by Tom Hoffman
Sophia nudged Orville, whispering, “The ship is invisible to mice outside the cloak, but not to the mice flying the ship.”
“Oh, that makes more sense, it would be scary trying to fly an invisible Dragonfly.”
Mirus strode over to the hangar doors and rolled them open.
Sophia grinned as she climbed into the ship. “This is going to be fun, we can fly right over Muridaan Falls and no one will see us. I wish I’d brought a camera.”
Proto stuffed his enormous backpack into the rear storage compartment. “The cloaking device will also come in handy when we confront the hordes of Anarkkian attack spiders in Cathne.”
“The what?” Orville whipped around in his seat.
“The hordes of Anarkkian attack spiders who still prowl the streets of Cathne. Many have become non-functional over the centuries, but a great number still roam the area, attacking anything that moves, pulverizing it with their deadly force beams.”
“Orville, don’t you remember the historical records Proto showed us in the Cube? The Anarkkian Battle Cruiser dropping all the spiders on Cathne during the war?”
“I thought they’d be gone by now. Creekers. Amanda never said anything about attack spiders roaming the streets.”
“Relax, we’ll be fine. We’ll turn on the cloak when we reach Cathne, land on top of the cloudscraper, visit Puella the Wise One, then fly home. No problem at all.”
“Right, no problem at all. That’s what you said about our trip to Tectar.” Orville was well aware that the boundlessly optimistic Sophia had a way of drastically underestimating the obstacles and dangers they would be facing on their adventures.
Sophia thwacked Orville’s arm. “Hold on to your adventuring hat, Orville the Brave!” She pushed the left stick forward and the Dragonfly’s glimmering wings became a blur, the ship lifting ten feet above the floor, a low hum filling the hangar.
“Duplonium motors sound good, all wings functional.”
“Whoo hoo!”
Sophia slammed the stick forward and the hum became a roar, the Dragonfly’s powerful motors sending them through the open doors at over ninety miles an hour, pressing Orville back against his seat, his eyes wide, his paws gripping the arm rests.
The Dragonfly flashed across the grass runway and blasted almost straight up into the sky. Orville let out a screech. “What are you doing? Slow down! Are you trying to kill us?”
Sophia gave a cackling laugh. “I switched on the cloaking device. We’re invisible now, we can fly over Muridaan Falls and no one will see us.”
Orville’s eyes lit up. “Fly over my house, I want to see what it looks like from up here. And fly over the Book Emporium, maybe we can see Master Marloh.”
“Whoo hoo!” Sophia pulled back on the left stick and the ship went into a steep dive, screaming down toward Muridaan Falls. An involuntary smile appeared on Orville’s face.
“This is kind of fun. I can see the Book Emporium!”
Sophia slowed the ship to a hover several hundred feet above the shop.
“This is amazing! The mice on the street aren’t even looking up. There’s the old barn where we have lunch. Fly down the road to my house.”
Sophia did a slow banking turn, flying two hundred feet above the familiar winding lane that led to Orville’s home.
“Look how beautiful the leaves are from up here! The whole town is orange and red and yellow. I’d like to see it in the winter when it’s covered with a big snowy blanket.”
Orville nodded, looking toward the snowcapped mountains. His insides turned to ice when he saw the beautiful translucent blue ghost mouse flying alongside the ship, her unblinking eyes staring at him.
“Uh… uhh… it’s the…”
“What?”
Orville pointed mutely, but the ghost mouse was gone. “Nothing, just… the leaves are really nice.”
“Should I slow down? Are you getting airsick?”
“I’m fine, I don’t get airsick. Just that one time when it was really stormy. Fly over Ebenezer’s house, I want to see what it looks like with all the paint scraped off.” Orville glanced behind them, but the beautiful ghost mouse was nowhere to be seen.
“There’s your house!”
Proto leaned out of the cockpit. “Oh drat, I forgot to water my vegetable garden this morning.”
“Mum said she’d water it for you. Ebenezer’s house looks really different with no paint. Hey, the front door is opening. I can see Ebenezer! Maybe he’s going to paint the–”
Orville never finished his sentence. He never finished it because the moment Ebenezer Mouse stepped out through his front door he vanished. He was there, and then he was not there.
“Whoa, did you see that?”
“I saw it. It didn’t look like blinking, it was something else.”
“Do you think he can make himself invisible? He never said anything about that, all he said was there was more to the story.”
“We need to get the red book translated. Maybe then we’ll understand what’s happening here. I’m more certain than ever the book has something to do with the story Ebenezer is going to tell you.”
Sophia made a sharp swooping turn, sending the Dragonfly across a brilliant fall sky toward the distant city of Cathne.
Chapter 7
Elevator Music
“What happened to the vegetation? It’s all black, like there was a big fire or something.”
“The Anarkkians peppered Opar with thousands of cloud bombs during the war, killing or mutating all life forms, poisoning the earth for millennia. Creatures still living in those areas are to be avoided at all cost.”
Orville glanced back at Proto. “What kind of creatures?”
“Bad ones, creatures even I don’t want to meet.”
“Um, maybe we should fly around those areas instead of flying over them? Just to be safe.”
Sophia nodded, angling the ship to the northwest.
“Why are you slowing down?”
“I’m not slowing down.”
Orville looked over the side of the Dragonfly. The ship was still directly above the stark wasteland left by the Anarkkian cloud bombs.
“We’re not moving, we might even be going backwards.”
“That’s not possible, the speedometer says were cruising at one hundred and ten miles an hour. It’s probably just an optical illusion.”
Proto’s head popped out from between the seats. “I would have to concur with Orville’s observation. My Interworld Positioning System indicates we are moving backwards at precisely three miles per hour. We are also losing altitude at the rate of twenty feet per second.”
Sophia jammed the stick forward, the duplonium motors roaring, the gleaming translucent wings barely visible, their ferocious wind forcing Orville to hold on to his adventurers hat.
“It’s not working! We’re still going backwards!”
“The motors are running at full capacity, I’m giving her all she’s got! The speedometer says we’re flying at one hundred and ninety-five miles an hour.”
“We’re descending! Something is pulling us down!”
“There’s no wind, it can’t be a downdraft. What’s doing this? I can’t go any faster!”
Orville froze. Far below them on the desolate tortured ground two gigantic rusty metal doors were sliding open, revealing an enormous black rectangular shaft beneath them.
“What is that? Proto, look! Big doors are sliding open down there!”
“This confirms my suspicion that we have been ensnared by a powerful gravitator beam, most likely Anarkkian. It is pointless to fight it, such beams are fully capable of capturing a medium sized attack scout ship. I’m afraid our little Dragonfly has no chance of escape.”
“Who’s doing it? What do they want?”
Proto shook his head. “I have magnified my vision by a factor of twenty, but am unable to see what lies beneath the open doors. In all probability the shaft is the entrance to an old Anarkkian military outpost lyin
g several hundred feet below the surface. It would appear the outpost is currently occupied by unknown inhabitants.”
Sophia pulled back on the stick. “I’ll burn out the motors if I keep this up, I’m reducing our speed to a hover. I’ve lost all control of the ship.”
Orville watched the scorched and blighted landscape moving up toward them as the ship rapidly descended.
“How could anyone still be there? The Anarkkians left at the end of the war.”
“It very well could be an autonomous defense system.”
The Dragonfly was now only a hundred feet above the ground, Orville anxiously scanning the ravaged land, the crusted black remains of ancient trees and plants barely recognizable.
“Something is moving out there! What is that?”
Sophia saw them, long writhing blue and white striped wormlike creatures undulating and pulsating through the charred earth.
“It looks like they’re swimming in the ground, like it’s water. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I think I’m going to throw up. We need to get out of here.”
Orville let out a shriek when the Dragonfly was drawn into the dark shaft. The ship shot downward, the opening above them shrinking until it had become a small blue rectangle.
“We are currently two miles below the surface, far deeper than I had anticipated. Such great depth would have provided the outpost with an impenetrable defense against even the most powerful pulsar beam weapons possessed by the Elders.”
Orville flicked his wrist, a brilliant orb of light shooting out.
“The sides of the shaft are all rusty and corroded. It looks really old. Maybe we can just shut off that gravitator beam thing and then fly out again. That won’t be so bad. We’ll just shut it off and leave.”
Ten minutes later the Dragonfly touched down on a heavily scarred metallic floor. Orville’s light orb flashed across the room. They had come to rest in a cavernous hangar filled with innumerable flying machines in varying states of disrepair and decay, some barely recognizable hulks of rusted twisting metal.
“Creekers, what is this place?”
Proto scanned the jungle of derelict ships. “These are old, some flown by the Elders, some by the Anarkkians, but there are many which I do not recognize.”
“Do you think they were caught by that gravitator thing?”
“Impossible to tell. Clearly the beam is still functioning, but when the last ship was captured I cannot say.”
Sophia sent out a second orb of light, brightly illuminating the interior of the hangar.
“I like Orville’s plan to shut off the gravitator beam. We need to find the outpost’s command center. Orville, blink up a sphere of defense, there’s no telling what we might run into. You saw those blue striped worm things swimming in the ground. There could be other mutations living down here.”
Orville blinked up a shimmering sphere of defense, his eyes darting around the hangar.
Sophia hopped out of the Dragonfly.
“Let’s take those doors on the other side of the hangar.”
The three adventurers cautiously wove their way through the dismal graveyard of long abandoned flying machines.
“Did you hear that? I think I heard something moving.”
“That was me stepping across this wing. I have scanned the hangar and found no evidence of life forms.”
“That’s a relief. Some of these flying machines are really weird looking. I can’t even tell how they fly. There’s a blinker ship over there but half the hull is missing. We should bring Mirus Mouse back here sometime to look around. He’d like all these weird machines.”
Proto approached the two massive doors at the far end of the hangar. He slapped a glowing violet disc on the wall and the doors slid open with a dreadful screeching and rending of metal.
“Whoa, that could use a bit of oil.”
Sophia laughed. Sometimes Orville could be so funny.
“This corridor is really long, lots of doors. Do you think there’s anything in the rooms?”
“Probably filled to the brim with giant squirmy blue striped worms.”
“That’s not even funny. We have no idea what might be living down here.”
“Proto said nothing is living down here.”
“I’m going to peek inside one of the rooms. Maybe the Anarkkians stored all their gold down here.”
Orville gingerly raised the rusted lever, inching the door open, sending in an orb of light.
“No squirmy blue worms. It looks like racks of weapons, sort of like those vape guns we found on Periculum.”
“Don’t touch anything, it’s all really old, probably unstable. The last thing we need to do is accidentally set off a gigantic explosion.”
Orville eased the door shut. “Now we know for sure it was a military outpost. Next step is finding the control center and shutting off the gravitator beam. Proto, any idea where it might be?”
“The beam originates from beneath the shaft, so I would surmise that the control center is located on a lower level, most likely the one below us. Although there are currently no living creatures in evidence, we must remain vigilant. Outposts such as this often had deadly security systems in place. One wrong move and we could be instantly vaporized.”
“That doesn’t sound especially appealing. What are we looking for?”
“Impossible to tell, many are quite undetectable until it is too late.”
“I wish you hadn’t told me that.”
Proto pushed through a set of battered swinging doors at the end of the corridor.
“Excellent, an elevator, and it appears to be functional.”
He tapped a glowing violet disc on the wall and the two corroded metal doors squealed open.
Orville peered inside. “Look at all the buttons, how do we know which one to push?”
Sophia stepped into the elevator. “It’s easy, the top one is lit, so it must be our floor. We just press the button below it, one floor down. Nothing to it. I like this soft music, it’s kind of relaxing.”
Orville stepped hesitantly into the ancient elevator. “It feels kind of wobbly.”
The elevator made a painful groaning sound when Proto stepped in, the floor sagging slightly.
Orville looked anxiously at Sophia. “That doesn’t sound good, we should look for stairs.”
“You’re being a nervous ninny.” Sophia slapped the elevator button.
Two things happened when she hit the button. First, the doors squealed shut, and second, the elevator shuddered violently, dropping like a stone. The three adventurers were in free fall, plummeting toward the ground sixteen stories below at over fifty miles an hour.
Chapter 8
The Invoice
The ancient rusty elevator brakes gave an ear splitting shriek, clawing wildly at the fraying steel cables, sending the trio of adventurers tumbling to the hard metal floor. Moments later the car groaned to a stop, the soft music still playing.
Orville staggered to his feet. “Creekers.”
Proto grinned. “Quite a thrilling descent.”
Sophia stood up, dusting herself off. “That was unexpected. Next time we should take the stairs.”
The doors creaked open.
“I guess we go through the doors at the end of this corridor.”
The adventurers strolled down the long hallway, Orville eyeing the old photographs of uniformed Anarkkians hanging on the wall.
“Definitely a military base.”
Proto swung the two large brass doors open. Orville’s jaw dropped. He stood facing an enormous brightly lit, luxuriously appointed room.
“Whoa, this looks like a really fancy hotel, something you’d find in a big city.”
The floor of the magnificently opulent room was covered with deep plush maroon carpeting, almost a dozen beautifully embroidered couches artfully placed next to ornate gleaming bronze tables.
Sophia grinned. “This is amazing, it rivals anything I ever saw on Quintari
. Look at the murals, jungle scenes with those yellow and orange birds, only a master artist could have painted that.”
“What’s a place like this doing in a creepy old military outpost? It seems kind of weird, doesn’t it?”
“It must have been for the highest ranking members of the Anarkkian military. It is odd to find such a luxurious setting in a military outpost, most of them were stark and utilitarian.”
“Like Norrich Bunker on Periculum.”
“Exactly.”
Sophia strolled across the brilliantly lit room, running her paw across the gleaming marble table tops. “There’s no dust on the tables. These books are definitely Anarkkian. They look like travel books, but the skies are pale green.”
“Look at the front counter where the guests checked in. Fancy. It must have cost a fortune to stay here, there’s no way I could have–“
Orville stopped in mid sentence when he saw the gleaming golden door behind the registration desk opening. A twelve foot tall gaunt rubbery looking speckled blue creature with no nose stepped into view. Fastidiously dressed in a smart gray pinstriped suit and red bow tie, the creature was humming softly to itself, holding a sheath of papers. It turned around, carefully locking the door behind it.
Orville whispered, “What is that thing?”
Proto studied it closely. “It is most likely an Anarkkian automaton possessing some high degree of engineered intelligence. It looks vaguely familiar, something I may have seen in the storage records back at the Cube. I am uncertain as to why it is wearing a suit.”
The creature looked up at the sound of Proto’s voice.
“Ah, we have guests. A wonderful good afternoon to all of you, and welcome to the magnificent Imperial Inn of Anarkkia. Might I inquire if you have existing reservations?”
Sophia stepped forward, smiling brightly. “I’m afraid we don’t have reservations, we stumbled upon your marvelous inn by accident. It was quite a surprise to find it here.”
“I do hope the gravitator beam was not too jarring, and I apologize for that dreadful elevator. I have called numerous times for a repair technician, but the service department has been painfully lax in their response.”
