way anyway, much less doing it at what seemed a hundredfold the speed and power, guided by nothing but Shi-Markia's thoughts.

She laughed, feeling the energy of the star course through her like lightning, and absolutely drunk on power. The old ways were nothing, this was power... true, unstoppable power! Drawing lines in the dust, fools! Trapping and directing tiny currents and flows of energy balanced so delicately they couldn't be powerful enough to do anything. But this star, it was the source, the true source! She had been told that it would be powerful, and she thought that she had tasted power, but it was nothing! With this she could take them all the way to Venus and back with a thought!

The other dragon with them, Zhirlin, was absolutely terrified, having never done this before at all, and having listened to too many stories that others had told about what happened if the connection was broken. His fear was realized, although not quite the way he expected, when the shots from the Beau Rosin screamed toward him and impacted on and partially through the energy shield surrounding them. He phased out in panic before he realized what had happened and that the shots had simply exploded on the loose energy but hadn't harmed him. However, the solid wall that he had happened to be moving through at the same time did.

[Alexis Voltaire]

Frank and Zhan quickly got up the ramp and to the cabin as the glowing ring flashed around them and the Beau Rosin. The ship appeared to be, in some mind-bending way, partly inside the walls, and they could see from inside the ring that there was something that looked like a thin heat distortion surrounding the Beau Rosin and separating the space she occupied from the rest of the normal dimension.

---

There was a distant and oddly distorted crack of the plasma cannons firing, and moments later the burst showing on the screen filled the cabin with green light. They soon took off after the Shi-Markia and the other dragon, both appeared to be going fairly fast, even for 'between' travel. Frank and Zhan told Bailey and the others what had happened.

"... and I don't really know what that metal star was, but they seem to know more about than we do, including how to use it."

"Yes, they can use transport like this, but it's limited in range." Zhan said. "And it takes hours to set up everything properly. They couldn't just disappear like that without using something very powerful, or they were brought out by someone from outside. But there are very few who can do that using the old methods and draconic symbols, and it is more difficult to do the more you transport. Shi-Markia is the only one I know of who could be here doing something that complicated. We might be able to catch them before they get off Far Rimrock." He said, and added. 'I've got a few things to say to Shi-Markia.'

'Shi-Markia is mine.' Mingh-Shrighk sent with a slight growl. She hadn't been entirely trusting of Zhan since they had met, though she didn't say much about it. They had known one another as enemies a until short time ago, and had in fact crossed blades once on Deimos.

'As you wish.' Zhan sent, closing his eyes against the light that was starting to make his headache worse. It was nearly three thirty in the morning, he realized as he opened one eye momentarily to look at the clock. And it looked like they might not get any rest for some time.

[MWBailey]

Jack turned the ship around, and set the sighting apparatus on the heading the three (now only two) dots were using. "Okay, I'm going to turn down the lights and divert power to the Travelling field," he said, a modicum of thoughtfulness edging his voice," So that should make it easier on your eyes...Zhan, is it?" Zhan nodded , barely perceptiobly, apparently in confirmation. "I f you like, you can trade places with someone below in the engine hold; its kind of loud and smelly from the oil fuel, but its not as bright." the lights went down as Jack spoke, and the energy picture in the 'tank grew slightly brighter, as the three dots once again appeared on the edge of the device's outermost limb.*

We're almost there, looks like they're stopping in midflight --DAMN!" He swore, as the two moved off again, roughly sunward. They've departed again; looks like a ship is as well..." Mingh cursed as well

"Can you get a bead on teh ship?" Bailey asked, as a new third form, much bigger than the other two, and having a distinct 'winged needle' shape, rose from what looked like the curved outer surface of the asteroid. he flipped two levers and punched three buttons that were adjacent to the three-gimballed scan tank, and range numbers for relative altitude and azimuth appeared next to the needle shape.

"She's in range, still, approximately one thousand yards, but increasing," Jack said tightly as he spun the wheel and thrust the throttle lever mounted on the wheel shaft upward, increasing the speed of the clatter-roaring diesel engine in the hold below, and thus the power level supplied for the ship (the whole running on a generator slave-geared to the engine)he ran out the two plasma cannons on the opposite side of the ship from a moment before, and aimed the two forward plasma weapons according to the rapidly-changing readings displayed in the energy picture of the 'tank. he flipped two of the cannon levers up, and then spun the firing wheel, causing the two forward cannons to fire a series of three plasmic bolts each. The needle shape in the display visibly accellerated just as the bolts left the shape of the Beau, and only two bolts struck the tailfins of the needle-like vessel.

Ahead, as they cleared the mass of the asteroid and could see into open space, the upper and port fins of a sleek aether ship sparkled blindingly for a moment, but the ship continued its acceleration, slewing around from the impact, apparently nearly losing control-- but then its aether prop glowed, streaming blue shimmering iridescent turbulence, and the needle shot away at a shocking speed.

" I kin foller in travelspace," Jack said, "but its risky goin' that fast sunward; the sun exists in all dimensions of spacetime, an' it's hotter in travelspace than in realspace." he looked around the Beau's cabin. "whatch'all wawnna do?"


------------------------------------------
*limb: an old term used mainly in astronomical and navigational parlance, meaning the visible edge of a circle or circular/spherical form. It was most often used in conjunction with such instruments as astrolabes and mathematical jewels, and the degree scales of octants and other sighting instruments. Also refers to the edge of the visible (or, I suppose, the dark or non-visible as well) stage of a planet or moon.

[Alexis Voltaire]

"It's your call, but I'd say forward. If we can pull ahead of them before we get too close to danger, we might be able to catch them." Frank said. "Whatever that star is, it's obviously important to them, and it's best if they don't keep it."

'Sounds good.' Zhan said, opening his eyes a fraction as the light dimmed. 'I'll go below, Shi-iri wants to come up anyway.' Shi-iri had come up to the cabin almost before he finished the thought, and he moved aside to let her past. The cabin wasn't big enough for more than Mingh-Shrighk and one other dragon to fit along with everyone else, and even with them it was crowded. Shi-iri edged her way past Zhan and moved over beside Frank, hugging him tight in one foreclaw.

'I'm so glad you're alright. I couldn't reach either of you for a long time...'

'Yes, now let him breathe.' Zhan sent with a slight chuckle as he headed down to the engine hold. It was a bit louder, but the relative darkness was a relief. He found a spot to rest near the other dragons, and though he wouldn't have thought it possible at first, he soon drifted into a doze to the steady sound of the engine.

The Beau Rosin passed and pulled ahead of the ship in a little under twenty minutes. The Drene-Vah ship was traveling fast enough to be difficult to keep up with even in 'travelspace', as Jack had called it, and they came back into phase with realspace well ahead of her, in hopes that they might be able to stop or slow her down before she could get past.

The plasma cannons fired in six double booms, sending long lines of blue streaking toward the ship. 'Stop or we'll blast you from here to hell!'

The sleek black ship was having none of it. She adjusted course and avoided most of the shots, somewhat awkwardly due to her damaged tailfin, and fired two shots of her own from her forward plasma guns. They both missed by several hundred yards, since she hadn't bothered to slow down to target them well enough. The ship streaked past them in a trail of aether, still accelerating.

'Cowards!' Mingh yelled after them.

They turned and went back into travelspace and came after them again, but the ship had gotten a larger head start this time, and was passing four hundred knots and still going. The Beau Rosin was faster, but only just, and had run into a remnant 'cloud' of the solar storm that forced them to slow a bit. Jack explained that areas near the sun often had energy from storms and flares lingering for days or weeks in travelspace, something that didn't happen, or only happened very rarely, in realspace. The recent storm had made travel even this far out a lot more risky than it normally was. They had just cleared the cloud and pulled ahead of the ship when they nearly ran into another, and in turning to avoid it the other ship jumped ahead, going too fast by now to catch up with.

[MWBailey]

Jack cursed, and began calculations for what he commonly called a 'Time Leap.' He finished the calculation, and plotted the chronospatial angular path onto the wax-board (a table-sized box with a chronospatial map of the solar system set in the bottom and a thin layer of clear wax on top of the map;the course was drawn in the wax, and thus could be erased without too much difficulty, plus ink  or other colorant could be spread over the map so that it filled in the grooves, which in turn made it possible to "print" a map of the course.

Jack had programmed the numbers into the complex stack of concentric dials set in the top of the chronojammer device, and pulled the 'set,' and 'oscillation initiator' levers on top of the box housing, and the 'jump permutatator' handle of the chronojumper up to the halfway notch, and turned it to lock it in position. He paused, then, in reaching for the 'actuate' toggle under the wire cage on the banister next to the sighting controls for the scan-tank. "There's one final chance to beat them to Venus, for that appears to be where they're headed," he said. "I can make a 'Time Leap,' as i tend to call'em, ahead in time and space for maybe ten minutes before they arrive within the planet's airspace and cut them off that way, but it'll be a near thing... but that's not my main concern." He took a breath or two before continuing.

"I can do all of that easily, but I cannot guarantee the outcome. I must also warn ya that we may be committin' a causal transgression for which Miss Sally 'n' her organization may be after us. It all d'pends on how much causality is affected by our actions. I want yer request ta go ahead 'n' make th' jump, an' share th' consequences, an' yer word that you'll all back me if it comes ta havin' adversely affected time and space."

"I've already typed a burst, repeatin' morse broadcast request to th' receiver in th' business office in Turvy City an' to the Badger in Hardtack's Drydock fer the Badger ta foller with full troop complement as soon as possible; I kin blow almost any ship to kingdom come, but we might need yer whole troop complement to take 'em on on the planet surface. Ah'll send the message if'n you decide that we go on. Your answer?

The answer was resoundingly "yes!," with an "of course" from Frank, Shi Iri, Zhan, Mingh, Bailey, Kirza, and several others.

The message sent, he said, "OK... Now, I'd tell ya'all to strap yerselfs in, but we don't have any straps, so grab somethin' and hold awn! and with that he flipped the switch, the ship leapt as if grabbed and hauled forward by a fallen angel, the cabin was filled with the screeching keen of the timewinds outside, and off they went, jack rolling his eyes as someone, apparently not having paid attention, yelled in surprise and pain as they rolled up against a bulkhead.

"There's always one," he murmured...

[Alexis Voltaire]

There was little time, and still a few days worth of work to be done before the Mad Badger was fully aether-worthy. But when the orders came, the repair crews redoubled their efforts, and what would have taken six days took just under three. The Mad Badger departed that evening, only hours after the final tests had been run, having actually managed, using every available space, to fit the entire Dragon Corps on board. They would be stopping at the base on Deimos in a day and a half, and the force would be split up into the seventy-five pairs that would stay on board the Mad Badger, and two groups of thirty-six, one of which had already been assigned to the HMAS KhuKhuri, the recently refitted ship that had been there during the Mars Assault. It would take them five days to reach Venus after that, even at maximum speed.

As the Mad Badger passed through the upper reefs on her way to Deimos, and a necessary quick resupply, her course brought her very near to the site of the recent battle and the huge asteroid. They altered the course just slightly, and passed near enough to the asteroid for those standing in the observation decks, and most of them were, to make out the craters and blackened starbust scars on the light colored surface.

The Dragon Corps and most of the Badger's crew stood at attention, the troopers saluting as they passed, paying final respects. The dragons drew their khukhuris and saluted in their own way, holding the bright blades high and at an angle.

The old hands watched with remembrance of the friends they had lost, and the new recruits looked on with something like wonder at a scene which, even at this distance, was reminiscent of a place one might find at the gateway to hell.

Mercourt cast solemn a glance down the ranks. It was possible that some of them would never see home again.

The Mad Badger's guns began firing, off into the star-speckled blackness above the asteroid. It later became a tradition among the trilidian miners to fire a shot over the asteroid when they passed, and even though the reason for the battle would be known to few, those who gave their lives there would not be forgotten.

The forwardmost two-gun turret fired seven times with distant double-booms that echoed through the silent ship, for the fourteen that had been killed on the Mad Badger in the action.

The second turret down the line fired, twenty-seven times and fifty-three shots, for the captain and crew of the Malcontent and those lost on the mining vessels and the Osprey.

The third turret echoed with two double booms, and then seven single shots, for those of the Dragon Corps that had died after the battle, and for those that would never leave the rock.

[MWBailey]

Sutter's Revenge left some two hours after the Mad Badger, along with the Jaguarundi as escort. it was an odd sort of arrangement, for the Sutter's was much more heavily armed and armored than the Jaguarundi, save for the Jaguarundi's resonance weapon -- but it carried the precious masonic treasures, and must thus be protected. Both followed suit and fired volley after volley over Forbisher's Rock as they passed (though they did not know, yet, that the Badger had done so); they took a more circuitous route that the Badger did, partly because they expected the Shatzenjaeger's scouts to still be searching for them, and partly because of the scouts, again, but also because they were both faster than the Badge, and thus ran full out, arcing up over the solar system the way that the Express aetherships did when traveling from the outer rim toward Earth. The course to Venus and Earth were so similar at that point in the solar year that they became simply two miniscule dots among so many other miniscule dots on the scanning devices of whoever happened to be looking, because of the relatively heavy traffic on similar courses.

Once, near the perigree of their arcing course, they had to dodge two  aether yachts who were racing from Pluto to Earth and disregarding every Lane Buoy* and Course Norm in existence. Cal radioed the two vessels to watch where they were going, as they were going to kill someone if they weren't careful, but all he received in answer was a raspberry-type of noise over the air from the larger of the two yachts.

"Sightseers," Captain Jaego of the Sutter's sneered as the two yachts shot off to solar east by south...

[Alexis Voltaire]

The Beau slowed quickly on approaching the right 'spot' in spacetime, and the strange colors were replaced by a gray sky of what looked like morning, and a thick sea of clouds that faded into an indefinite horizon. There was nothing but sky and clouds visible for as far as they could see out of the windows, and in the darker part of the sky there were a few stars left. The sun had not yet cleared the cloudtops, but it looked like it was about a half hour away.

"Here she comes."

She appeared in view of the forward windows, a long thin spearpoint that was as black as a starless sliver of the void, her polished hull reflecting no light in these conditions. Her turbines were visible from the front, and set deep inside her frame just behind the thin forward window, inside what looked like aerodynamic funnels. She skewed to one side as soon as she became aware of them, more out of apparent surprise than anything else. She avoided the first three shots by luck with the badly handled half-turn, but the other three impacted her hull, two at once and then one just behind it. All hit just behind one turbine, and the last two impacts threw orange streaks of fire from her hull. Her port turbine exhaust spat fire and a thick trail of tar-colored smoke, and she slowed.

There was no response to Mingh's taunts or any other attempts at sending over to the vessel, even from Shi-Markia.

The smoke and fire started to thin as her port turbine was shut down, and she listed slightly before correcting for the loss of power. Three more shots hit and partly glanced off her hull, with varying amounts of visible damage, but she seemed less affected. She slowed even more, just above the cloudtops, and it looked as though she was about to give up or make some unusual maneuver. But she just skimmed the clouds at low speed for a moment, and then accelerated slightly, turning toward them and firing her own plasma cannons rapidly. Jack avoided them easily, as it appeared they didn't have an experienced gunner on board (or possibly one at all, for that matter), and fired two more shots. One missed the starboard turbine by inches, and the other took off the very top of her starboard tailfin.

"Look's like they're making a run for it." Jack said, indicating two dots leaving the ship in the scan.

'Maybe.' Zhan sent. 'I think they are taking the star off the ship before anything can happen to it. And I don't think there's a question now about how they're doing it.'

The black ship accelerated suddenly and nosed down at a steep angle into the thick clouds, disappearing as though she had never been except for a thin trail of black smoke. They could see the ship make several directional changes as she went down, apparently to throw off pursuit, and then she dipped into the maze of steep canyons below.

Welcome to Chapter 5 of Red Sands and Red Swords: The Morning Star

[MWBailey]

"The arroyos and canyons back home out on the Cimarron border were hell to play hide-and-seek in," Jack said, "and these make those look like shallow rain furrows; No offense, friends, but I'd hesitate to take the whole ship and present company down there, for fear of what might happen to all of you folks if that ship manages to jump us." Mingh sighed and rolled her eyes at Mr. Rodney's ill-tempered jab about being afraid of a novice gunner, and Jack responded acidly, "They won't need a good gunner at the short ranges that will prevail in that soup, and canyons in a fog are not good places to cruise in at speed. Unless, of course, you want to be come part of the local rock formations?"

"Oi'd prefer that ter just sittin'  'ere coolin' my 'eels!"

"If it's exercise you're wantin', you could take the rest o' th' party down after me and Kirza and Mingh, and maybe one other trooper pair flit down to the planet surface," Bailey offered, a glint of annoyance, but also of speculation, in his eye. We kin scout out Shi Markia an' her lot before th' Badger gets 'ere, since she's mostlikely not on the  ship."

"A word've advice, just in case," Jack said, hurriedly, as if he were afraid Bailey would not listen, "Back home, we had people what could throw fire; my buddy Dreyf was one of 'em. He told me once about how some people act when they first realize 'at they kin do th' fire-throwin'; basic'ly, they jest go plumb crazy, thinkin' they're s' dang powerful, and either ...what were the word he used... immerlate*? yeah, thats it, they immerlates Theirselves in their own power, jus' sorta burn themselves to a crisp, like. Ol' Dreyf didnt, but only 'cause he'd seen what kin happen firsthand. He did the otrher thang, tryin' to pertect a buncha other folks in a zeppelin he wuz a crewman an' a fighter on" he paused, then pressed on, Basic'ly, he used too much power and knocked hisself out. he survived and was able to use more power later, but most folks hurt themselves an' cain't use any power anymore. If'n ye kin make 'er mad or what, you might be able to make Shi-Markia do that to herself..." He also added that he would stay with teh ship and give fire support if needed and teh targets could be marked somehow. he tapped his head, and said, "just call, I'll hear you." HE also added that he still had a mounted mortar, and that the electrically-cranked gatling was good for concentrated fire even from high altitude, and was loaded with a thousand 90-caliber exploding rounds. "I also have rockets, in the mitrailleuse* up front, but I've never used them before on this ship."

Mingh sent, privately (though Jack did not yet know about such things), and you, call if you need help, and I will come, in a mindvoice that seemed oddly congenial to Jack. Thank you, he thought back, and Mingh smiled frighteningly, though to Jack and others nearby it looked to be intended as a friendly expression, bared fangs and all, and he smiled back in return. The moment lasted until Bailey cleared his throat.

"Well, Jack! looks like you just might have found yourself a companion." Bailey said, matter-of-factly, but also with a slight note of teasing. "do they look like a pair, Kirza? Bailey sent privately...

The choices and decisions were made, and Bailey, Kirza, Mingh, Cartwright and Korza flitted to a position in midair just above the trees on a promontory close to where the black ship seemed to have gone to ground, Rodney to spot them on the scan tank and 'port his party to the same spot, after Kirza stood on a suitable landing spot and fired her plasma rifle. The signal came, and soon the entire party, five pairs in all plus Rodney, stood on a table-like formation of black basalt that overlooked the canyons below on three sides. "Okay, how shall we split up, Frank?" Bailey asked

-----------------------------------------
Mitrailleuse: a projectile launcher that resembles several rows of organ pipes, each pipe containing, in the Beau's case, one aether-capable high-explosive-warhead rocket, intended for air-to-air but applicable to ground targets as well.

[Alexis Voltaire]

The star blazed like a comet, white flame and sparks trailing away after it into the darkness. Raw power. True power. The source of all they had used, all the symbols of power linked to this. And she was holding it in her claws, unchained, no longer needing the lines and writings to channel it. Directed by thought alone, power greater than the sum of all symbols ever written or drawn all the way back to the first. And the power used for this traveling, once the greatest amount they dared use, was only a fraction, so small it was unmeasurable, of the full energy it contained.

Zhi-Vah-Tahl just closed his eyes and wished it would end. It did soon, as they left the darkness with a halo of spreading flame and a boom that rolled like thunder through the canyons a dozen miles away. Shi-Markia laughed madly, and angled her wings down to the canyon windstream. The rushing wind caught their half-folded wings and pulled them down the twisting canyon at nearly twice the speed of normal flight. The ever-present wind in some of the steeper canyon bottoms functioned as a quick way to move from place to place, but it required skill and quick reflexes to navigate the unpredictable turns without crashing. Shi-Markia knew them better than most, and she sent an annoyed thought to Zhi-Vah-Tahl as he turned suddenly and barely avoided a vortex that formed at the junction of two ravines.

---

The round stone room that was used as a meeting place for the council was dripping and damp, and filled with a slight air of tension. It wasn't used often, since the council rarely came together in large enough numbers for it to be needed. But this time it was filled with dragons, all waiting to find out why they had been called to homebase at such an important time.

'We have gotten word from our forces on the Falasar that we have the star.' Keri-Tais sent, walking in through the stone archway. 'They will be here soon.'

The assembled councilmembers looked up, each saluting, and Keri-Tais did the same in return.

'As chief I would say something. It is the reason you have all been brought here. We do not have much time, and you will need to return soon, but the full council must be brought together for this purpose.'

The councilmembers looked around, noticing that it was indeed true. There were very few reasons that the full chief council needed to be brought together in one location, and so far it had only happened three times. But this time it was not as uncertain to the reason.

'It is time then? We may fight at last, as we have been waiting all these years?' Zhi-ni-Dreku growled. Others sent similar questions, and only a few were still unsure.

'Indeed,' Keri-Tais sent to all with a wicked grin. 'The chief council is no longer bound to guiding alone, as they have been. Send word, all of you, to those you lead. This is the Day Foretold. The Drene-Vah Goes to War!'

[Alexis Voltaire]

The climate and atmosphere of Venus was something few of them were prepared for. The air was more dense and had a higher oxygen content even than earth, and was dripping with humidity. Despite the almost mile-thick cloud cover and early morning sun it was nearly as bright as full daylight and over ninety degrees, and heat was radiating from the open basalt plateau in waves.

The trees behind them were nearly two hundred and fifty feet high and most were over twenty feet wide at the base. Huge snaking root columns ran down from them and out to the edge of the open space on the plateau. The leaves of the trees and the surrounding plant growth were a thousand different shades of green, and interspersed with flowers in vibrant and almost psychedelic colors. There were also trees and plants that could be seen, here and there, with bright blue leaves as much as three feet across.

Down and nearly seven hundred feet below they could see the floor of the canyons, narrow slots with white water rushing over jagged stones. The nearly vertical walls of the canyons were carpeted with green and divided by hundreds of thin waterfalls that fell in white misty lines. They could also see two dragons, nearly a mile off down the canyon to the left, and coming closer.

"Looks like Shi-Markia and another." Zhan said. "We can catch them, if we-"

"I don't mean to interrupt," Zhi-Selkio said. "but we should get out of the open. Now."

A sudden shadow fell over them. there was the thunder of immense wings overhead, and a screech.

Mingh spun and pointed her heavy-barreled plasma gun upwards and fired in the same moment. There was an explosion of feathers and the black bird screamed, coming down hard on the edge of the cliff. It looked like a vulture, with a bare head and neck and a curved beak, and shining black feathers. It beat its twenty foot wings hard against the flat rock, and claws scrabbled on stone before it fell back over the edge.
 
The screech echoed across the canyons, and more shadows passed over them. Looking up, they could see a dozen more black birds swooping in.

"Run! Back to the trees!" Zhi-Selkio shouted out loud and mentally, already halfway there. They followed, taking down two more of the birds and driving away a third. One of the birds came down on the open rock, flapping and crying pitifully. Five others landed around it in a circle around it, and waited, still for a moment. The wounded bird hissed and struck at them with huge black claws. Two of the waiting birds squawked, and then they and the others pounced, screeching and tearing the downed bird to pieces in a flurry of wings and beaks and claws.

'Black condors.' Zhi-Selkio said, watching them eat with a wary eye from the shadows of the trees. 'Nasty creatures, but they stay away from the deep canyons. It's the only safe place to fly in these parts.'