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

[Alexis Voltaire]

Zhan half-said something that sounded like a curse in draconic when he heard what Bailey said. He rarely showed what he was thinking, out of habit and especially when he was troubled, but now his expression was somewhere between anger and trapped panic. He appeared to calm down slightly after a few moments, but it was unlikely that he actually had.

'She is Drene-Vah, yes, but you hate her that much?' Mingh sent.

'Yes, she is Drene-Vah, and many of those within the Drene-vah hate her. I doubt many were upset to learn she was dead, most were probably very glad of it. She is simply too useful for them get rid of her. Or let her stay dead, apparently.'

After Brantley had finished his introduction, and the others had talked some, Frank asked. "If you don't mind me asking, what is going on here?" 

[MWBailey]

"I'm really just here as a repairman," Brantley said, " but I'm also an operative  of A.U.N.T.S.A.L.L.I." He spelled out the acronym. "Don't ask me what each letter means. Some of 'em are from alien tongues, and all of it depends on a sort of alien logic of ...spellcraft, for lack of a better word, though that one doesn't quite cover it." He paused as if considering what to tell and what not to, and then continued, "We're mainly concerned with the prevention and repair of damage to the timestreams.

I invented one of the major causes of damage, so I started out finding, deactivating (in some cases destroying) and rebuilding the ones I'd already built, whilst simultaneously travelling from world to world and dimension to dimension, fighting the threat of the Cthuloid Martians who were set loose by my inventions weakening the fabric of spacetime in my own home multiverse so that theirs could actually work, when combined with copies of mine. I unwittingly set up one such machine, and it cost me part of my humanity; the Martians who captured me forced me to accept prosthetics intended to make me physically a superior time-traveller, a sort of "synthetic timelord," as well as control me. That last part failed miserably, but I am now able to survive an absolute vacuum, stand high degrees of heat and low degrees of cold, and walk through thin walls and obstacles...such as travelling fields, for example.

And now I've been sent here by A.U.N.T.S.A.L.L.I. (he pronounced it as "Aunt Sally" this time) to prevent a similar occurrence for Jack, and thus attempt to help keep the drene-vah in this dimension. If I or You all fail, they will be in a prime position to establish a hegemony of Drene-vah -- but the Committee will not allow that. If I or you fail, they will send in an interdiction force and raze this solar system down to the bare planetary cores, and commit mass genocide on all species, sentient or not, within it, to remove the Drene-vah threat. You might say I'm your second-to-last chance...

Several of the ship's company did not like that explanation, and things were beginning to get ugly. Several asked teh question again, "what's going on here, really? who are you to tell us what to do and threaten to destroy our home --?"

"SILENCE!" Brantley roared. "You want to know whats 'really' going on here? I should be asking you that question! What the hell are you people, soldiers or dilettantes? A presence forces its way aboard the ship, steals an artifact that you already know beyond a possible doubt to be a real threat in their hands, and you don't even shoot at the light?! Who the hell cares if somebody's stupid enough to get in the way of the crossfire! It's your whole bloody way of life at stake, and you just stand there and do NOTHING?!

"And why are you just standing around now, just listening to me rant, you so-called "knife-biters?" If you were real fire-eaters, one of you would've pulled their fancy kookerookerya-ya bull-stickers and killed me for daring to question your honor and prowess!"

One of the Dragons did attack him now, pulling her Khukhuri and making a sweeping slice-cut at his neck -- or would have, if Brantley were still where he had been. Moving more swiftly than any would believe of a mere human (which, in fact, he was not), Brantley had already side-stepped, pulling from under the trenchcoat, from the vicinity of the small of his back, a dagger-knife of the "arkansas toothpick" variety; as long as his right arm-and-hand, it sported a wide brass guard and a wickedly-sharp point. He deflected the slice, disarming the dragon (one of the new recruits) in the process, sending the khukhuri flying over to embed itself in the casing of the porthole behind Jack. Brantley had also simultaneously drawn his pistol, and now shot both Frank's pistol and Bailey's double-barrelled machine gun out of their hands.

A strange tableau resulted: Brantley had managed to predict Bailey's next move (he was reaching for his own Bergmann), and had pressed the muzzle of the Bergmann magazine pistol (so like a Mauser it was hard to tell them apart until it stopped moving) against Bailey's right browline, while also holding the dagger against the chest of the attacking dragon trooper, the point nicking the skin and allowing a thin trickle of her saffron blood to drip down her chest.

"STOP!" Brantley shouted, "Or both will die!" he added, white-hot fury evident in both his eyes and his voice, "And oh, yes, I can pull the trigger and scatter your brains before you can flit, Bailey-boy!"

---------------------

[MWBailey]

After things had calmed down at least a degree or two, Brantley and Jack set to work on the chronojumper/chronojammer inter-device connection. Well, there's a big part of the problem, right there, Brantley said, when the housings of the various components had been removed, and tthe interdevice connector was revealed. there wasn't an actual connection, but rather a sort of short "jacob's ladder" kind of thing under a glass dome.

"That's probably right where they got in, right there, Jack," Brantley said. "You did a good job reverse-engineering the chronojumper, but you missed the point of the pot-luck interface circuit determiner. The PLICD is a hard-wired circuit, which creates a closed system. the jacob's ladder, there, is a great solution to the different-dimensional-physics problem, but it leaves the interior of the fields open to attack because it's an open system. You see?"

Jack grumbled something about time and being busy, but in the end agreed that a better circuit connection would be a good solution.

The problem was not really one of intelligence, or any lack thereof on Jack's part; he had actually managed a superhuman feat, reproducing in full-size what Brantley's cigarette case chronojumper achieved with microcircuitry. the large size of the components (micro-circuitry being laughably unavailable when and where he built the unit) made such finely-honed circuits impossible, and the thought rather laughable. Finally, Brantley closed the connection with a larger pot-luck  component he had brought along for the purpose, and after awhile, they announced that the ship was ready to go. It was decided to take the star back, by brute force if necessary, and so they started up the fields again, and set off.
--------------------------------
the Drene-vah practitioners were warming up for another attempt on teh Beau Rosin, when there came the shrieking sound as of winds howling with stormlike force, and suddenly teh ship was there, in teh room, with them! it was obviously too large for teh space, far too largge, but nonetheless, there it was! They all stood in shocked, indignant silence until a hand reached through the opaque travelling field, grabbed teh star, Shi Markia screaming all teh while and demanding to be put down and for teh practitioners to "blast these infidels! You stupid fools! DESTROY THEM!" and then the hand pulled the star into the ship, and the ship, the hand, and the star, vanished...

----------------------------------
Aboard teh Beau Rosin, the starr was immediately dropped into a wooden ammunition box, which Bailey had, at Brantley's instruction, marked the same way as teh hangar, but also with the designs both inside and out and marked inside and out on the corners as well, and the whole locked with both padlock and Deep Reach script by both Bailey and Brantley.

Teh box bucked and bounced as the voice of Shi Markia made threats and generally promised doom for whoever had grabbed her and put her in the box.

"FOOLS! YOU DARE! I shall cast your souls into the fires of hell! I shall call the firebeast of Parhoon to consume you all!"

"SILENCE, you disembodied minx," Brantley said, "I've spoken with the person you so disrespectfully mention, and neither he nor his kind shall ever answer your "summons" again. By the way, they don't allow people to summon them, they come when they want, and for their own interests. Did you really think you could control one of teh Deep Ones?

"I have the ELDER SIGN, fool, they will do my bidding or pay the consequences to the God!"

"Ah. Yes. The Elder Sign." Brantley laughed right out loud, then. "Even that won't always work, and they are sick of you and your kind. Have a care, my little disembodied treasure, lest my distant cousins come for YOU!"

Your COUSINS? What folly is this? you are human! I can hear your voice! I can sense your --!" Shi Markia's disembodied voice faltered, suddenly, having sensed something horribly amiss."W-What? What ARE you? She demanded, sounding somewhat broken and more than a little fearful.

"Nothing but an "augmented" human, whose augmentation has become a part of himself and of his Basic genetic structure."

"I do not believe you! you are Lying!"

"She seems to be hardly more of a threat than a demonic phonograph player, now," Bailey said, amusement tinging his voice as Shi Markia made the box bounce such that they finally strapped it to the table, which was itself bolted to the deck of the aft cabin of the Beau Rosin. Even so, it still shifted and scraped and made bumping noises-- but thanks to the markings of power, she and the star were kept tightly enclosed within the box.

[Alexis Voltaire]

"I'm not sure we can keep it in there forever." Zhan said, looking suspiciously at the box. "Can the star be destroyed?"

"It can be destroyed, yes, but doing so would release the power it contains. It would be enough to level most of the Veritzeth and then some, if not all of Venus." Zhi-Selkio said. "I doubt that Shi-Markia was put into the star, I don't know if doing that would even be possible, with the power it contains already. I suspect they have bound her to that gem connected with it. But she would have to have contact with the star to get any energy from it, even for mental strikes."

"If we took the gem out then, and it didn't have contact with the star, would it kill her?" Zhan asked.

"If we could somehow find a way to do that, I doubt it, but she wouldn't be able to do anything." Zhi-Selkio said, with some amusement as the box rattled and screamed threats. "She'd just be a very angry talking rock. I'm really not sure what can be done with it, short of dropping it into the sun. I wouldn't trust it to be hidden anywhere, not the way it is. I wonder though, could it be safely hidden outside this dimension?"

[MWBailey]

"Hidden, yes. Safely? You must be joking." Brantley took a cheroot and a strange-looking cylindrical lighter from his pocket, offered them and Bailey a cheroot, paused while Bailey accepted one, and then lit both with the wheel-top lighter, put the cap (attached by a tiny brass chain) back on top, and pocketed the lighter somewhere inside the huge leather trenchcoat; one could see, standing to one side beside and slightly behind the man, that the coat had all sorts of pockets, some of them bulging suggestively as if filled with ammo or grenades, others either empty or full of non-bulging items. Two more of what looked like gun handles could be discerned, and a blaster with a rosewood stock and a modified Mauser 1896 self-loader were both clipped to his right hip, and there appeared to be some kind of large knife in the right inner breast pocket

"You folks are already saddled with hiding something that can't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands," he said, puffing on teh cheroot thoughtfully. "The safest thing to do would be to destroy both the gem and the star. Your desire to separate and save the gem is natural; that's the reason the mezetoin put it on the star in the first place -- so that people would try to separate the two, and thus keep the star because they would be unable to remove one from the other. Thus, the unit would stay together, the star would not be destroyed, and they could come back for it later. If you think about it, that's exactly what keeps happening; people keep coming back for it..."

"It's just a suggestion, but putting one of those aether grenades of Jack's on each flat space of the outside of that box and rigging all ...six of them to blow simultaneously, that would guarantee it's destruction -- but you'd better take it far out beyond the farthest rock of the solar system, since it will at the very least burgeon into a brief starlike asterism. Zhi Selkio, you're right, it would level Venus -- it'd burn it right down to the planetary core, and leave it molten..."

[Alexis Voltaire]

Keri-Tais wasn't enraged. He was in his strange state of icy calm beyond rage, and it made those standing before him tremble. He turned on the young dragon, and looked her directly in the eye.

'What happened?'

The shaking dragon told him again about what had happened when the ship appeared, and Keri-Tais listened until he had heard enough.

'Who is responsible?'

The dragon fell silent. They had heard this before, or rather heard it happen to others, and they felt sudden dread.

'Who is responsible?' Keri-Tais repeated.

Shi-Arkai started to say something, but Keri-Tais silenced her with a wave of a claw. The dragon said nothing, but stood there trembling.

'I do not know...' She finally managed to say, and Keri-Tais asked again, to all the others. They said nothing.

'Very well, Shi-Arkai,' He paused. One of the dragons looked over to him, and then away quickly. 'If they will not say, then send them to Malkhai until you find out who was.'

One of the dragons wailed, and fell quiet in the silence. As soon as Keri-Tais left, some of them simply fell trembling where they stood, others tried to bolt for the door. They were stopped by the guards, and a few fought madly to get away. But in the end they all either walked or were dragged out by the guards.

'It is too bad we do not have Shi-Markia.'

'True, but there are others.' Shi-Arkai said, watching them leave with a mixture of sympathy and relief that she was not among them.

'The book is no help in getting her back?'

'No, but we have not deciphered all of it yet, we are still working on it.'

'It is good.' Keri-Tais said, and added. 'Find a way soon, or you will join them.'

[MWBailey]

Brantley thought a moment longer, and then contradicted himself. "You know, I think I know a way to get that gem loose after all -- if you people can stand me doing something rather unsavory." He took off the trenchcoat, pulled his shirttail loose in back, and then began to wiggle about in an odd and uncomfortably inhuman manner, his back doing things that should have been impossible for a human backbone.

"I don't enjoy RRRKK! this at all (ouch!)," he said. "It hurts to grow the thing so fast, and it stays the eventual size for hours. It (arrrgghh) does have it's uses, however." he grunted again, as a long tentacle, complete with suckers, and obviously attached to his back, wriggled out of his shirt and grew right before their eyes to a length that could be brought to his front and manipulated easily. It proved to be extremely prehensile, and  just as dimensionally versatile as that of an octopus, as it wriggled itself inside the locked and sealed box in which the star of India resided."I haven't been able to doi this for very long," he said, "apparently its developed only in the last few realtime months, ever since that misadventure with the stellar core." he looked up and saw the glazed expressions and slack jaws, and realized they knew nothing of what he had just said. "begging your pardon, sometimes I talk shop too much. if you will please unstrap and open the box, now."

They did so, and Brantley withdrew the shrieking, abuse-shouting artifact around to his front, grasped it in both hands (now covered in gloves apparently made of steel mesh lined with silk and sharkskin), and wormed and insinuated and wriggled his tentacle around and actually under the gem!

"BASTARD! HOW ARE YOU DOING THAT! I WILL BLAST YOU TO ATOMS!" Shi Markia obviously tried to make good on her threat, and there was a blinding flash, Brantley screamed -- and stayed exactly as he had been, and then jerked mightily upward with his tentacular limb, the gem coming loose from the star with a loud SNAP, the sound of Shi Markia screaming, and several bolts of energy coruscating around it. Brantley screamed again, this tim ein concert with With Shi Markia, his clothing and flesh smoking in several places as the gem and the energy of its separation from its setting burned him.

There was also a slight lurch, after which the Beau's gauges and temporal controls went slightly haywire for a few seconds; it was as if a sudden conduit to the Drene-vah spell-chamber were opened and then shut again, violently, explosions , sounds of white-hot lightning strikes, and the wails and screams of wounded and dying practitioners echoing from the void between -- and then silence and normalcy once more, save for flashes and buffets from outside the travelling field, as of someone trying unsuccessfully to break through at distance by sorcerous means...

"You BASTARD! what have you DONE!?" Shi Markia's voice wailed, "What has happened to the star? Where did it go? WHAT HAVE YOU DOOONE?"

"I've made you less of a threat, my dear diembodied one," Brantley said, sardonically, despite the pain of his burns, as his tentacle held tightly to the blazing gem...

[Alexis Voltaire]

"It seems you are without any power now, Shi-markia." Zhan said, grinning as she tried to attack him mentally. It was without effect, she didn't have any source to get energy from.

"Perhaps you will look nice in a setting on the Droku cliffs, you miserable tas-..." He stopped himself, partly because he was unsure if such words in draconic might have unintended effects, since they were somewhat 'occult' in origin. Shi-Markia was finally figuring out that she could do nothing, and the gem slowly dulled and quieted after a few minutes. It pulsed with light, very faintly, and she spoke again in a more calm tone.

'Perhaps a deal would be in order?' She asked in a hopeful, sly voice.

"I would not make a deal with you if you offered to bring down all of the Drene-Vah. Most especially if you did that." Zhan said with disgust.

'There is much I can teach you Zhan, things that even these fools do not know.'

"You have taught me more than enough. Things that no living creature ought to know of." He growled.

'That can be undone... you can-'

"You lie, and you not very good at doing so. Much as death is too good for you, I see much less of a purpose for you being alive, in whatever capacity that might be."

'You do not know enough, there is much the Drene-Vah can do that you know nothing of!' She had almost lost her temper again, and she tried a different angle. 'I would not trust him, do you know of why he gained such rank?' She laughed. 'I would guess he told you nothing, he probably lied outright and told you he never killed for the Drene-Vah. He is deceptive, that is one requirement for such a position. But they would not have chosen him if he were just a good liar.'

[MWBailey]

The nerve. the utter bloody cheek, Brantley thought. "You yourself are scarcely trustworthy either, Shi-Markia," he said, "here you are, your interface with the mortal world still held tightly in my tentacle (which I think could just possibly crush the gem), and yet you have the utter temerity to try and strike a deal with one expatriate to your cause, even as you attempt to "sell out" another expatriate, who by the way seems to know yet another way to destroy your current residence!"

Brantley warned Zhan, "always be careful of the disembodied dead, young fellow. They tend to be desperate for a body (Yours) and hungry for carnage(Everyone else, including --especially--your loved ones)...

[Alexis Voltaire]

Shi-Markia laughed. 'And you think he is any more so? They didn't even choose him for being a cold-blooded killer. No, they did so because he enjoyed it, enjoyed the sport of killing slowly. It was very useful to us, but almost as dangerous, he does not care who he kills, so long as they scream loudly.'

Zhan growled, loud and deep, rage and and something close to madness showing in his eyes.

She laughed again. 'It is something even you cannot hide, Zhan. You are Drene-Vah, even if we will no longer welcome you as kin. You have been a liar for so long you do not know the truth.'

He slowly brought his anger under control, much to her surprise. "No, Shi-Markia, you are wrong."

[MWBailey]

Brantley grabbed the box and dropped the gem inside of it. "Be good, little one, and perhaps someday someone will make a new setting for you. Be very glad that although I share a few of their bodily characteristics, I do not share my cousins' disdain for non-cthulid lifeforms and intelligences. You could easily be banished from your current abode and back to the nothingness from which you were summoned." He slammed the lid closed and locked it down both physically and thaumically, using his 'third arm',  and the hand and arm not already engaged in holding the key, to bring the straps back up and strap the box to the table, with the help of Zhan and Zhi Selkio.

"Shall I see if I can work out a silencing system for her prison, Zhan? She seems to be rather attached to you," Brantley offered, as he re-donned the trenchcoat, the tentacular arm coiling itself loosely around his waist, outside of his shirt-and waistcoat but inside the coat...

[Alexis Voltaire]

"That would be much appreciated." Zhan said, with a dark look at the box. "I would hope that it is enough to say that she is not telling the truth in full. She stole much of my sanity and very nearly nearly my life in Malkhai, and the years after are something I would give very much to forget. The Drene-Vah have many enemies that are just as evil as they, and now they have fewer."

"It seems to me that she's figured out she can't get what she wants, so she's just trying to cause trouble." Frank said after a moment of thought. "I still trust you, Zhan, whatever she might say."

"Aye. My thanks for that." Zhan nodded, and moved out of her range of hearing, as much for not having to hear her rant as keeping her from listening. "Losing the star will be a setback, for some things they have planned. But they are far from being stopped. I suspect they will concentrate on gathering forces, while the others try to make sense of what has happened. They have few ships of their own, but they are powerful enough to begin hunting for others to add to their fleet. Their plan is to capture as many as they can from others, with help of their 'allies', and then when they have enough ships under their command, to turn on those that helped them and take their ships as their own. We have the star now, and I think it can be used against them. We might be able to stop them before they can launch their ships from the fleet base in Salos, the old volcanic cone in Satan's Paradise. If we could do so, it would put much of their strategy out of action."

[MWBailey]

"Taking the Madcat from guard duty over the Goldfighter might be risky," Bailey said, using the code names for the Jaguarundi and the Sutter's Revenge, but it might be helpful to have her weapon handy for the antifleet debacle. The Sutter's is no slouch as far as self-defense is concerned, luckily." Seeing Frank's face, Bailey added, not unkindly, "Begging your pardon, sir, but don't ask. The fewer people who know her location the better."

Sensing Bailey's desire for communication with his comrades elsewhere, Jack had warmed up the wireless transceiver, and handed him the Morse key, already wired to the transmitter circuit. The Jaguarundi would not respond immediately; if all went according to prearranged plan, she would not acknowledge until she showed up within twelve hundred miles of the outermost atmosphere of Venus, and then only in an automatic, infinitely-switching frequency series. Bailey had already told Jack to keep the radio tuned to all channels in case of such a transmission, and to turn on the set and check it at four-hour intervals. Jack had dome so, and was thankful for the diversion.
Bailey took the key, and sent the message

XYXYXYATTENTION MADCAT (repeated twenty times)- STOP
ASSISTANCE REQUESTED AT MORNINGSTAR RENDEZVOUS-STOP
GOLDFIGHTER TO MAINTAIN POSITION-STOP
ENDXYXYXY
The entire message was repeated five times, Jack recording the beeps on a gramophone recording cylinder; when Bailey finished, he nodded to Jack, who set the channel switcher (Bailey had had it built on and had brought it with him from New Purgatory), and played the recording over the radio, repeating the recording twenty times, and repeating the transmission five times over the next five hours.

-------------------------
Far above the solar system proper, somewhere within the first ranks of the Asteroid cloud, the Jaguarundi stirred. Her electrics glowing slightly, she descended to clear space, then turned about and pointed her bows in the proper direction. A slight lurch, and then she was simply gone, silently and stealthily defying physics and time to carry out her orders...

Brantley finished making the box-within-a-box, its sides and top and bottom insulated and scripted against sound, and transmission of sound-acting thoughts, that might make other artifacts vibrate and produce the sound of a voice. He locked the sealed box within it, and Shi Markia's voice was heard no more.

"My work here is done for now," Brantley said. He took a gold-and-gator-skin cigarette case from his shirt pocket, and a blackbox very similar to, but obviously more advanced than, Mr. Rodney's, from the left thigh pocket of the trenchcoat, and plugged a wire in on both devices. He then opened the cigarette case, turned a dial on the instrument panel thus revealed, and he was suddenly out on deck. those curious enough to look through the windshield, and the front windows, saw him adjust a slider, the same dial, and two toggles on the case, and three toggles on the blackbox. A single sphere of transparent light formed around him, and he stepped to the railing, climbed atop it, and then simply stepped off into the void

--And was gone!

-------------------
When he materialized elsewhere, he turned to the gargantuan monstrosity before him, smiled in greeting, and said in its native tongue, "Hail, great cousin! I have a potentially-profitable venture for us!

[Alexis Voltaire]

"This base will have changed little, at least in layout." Zhan said as he finished the map. "It was fully built a few years before I was there, back when they needed space for a large fleet. Most of the docks have been empty since most of the fleet was destroyed by a solar storm, similar to the one that happened when we reached New Purgatory. They may have added more defenses, but there are few locations were they could have done so." He had drawn them out on the map, on ledges around two of the exits and three others on the mountain. "And it is unlikely that they will have much in the way of ground-based defenses, since they will be counting on the ships to fight off any large-scale attack. We'll have to disable these five exits here," He indicated them on the mid-level interior drawing, spaced evenly around the mountain like rays of a star. "Before they can launch the ships, otherwise they will be able to get out very quickly. These tunnels connect to the whole dock, they were made this way so that the any of the ships can launch from any direction. They are heavy doors on each of them, similar to those on the station hangar but thicker. Normally one or two of the doors is kept open most of the time, usually the ones on the ledges, for the ships that come regularly to get in and out. It takes about two or three minutes to fully open them, and maybe at the least five minutes to launch the first ships. That's if they aren't already preparing to launch, and the base is probably fairly busy right now... That could be an advantage though, since they will have more to deal with when the attack comes. The fuel storage is down near the bottom level, it wouldn't be enough to destroy the whole base, but taking it out would cause a lot of damage and confusion. It would probably work best for that if Jack can take the ship down there and set it off at the same time as we begin to attack the doors."

"Dy'think you can take out this entire base by yourselves?" Donnavan asked a bit apprehensively, looking over the map of the base Zhan had drawn.

"We have to try, I guess." Frank said.

Donnavan shook his head, unsheathing a long dagger from his jacket sleeve and testing the edge with his thumb. "Heh, You always were one for crazy ideas..."

[MWBailey]

"That's doable. no word yet from Madcat, Bailey; last transmission going out now," Pulsifer said.
"A couple of the Mondragon grenades would put the fuel depot out of commission and probably start the cone collapsing, if it's like I think it must be inside; one might keep it from collapsing before we want it to."

"What happened to Brantley?" Bailey inquired

"Oh, don't worry about him, Jack answered, "I think he's off someplace getting help. Don't ask, Dub, you won't like the answer. Sometimes I think he's more nefarious than I ever was. Where's Rodney , for that matter?"

"Oddly enough, he's off getting help as well, making short hops back to Terra firma, Bailey intoned, "said something about getting his blackbox looked at; also mentioned bringing some of the Black Suits back with him, if they let him, and also alerting them in person to the Drene-ah conspiracy. He thinksControl already knows, but he'll bring it up anyway, he said.

Frank, give me and Kirza that firebrand who attacked Brantley and her companion... Shi-Mori and Mordheim, wasn't it? set us down with that bunch and about three aether grenades apiece and a mortar and Sophia, here  about 1/8 click from it(he patted teh double-barrelled Villar Perosa machinegun), and we should be able to hold that main entrance until time to blow it. Might even manage to wedge a couple of ships in it..."

"Shi Mori and Corporal Mordheim, verily," said Kirza, and a good choice; she knows a few recondine tricks, and would charge an armored battallion as long as Mordheim were with her, she said fondly, as will I with you, She sent fondly.

Bailey looked at her and smiled and sent back, [likewise,[/i].

"Mingh can stay with me, if she wants," Jack said. "I can use the help. Ever piloted an airship before, Mingh?"

"I have piloted many things, and once or twice a zeppelin, yes, Jack-Captain," Mingh answered almost shyly. "I will be honored to accompany you."

"Sounds like mayhem and mischief are to be the order of the day," Bailey said, wryly...

-----------------------
"We are more than willing to accompany you, and do as you suggest, little cousin," said Chthorig-Hai of the Deep Waters, in the Choggorai tongue, to Brantley (Brthugor of the Winds of Time, in their language). "Indeed, these Drene-vah (the Stinking Presumptors I call them!) are becoming an irritant in our quicks, and their "psychic" stink is nigh unbearable. We would accompany thee and follow thy plan only for the satisfaction of the  endings of their "sorcerors!!"

"As long as they do not know thou are to accompany us for the summoning," the Elder Counselor continued, "the Elder Sign should not affect thee -- and even if it does, The God (his voice filled with what among the Choggorai passed for reverence) says that Thou are exempt, for too long have they used us without his sanction!"

The Caverns of Counsel rang with the Roars of the Elders of the Deep, but one voice said, "Nay! NAY! I want as is my right the essence of their High Priestess!" Said Chthuga the Destroyer, until recently the Beast of the Temple of Parhoon. And we must secure The Book!"

"I pray that such can be arranged, my cousin," Said Brantley Thou hast my promise, that if I am able, I will leave the priestess to Thee, and shall let Thou take, or render unto Thee, the Book of the Illuminati..."

"One thing More," spake Cthuga, "I wish to apologize to Bailey-of-the-Knives. If I had known he and his were against my summoners, (and if I had not been mad with grief and pain), I would not have killed so many of his people, for in the end, he did try to send me to our home, my Family..."

"We Grant thee These Rights, Cthuga, called The Destroyer," spake the Counselors in unison.

And then, in the timelessness of their realm, the Choggorai were brusquely summoned to the Universe of the Presumptors, And Brantley went with them, to pay back the Drene-Vah treachery with treachery and vengeance...

[MWBailey]

The Volcanic cone that was the base for Drene-vah interstellar ships was a very rugged, weathered affair, rising up from the hotfields and pits of boiling mud that surrounded it. The mountain held no more fire, but the plume of magma below it was still as hot as ever, and had moved on by a rate of fractions of an inch per year, to create a Yellowstone-like landscape of geysers, thin crust over boiling waters, and gaseous pits of horrible death by asphyxiation or scalding. Far above this end-of-the-world landscape, the teams let down by the main ship doors moved in on their targets.

Not content with the teams' mortar rounds and aether grenades, Jack had stripped away from the Beau's new rocket mitrailleuse four pipes, complete with their ignition mechanisms, and devised stocks and handgrips. Each team thus had one rocket tube and six rockets to fire from it.  seven o'clock was the planned time for the attack,since that was the time when the guard details were changed, and the shift's new arrivals were still blind from sleeping.

Six-thirty had come and gone, and Jack and Mingh had descended almost all of the way to the empty magma chamber, where the fuel depot was located. a fluke of geology had caused the room to stay  put and not collapse, as would normally have been the wont of such a feature, and the result was a vast room where the gigantic fuel storage tanks could be stored without fear. Until now, Jack thought, and chuckled, and was joined in his mirth by mingh.

They had placed the three aether grenades and pulled their pins, got back aboard the beau, and already passed through the walls of the cone to the outside when the guard-change klaxons came on, and a small lightship entered the room. It was immolated, literally burned to nothingness by the massive trio of explosions, and then the titanic roaring detonation of the Main Fuel Storage; a ship was coming up the tunnel assigned to Bailey and his team, and the blast upended the vessel and wedged it in the tunnel; then the stress grew too great, and the ship was thrust out through the locked doors as it exploded as well, and Bailey and his people ducked away from the opening, taking to the air as they had each set the timers of their own grenades; the explosions, when they happened, followed exactly on the heels of the fuel explosion, and brought down the entire escarpment above the door, blocking it as effectively as if it had not been there at all.

Then, Jack reported that the Jaguarundi had reported in, and was awaiting orders. Bailey radioed Jack back to tell him to relay the order to resonate teh mountain, and fire for target destruction. it became a general Fall Back Order, then, and the Drene-Vah who had so far survived and continued to resist cheered, for they thought they had won the battle, seeing the vaunted Knife Biters retreat...

[Alexis Voltaire]

The final plans and preparations were made as they waited for dawn, just a few hours away. It had been decided that Zhi-Selkio would take the star, hopefully it would be some use against the doors, or the ships, if they couldn't keep them bottled up in the mountain.

"Could you use my help?" Donnavan asked. "I don't know if I could help out with the doors, but..."

"I could take you." Zhi-Selkio said, after a moment of thought. "Where's that old cat-rifle you brought from the station?"

"In the back, I'll go get it." Donnavan said, disappearing through the door. He came back a moment later carrying a small ammunition box and a heavy looking rifle. It looked similar to a sharps with a heavy short barrel that had a gas tube assembly underneath. It had a short clip in front of the trigger guard, and fixed wide iron sights. It was heavily built and looked like it was made for rough use, and showed signs of it.

"Fifty-one Tiger." Zhi-Selkio said, somewhat impressed. "Haven't seen one in a long time, does it shoot good?"

"Dunno, never put more than a few rounds through it. Kicks like a sonnavagun." Donnavan said, handing the rifle to him.

"They certainly do." Zhi-Selkio said, inspecting it to make sure everything was functional. "Here, trade you for this, if you'd like." He said, retrieving his light plasma gun from where it was leaned against the wall and adjusting the sling before handing it to Donnavan.

"Thanks." Donnavan took it, a bit uncertain of it's odd configuration, but found it workable to his satisfaction, and slung it across one shoulder.

The volcanic remnant of Salos had eroded over the years from a symmetrical ash cone down to a roughly cone-shaped mountain of bare basalt cliffs, topped by a jagged half-collapsed crater. About halfway up the mountain and spaced evenly around it were five huge covered doors. There were a few other small entrances that came out onto the ledges, but they gave little indication of the size of the vast network of tunnels they led to. Baily and Kirza, and Mordheim and Shi-Mori took off for the first ledge, the widest one at the main open entrance. The others took off after the remaining doors, carrying the improvised rocket launchers.

Zhi-Selkio, Donnavan and another pair came down toward the second ledge. It was protected from above by wide overhang and to both sides by outcroppings, and the two turrets on the ledge. It would take almost a suicide run to take out the doors the way they had planned. They landed silently on the end of the ledge where it wrapped around the rock, hidden from view of the rest of it. Zhi-Selkio took off with the star, and the rest of them headed for the turret just around the bend in the ledge. They took out the first two at the turret, when one of the sentry dragons who happened to be walking around the ledge to the turret took them by surprise, and one of the troopers felled him with two quick shots before he could raise the alarm. The other sentries on the ledge heard the shots, and came toward them with blades at the ready, but not yet sure what was going on. Donnavan loosed his dagger in a quick motion, taking the first one through the eye, dropping him dead before he hit the ground. They trained the captured turret around at the far end of the ledge and took out the other turret before the other dragons could fire, and most of the other sentries on the cliff. One started firing back with a plasma rifle, but it apparently jammed before he could get off more than two ineffective shots at the turret shield. The others roared challenge and advanced. The ledge narrowed at one point as the sentries neared, to where it was hardly wide enough for more than one of them to get across. The dragon at the turret killed two more of them, but the other three had come past the turret's limit of train angle. They killed the first two with quick shots, and Donnavan retrieved his dagger and caught the third sentry in the throat as she turned and ran back for the tunnel. They had just finished off the sentries and were moving to disable the door when five more dragons suddenly descended on the ledge with a roar.

Zhi-Selkio took off from the ledge, taking the star in one claw and focusing on it. The rush was like flying a hurricane wind, incredible power that was easier than thought itself to direct, like having the energy of the storm itself at command... As he came around the mountain he concentrated, focused the energy, and directed a thin white bolt at the center of the wide door. It stuck with a crack like lightning, and a boom as the door dented inward and was actually pushed back into the rock face. A rumble came from behind it, and dust drifted out from between the cracks in the metal as the tunnel collapsed behind it. He focused the energy wide, and shielded himself from the shots from a plasma turret on the ledge, before sending another beam down and destroying it. The star was hot in his claw, almost too hot to hold on to, and he focused away from the energy. It cooled slightly as it grew dark. It had apparently been affected by the removal of the crystal, or the crystal had been some sort of dampener, but whatever the reason it couldn't be used very much or for very long without burning whoever held it. He quickly replaced it in the pouch on his harness and unslung the heavy rifle, clicking the safety off and taking aim at one of the two remaining dragons that had recaptured the turret on the ledge where Donnavan and the others were still trying to clear the way to blow the doors.

Frank readied his rifle as Shi-iri circled around the mountain, returning fire from one of the ledge mounted turrets and causing it to explode in a shockwave of flame and hot metal. The first door was easy to block by firing at the overhanging rock above it, but the second was in a sheer cliff and was a bit more tricky. It shook loose under the pounding of the rockets, taking out part of the cliff and killing the sentries at the turret in the open tunnel just below it, but left the exit wide open. Shi-iri circled around, and before he could get a shot a small gunship had come out from the open tunnel. he quickly phase-matched on the ship and fired, and there was a small explosion of fire from one of the engines, and the ship veered off to one side, barely missing the cliff face as it went down and disappeared around an outcropping. Shi-iri had come almost level with the open tunnel, and as she did Frank could see another ship coming down it. He quickly fired again, not sure if it hit or not, and Shi-iri dived and pulled away as the much larger ship left the tunnel with the roar of turbines, and quickly ascended up into the gray sky. It circled once, as if it were about to return and attack, but then it turned away again and rose into the clouds. Shi-iri came up from below the tunnel for a third attempt, and he had time to phase match the shot and fire into the roof of the tunnel, and it collapse as a huge block of basalt thundered down from the tunnel's ceiling. A muffled explosion came from behind it as one of the ships coming out either was crushed or hit the suddenly-appearing rock wall. Streaks of blue came around from the side of the cliff, and then two loud shots echoed almost on top of each other. There were distant shots, and roars, and explosions from other parts of the mountain as the remaining exits were blocked and the other defenses were destroyed. The Drene-Vah roared victory calls as they fell back, but then it became relatively, and oddly, quiet.

Too quiet.

[Alexis Voltaire]

Shi-Arkai looked over the page again, and hissed in frustration. She simply couldn't make sense of it, and time was against her. She looked up as the first of the explosions shook the mountain from top to bottom, followed by more shaking and deep booms as the lower levels collapsed. There were sudden calls from outside as well as inside the tunnels, and in the confusion that followed it became apparent that the base defenses were not holding out.

'We must leave with the others,' One of the dragons sent as another explosion shook the floor. 'the book must be kept safe!'

Shi-Arkai was about to respond, when a sudden idea came to her. They had set up several script writings, similar to to those used for summoning, in attempt to retrieve Shi-Markia. She laughed 'No, there is much we can yet do. They think they can stop us with such attacks, fools! They will soon learn of power the Drene-Vah have at their command!'

She called the others to the chamber as she walked down the sloping ramp into the darkness. They quickly assembled, and she began the ceremony as the explosions shook the chamber and made the lights of the script flicker.

'Have no fear! They have had but a taste of our power, Soon they shall soon know it's true fury!' 

The light shone brighter and fiercer, and the chanting quickened. They finished the final summoning as the script blazed with fire and smoke began to drift up from the destruction below, and Shi-Arkai screamed the final summoning word. She sent for those outside the mountain to take cover. But she felt, very slightly, as though something was wrong... She shook her head and laughed. the bindings were secure, and the sign would hold them. They knew what they were d-!

[MWBailey]

The Summoning went as it had for years before,the ritual having become so commonplace that it was completely scripted; too, a way had been discovered long before of writing out incantations to take the place of the interminable offerings, and promises, and bows to the winds, et cetera; long-term promises could thus be made, quickly, without resorting to the maddeningly-slow process of ritual. Many of such  'shortcuts' included as a matter of course promises to allow the powers that be, or the summoned, or both, to extricate their due at their discretion and to the degree that they chose.

There had been great trepidation, in the beginning, about the eventual bill coming due, but complacency had set in when a year and more passed without any sign of such...

And now the Summoned came, and while one among them was not a power, he did, in fact, work for one of them...
--
Shi Arkai stood looking upon the Summoned; though the level at which they stood below the dais was low enough that a Practitioner or other lackey would have to bend their neck and raise their head to look up at the one in the Summoner's position, most of these made it necessary for Shi-Arkai to do the looking upward. "We have need of thee! Destroy our common enemies!" she shouted, in the ecstasy of power that raced through her.

But they did not move.

"For what do you wait, Great Ones of the Deeps? Battle has been joined, and we wait upon thy aid!" impatiently she gritted to herself.

Then a voice came form among the Deep Ones, from near the front, where the Flaming One stood.

"THE TIME OF REQUIREMENT HAS COME, PRIESTESS!" It simply spoke in what was obviously its normal voice, yet the voice was louder than that of a titan, and the rocks of the chamber rent themselves in reaction to its power. "WE REQUIRE OUR PRICE, AND THE BOONS YE HAVE PROMISED TIME, AND YET TIME AGAIN!"

Shi-Arkai's breath caught, and the acolytes and Practitioners assembled began to mutter fearfully. This was not the way it should be! It had always been such a simple matter before!

She shook herself, and steeled her body and mind for what must be, though she feared how that might manifest itself, and said, her voice and manner a model facade of steel and fearless power, "What is it that you require, great ones? ask it, demand it, and it shall be given!"

"WE REQUIRE THE BOOK," the Speaker said, and then it, a diminutive , man-shaped and man-sized collection of only ten or twelve tentacles and a human face, moved dramatically and decisively out from behind the Fiery One, drew a pistol from under the mannish clothing it somehow wore, and shot Shi-Arkai solidly in the chest!

"...AND WE REQUIRE THEE," the Speaker said, sardonically. The Speaker changed his voice to that of a loud human. "I leave the rest of her fate to thee, Cousin," he said, smugly, aside to the Fiery One, who actually managed to bow in a courtly manner, and chuckled deeply and evilly.

And then The Speaker turned suddenly upon the assembly and said, AND WE REQUIRE ALSO, THINE! And the chamber and the passages outside echoed with the screams of the dying  and the lusty roar of the Summoned as the Practitioners were ripped limb from limb and devoured.

And then the Summoned took the Book, and a Lesser of the Deeps took it to their home world, vanishing in a puff of mist, while the others went out to wreak their due.

Brantley looked to the leader, and got what would have to pass for a nod from the inhuman bulk before him, and whipped out the cigarette case with a suddenly-human hand, and another hand, suddenly-morphed, opened it and keyed the proper sub-device and the frequency, and when the aetherphone was picked up on the Beau Rosin, and Jack's voice demanded "Hello?!" he said in a human shout, JACK! ITS BRANTLEY! TELL FROMMAGUER NOT TO FIRE UNTIL MY COUS -- UNTIL I GIVE THE CLEAR! AND TELL MINGH TO TELL THE OTHERS THAT THE CHOGGAI IN THE TUNNELS ARE OUR ALLIES! THEY WILL NOT HARM THEM!DON'T SHOOT THEM!

--------------------------
Zhie's claw had hovered over the tether-rocket's firing button, a sudden impression stopping his draconic digit. A second later the call came from the Beau to "HOLD YER FIRE! WAIT FOR TH' ALL CLEAR!"

Both Zhieh and Cal  breathed a sigh of collective relief, once Pulsifer explained the situation and they heard the urgent sending from Mingh. Gods, what they almost did...

And Bailey was suddenly Nonplussed to be confronted by, apparently, the same fiery being he and the troopers had hunted in the Deep tunnels of Iceberg station; the message was both spoken aloud, and sent, for all to hear:

HEAR ME, BAILEY-OF-THE-KNIVES! I AM CTHUGA, BEAST OF PARHOON, AND YET NO LONGER SO, AND I REJOICE IN THAT, THANKS LARGELY TO THEE AND THINE.

I AM NOW ONLY CHTHUGA THE DESTROYER, AND I APOLOGIZE TO THEE, BAILEY-OF-THE-KNIVES, FOR KILLING SO MANY OF THY KIND, WHEN IN THE END, WHEN AVAILED BECAME THE MEANS, THOU DID THY BEST TO RETURN ME IN NO FURTHER HARM TO MY HOME WORLD. I DECLARE NO QUARREL BETWEEN US, AND ONE BOON TO BE CALLED IN FUTURE FROM ME. CALL IT NOW, SOON, LATE, OR NEVER, ALL IS WELL WITH ME. I GO, NOW, TO KILL MY DUE... and The Destroyer vanished in a cloud of steam and fiery vapor.

And the tunnels and chambers of Salos rang with the roars of the Summoned, and the screams of the Drene-vah, as the Summoned claimed their price... 

Well, that was unexpected, sent Korza, after the Beast had vanished.

[Alexis Voltaire]

The dragons and troopers returned to the deck of the Beau Rosin just as the Drene-Vah's half-shielded screams started. By some stroke of sheer dumb luck none of them had killed, though almost all had been wounded in some way or another from this battle and the earlier one in the canyon. Zhi-Selkio had returned with Donnavan, who was holding tightly to his harness in a dazed state of partial consciousness. Blood was running down the side of his face from a deep cut on his forehead.

'They got him pretty good with a rifle stock,' Zhi-Selkio sent in a worried tone as Frank helped Donnavan down to the deck.

'Not so loud...' Donnavan muttered, both out loud, and to their surprise, in mental speech. He winced, and grinned slightly. 'Don't worry about me, I'll be...' He stopped as Chthuga appeared to Bailey and sent his message. "What was that about?" He asked, puzzled.

"Long story." Frank said as helped him into the cabin, and found a place for him to sit down so Kirza could clean and bandage the cut on his head.

By the time the Summoned had finished, the collapsing of the lower tunnels and levels had started a chain reaction that slowly brought down the levels above it, one at a time. A little less than an hour after the first blast, there was a huge groundshaking boom, and one part of the mountain collapsed inward on itself in a cloud of shattered rock and dust. One side of the crater fell down into a deep depression that formed on one side, and the collapse had triggered several rock slides around the mountain, taking off most of the ledges and overhangs and leaving it mostly bare slopes and sheer cliffs. Only one of the doors, or what was left of the tunnel leading to it, and only one or two of the smaller entrances could be made out, and only with difficulty and partly from knowing where they had been. Salos appeared, for the most part, as thought it had never been occupied. The shattered rock that had fallen around the base had dammed one of the slow, thick rivers that snaked out from a vast orange-red lake, and it gradually overflowed and drained into a nearby dry basin. The thick, what for lack of a better word could be called water, flash-boiled as it hit the hot ground, throwing up huge clouds of steam. Gradually the inflow of water cooled the basin somewhat, and it filled into a bubbling lake. The drifting steam hid most of Salos from view, and soon everything else but the ground directly underneath them and the near side of the mountain was hidden behind white fog.

But then several booming explosions shook more rock loose, and another tunnel entrance, nearly as wide as one of the five that had been destroyed, opened in the side of the mountain...

[Alexis Voltaire]

the smoke and flames had barely cleared from the tunnel entrance when two black gunships, each about thirty feet long, emerged into the early morning light. They drew even with one another and slowed, and then rose slowly above the tunnel entrance. One more followed, and following it was the pointed bow of a much larger ship, steel colored (though it was unlikely to be bare steel, in this climate) and painted across it was a red bar, and above the bar the shape of a rising sun with many rays. the rest of the ship came slowly, carefully out of the tunnel's jagged mouth, and picked up speed as the three gunships fell in beside it, two on each side and one above. Both the gunships and the larger ship bristled with turrets, and under the short 'wings' of the larger, double rows of rocket tubes could be seen. The ships turned and came toward them, looking as if they were preparing to attack, but then abruptly slowing and stopping. The larger ship hovered by means of it's pivoting aether-capable turbines, and the smaller ones through a similar series of multi-directional steam turbines.

'You are outnumbered and outgunned.' Came a sinister, but almost disappointed sounding call. 'If you fight, you will die. You have no choice. You will come with us.'

[MWBailey]

Brantley had seen off the last of his 'cousins,' and used the cigarette case chronojumper to teleport out onto the ruined slopes of the collapsed cone--and was there confronted by the sight of the confrontation between the Beau and the gunships, the largest right above him. No notice was yet taken of him by the gunners in the blisters and turrets right above him, but he knew something potentially bad was in the offing. The Beau could withstand the worst of what the black ships would be able to dish out, but Jack was sometimes a bit too wily for his own good; He might let them capture him and then try to blast his way out from inside. Brantley, as it turned out, waited too long to act and try to rescue the situation. The sphere of the first level of the travelling field blinked on around the Beau Rosin, and true to all form from his past and to his name, Mad Jack Pulsifer got sick of waiting for the enemy to make a move, and made one himself.

Jack possessed, or had possessed when he came through the interdimensional vortex, an entire crate of Commodore Dreyfuss' infamous Aether-reactive Mondragon Grenades, the very same explosive that had obliterated a box canyon just a day before. Dreyfuss had made them not from some half-poisonous metal, but from plates of copper engraved with a half-sorcerous power-collection grid shown to him by a friend, Captain Mondragon, whio was most recently the commander of the RTAF Zeppelin David Crockett. The grid collected Thaumic power, but had the heretofore unfortunate  side effect of being incapable of being drawn upon. The result was a grid that built up thaumic (also aetheric, by happy coincidence) energy, until it overloaded and exploded with massive violence and damage. in Dreyfuss', Mondragon's, and Jack's home multiverse, they were merely horrifically powerful. in teh Badger's, they were about on a par with a tactical nuke...

Jack fired three rockets from the bottom bank of the rocket mitrailleuse on the bow of the Beau, jinking it around for the bare 30 degrees that the block of pipes would rotate, sending each rocket torpedo toward a ship. It was almost a 'final act of defiance," as Brantley had heard such an action described, except for one thing, if one knew Jack and his current ship. the Mondragion grenades? Ten of them had been fitted into the warheads onf ten of the rockets...the entire bottom rank of the Mitrailleuse, as a matter of fact.

As the rockets slammed home, Brantley ducked back into a handy half-caved tunnel, Jack Slammed the Beau into second-level  Travelspace, and the two smaller gunships suddenly were enveloped in a searing, bright flash and obliterated just as they joined the largest of the three in blasting the Beau with everything they had. The beams, bolts, rockets, and various other missiles did not penetrate the field, of course, but the comparatively-tiny Beau was thrust and bounced and hammered all over the air above the hotfields, once into and then back out of the bubbling lake of now-acid water, and then shot upward at a dizzying rate as Jack yanked down the emergency-ascent pull-chain from the ceiling of the cabin, and hung on like a trapeze artist on a bender.

The big gunship was severely damaged, but not so much so that it would surrender or break off the fight. Its captain screamed in Draconic and in mindspeech for "EMERGENCY POWER! I WANT REVENGE!!!

The huge gunship began to rise, as Brantley unhooked his blaster from his belt, and aimed upwardat the barely-visible edge of teh bridge's glass-paned canopy on the giant gunship. "Sweet Mother o' mercy, guide my hand, and the comin' bolt. Amen..."

[Alexis Voltaire]

The ship had started to rise, when one turbine choked and sputtered, and restarted, making a loud noise that sounded as though something inside it was shredding the blades. The ship stopped rising and began to list, despite the efforts of the pilots to correct it, it was all they could do to remain airborne. It also tilted the canopy to the side just enough so that Brantley's shot went through the glass instead of ricocheting off of it. Screams of fury came from within as the ship tilted up again suddenly, almost overbalancing and flipping it over, and at the same time shot forward a few hundred feet before the remaining pilot could correct it.

'TURN! TURN AND FIRE ON THEM!' Came a scream, but the Beau Rosin was already far above them and doing the same.

The pilot's claws, slick with blood and damaged beyond their ability to hold the ship steady by the shattered glass and the shot that had gone all the way through the dragon next to him, lost hold of the controls. The ship plunged down to the ground, almost crashing before it was brought under control again by another dragon, and by then it was too late. The dragon at the controls tried to pull the ship up, but it was all the remaining turbine could do to hold them just above the ground, and it was rapidly losing power. The ship hovered with one turbine screaming and the other spewing black smoke, and her turrets still firing ineffectively at the Beau Rosin, before the heavy gasses overcame the dragon at the helm and the ship spun sideways, listed, and crashed.

The still running turbine exploded, killing the captain, and causing the turrets to finally stop firing when the explosion touched off the rockets and then the fuel tanks. A few dragons somehow made it out of the burning ship, but none made it out of the layer of poisonous fumes in time.

[MWBailey]

As the remaining black gunship dropped into the gaseous mire, Brantley noted the name of the ship, picked out in gold-and-white on the bow and stern: Achilles. "Thats odd, a feminine voice behind him said, and he whirled arounds as the voice continued, "It looks as if that Achilles' heel was in his head," Brantley gaped at Miss Sally, standing not three feet behind him, her hair tucked behind her pointed ears and her needle-like canines bared in a smile that would have been terrifying if he did not know her intimately, and dressed in a long, flowing , dramatic Goddess-of-Time robe (or so they had been called when it was chosen for female operatives who had to take on 'angelic' roles to head off temporal disasters)

"Miss Sally?! What-- Oh, the gunship, I can explain about that, see, the Beau would have been destroyed by another salvo, her field can only take so much, and--!" He cut off as Miss Sally kissed him and nipped at his lower lip with the canines; after a moment, he countered by wrapping his arms and his two remaining tentacles around them both (he had unintentionally re-absorbed all of the others). There was a flash of golden, and then bright-white light, and then as they finished the kiss and gazed into one another's eyes, they heard the hoots, cheers and jeers of the Advance Party on board the Beau Rosin, and both blushed, realizing that they had  still been in the embrace when they appeared aboard the airship. Inside the Forward Cabin, no less. Stars surrounded Sally, and just as suddenly as they appeared, she was gone, blowing him a kiss further, and saying quickly, "return soon, we need to talk."

"My friends...Comrades... It looks as though my job's done here," Brantley said, still chuckling and blushing slightly, "so I must return to my own plane and time. But the Committee will be watching. Jack, you will need to try and return to our London of 1898 in, at the latest, about ten years time. The Beau will be needed for a further debacle with either the Cold Ones or the Martians; maybe both. We'll just have to wait and see." And now, I apologize, but I must leave you," he said as he took out the cigarette case and adjusted several sliders and a rotary potentiometer dial."Mingh?" he said, as the spheres of his own field began to form, "take care of Jack while he's here-and-now, he has a tendency to wander off by himself if he's not well-minded." Jack stiffened indignantly, and then burst out laughing. And with that, MWBrantley vanished in a white blink that was not quite a flash, as the timewinds were heard as if in the distance, shrieking their interminable, grating song for a split second; and then there was only the relative silence as the diesel engine clattered along under the deck and the Chronojammer and Chronojumper ground away through travelspace...

-----------
"Brother, where is the Book?" Ulthuga of The Deep Caves asked Cthuga The Destroyer, deep within the Palaces of the God.

"It is in a safe place, Brother, Cthuga answered. "The female, Klthleega of The Claws, guards it and will rip it to shreds if any ask for it ever again."

"That is well, Brother, Ulthuga answered as he ripped another Drene-vah snack in half. The thing's dying shrieks were so tantalizing...

[Alexis Voltaire]

"I doubt they will be able to track us the way they have been, it seems that most of those left who could do so were inside the fleet base... " Zhan said. "It would be best, I think, to wait on the Badger, or other reinforcements. We have stopped most of what they had planned, for now, and bought enough time to regroup before we destroy the base in the Veritzeth. That will not be easy, and it will take a much greater force than we have now... Lygos might offer the most protection from anyone seeking us by more conventional means, there are many places the canopy is too thick to get through, and would take days to get a ship into by going underneath."

"Aye, I could probably find a place that they couldn't get into anyway." Zhi-Selkio said, pulling out the stack of maps and looking through them. The Sea of Lygos, or Sea of Shadow, was more of an immense mangrove swamp than a sea.  The trunks of the trees stretched fifty feet or more underwater to the muddy bed, and the thick canopy blocked out much of the light, bright as it was. under the trees it was like a half-lit cavern, with the pointed stalagmite-like roots of the trees stretching up from the water. The canopy streched unbroken for seven hundred miles east of the Veritzeth, and twelve hundred from it's far northernmost point to the the Sea of Equalis, the sea that circled the equator of Venus. There were a few small islands shown, but most of the of Lygos was unmapped, and the maps showed nothing but blank geen.

"Here," He said, marking a point in the middle of the green about halfway between the Equalis and the northern Veritzeth. "would be a good spot, there's an old mining base there of all things, dug down into one of the only solid rocks in Lygos. It's been abandoned for years. People have tried to get in, but there isn't really a way to do that now, it's all overgrown. This ship could get in there though, and it would be a more-or-less safe place to wait."