Omegaburn loaned me her wrist computer so I could surf the Internet while I recuperated. A wrist computer she hadn't worn during the raid, I noted. She claimed to not use it much. The Ygnaza were all over the news cycle. They weren't the first aliens we'd made contact with, but they were the most recent. Much to my annoyance, I was all over the news cycle too. Someone at the fund had painted a publicity still from reference shots that was scarily accurate given that I'd never been photographed with my new goggles. Judging by the style, it was the same person who'd painted the "Sidekicks Assemble" series.
Most of the morphine had cleared my system by the time Minispell arrived, riding on the shoulder of her apprentice. My head was clearer, but so was the pain in my midsection. Minispell dressed in royal purple and blue. The inside of her cape was lined in red. She had a more elaborate costume than most; she could get away with it since she didn't have to engage in hand-to-hand combat much. I don't know what the diminutive sorceress's natural height was, but at the moment she was twelve inches tall. Her apprentice held out an arm and let her walk to the top of my now-disconnected heart monitor.
"Hi Ixa," I said, avoiding eye contact with the apprentice. Ixahau was her code name, I didn't know her real name. She was about my age, possibly a little older, but not by much. Her costume was white, with fake boots and gloves. That is, the sleeves and legs were colored black up to the calves and mid-forearms. At a glance, it gave the impression of separate articles of clothing. She was among those members of the community who wore a sigil. In her case, the image was a black starburst with a Mesoamerican hieroglyph at its heart. Her mask was old, as in Olmec old, carved from white jade into the face of a goddess whose forehead bore the same glyph as her sigil. At some point, centuries ago, the mask had broken in half, leaving an uneven, angled lower edge just below the nose.
My eye was drawn to the red sash around Ixa's waist. The knot sat by her left hip, the ends of the fabric falling by her thigh. Compared to the rest of her, which was all black and white, even the patch of pale skin showing at her chin, the shock of bright color stood out. I never did figure out her ancestry. She'd inherited a Central American legacy, but nothing about her accent or complexion would have suggested Latina without it. She gave me a curt nod, barely dislodging a single strand of black hair.
I turned my attention back to the tiny woman atop the heart monitor. "Minispell, I hear I have you to thank for not being written off as dead."
"You're welcome," she said, her voice somehow not pitched up by the tiny windpipe. I had to chalk it up to magic. "Though the doctors had their doubts when we brought you in for surgery."
"Personally, I'm glad you convinced them otherwise."
"It was the right thing to do." I couldn't argue with that sentiment, being the primary beneficiary of her efforts.
"Aren't you going to wonder why I'm here?" Ixa asked. "After all, I didn't participate in your raid."
I had actually been avoiding the question. I still had very strong memories of the last time I'd been around her. I'd spent a week working up the courage to ask her out, only to be answered with laughter. I'd spent months convincing myself that people who only know each other on a codename basis were going to have trouble dating anyway. That didn't make the laughter any less painful.
"I figured it'd come up in due course," I lied. I'd hoped it was incidental.
"Ixa is here to help speed along your healing," Minispell said. "It's magic I don't have."
"Speed along how much?"
"Well, you won't be able to hop out of that bed and do gymnastics," Ixa said, "But it will bring weeks down to days in terms of recovery time."
"Well, thank you Ixa, every little bit helps." I guessed that the spell in question could only help those already on the road to recovery, or she'd spend a lot more time in hospitals. Ixa brought her hands together in front of her. As she pulled them apart, she drew a bundle out of a swirl of white energy. It was a trick more impressive to those who didn't know she had to spend a great deal of time preparing the storage containers she summoned the items from. Ixa unrolled the bundle on the prefab floor of the field hospital, extracting a satchel which she hung about her neck. The bundle itself was the tanned hide of some sort of animal, possibly a capybera. The fur side went down.
She placed a brown clay bowl in the middle of the hide, extracted small pots of unguents from the satchel and began to draw on the hide around the bowl. Using a different finger for each unguent, she produced a multicolored pattern laced with glyphs in the general shape of a circle. She tucked them back in the satchel when she'd finished. I tried not to chuckle. The bowl had no part of the ritual, but it did serve as a handy guide to get the circle right. Standing, Ixa closed off the IV for my blood drip and took the mostly-empty bag from the line.
"What?" I asked.
"I could take the blood from your hand, if you prefer," she said.
I said nothing, and she knelt by the hide. As she started into the incantation, my skin began to crawl. It wasn't only the unnatural words, it was the almost palpable energy being called up with each syllable and utterance. At the height of her incantation, Ixa slashed the blood bag with a flint knife. Where the crimson splatter fell upon the circle, it glowed a bright red. Glowing fumes from the splatter rose and swirled around inside the circle, joining with the energy she'd collected. Ixa raised her arms, blood bag and knife still in hand. A red mist rose from the circle. Approaching me, it wormed its way under the bandages and slithered in through the sutured hole in my midriff. The glow subsided as Ixa finished her incantation. The circle had also vanished from the hide.
"That feels weird," I said.
"It will fade as the wound does," Ixa said.
"At least, the pain stopped."
She stood, restoring the bundle to its rolled and tied state before sending it back to storage in a swirl of white energy. The part of me that most lamented not having a girlfriend wanted to ask her out again. My fear and the analytical part of me gagged it and dragged it to the darkest corner of my mind for an unholy beat-down. Needless to say, I didn't speak what was on my mind as Ixa collected Minispell and the two left. At least Ixa looked as nice walking away as she did walking towards me. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder.
"You should go back to the domino mask. It was a classic," Ixa said, "The goggles just look silly."
I never could grasp magic. I've been told that one of its key ingredients is faith, which is why the government repeatedly failed to weaponize it. I've seen it work, but I can't help trying to rationalize it. Even though I went from bedridden to being able to shamble about the compound unsupervised overnight, the explanation of "magic" didn't sit well with that obnoxious analytical part of me. Why that was the most vocal part of my mind, I'll probably never know. While it came in handy from time to time, that part of my mind was a sanctimonious know-it-all. I wandered about the base in borrowed BDUs and my goggles. I don't know where my costume went, but after the abuse it had taken, it was probably a write-off anyway. The green-gray digital camouflage pattern didn't suit me, but it was better than a hospital gown.
The staging area from which we'd launched our raid into the slaver base had grown into a fairly large town as they trucked in scientists and engineers to pick apart the Ygnaza tech inside. Past an armed perimeter of MPs was another camp, far more chaotic and disorganized, and filled with press and alienists. All of them wanted to get a peek inside the slaver base, meet the Ygnaza, or both. A handful of vans parked along the dirt road enclave bore no press markers, or the chaotic scrawl and artwork of the alienists. They were the Hero Watchers. I couldn't decide if they were overzealous fans, stalkers, a demented brand of paparazzi, or a mix of all three. One of them snapped my picture with a telephoto lens that dwarfed the digital camera it was attached to. I scuttled away from that group, trying to get out of their line of sight.
I found Xiv trying to stare down a couple of MPs who were keeping him from approaching within sight of the front gate. Someone had found him a new pair of pants. These were still black, but not worn or tattered. The opening for his tail still looked to be an aftermarket modification. "Why can't I meet the people out front?" He asked with that naive sincerity you get from small children. "I got to meet all these scientists and soldiers in here."
"The people out front are not interested in meeting you for the sake of finding out what a nice person you are," I said. "They'll make up all sorts of stories about you, most of which will be lies, and more than a few of which will be mean."
"Why?"
"Not everyone is a nice person Xiv. We're just trying to keep you from getting hurt. Not physically hurt in this case. But you know there's more than one kind of pain." Xiv pouted slightly, but nodded. "Has anyone been mean to you?"
"Not since you woke up," he said.
"You want to meet some new people?" I asked. Xiv perked up and nodded. "My dad's setting up a video call with my brother and sister, I'm sure they'd love to meet you." Xiv smiled. It was unnerving how his oversized canines protruded when he did, but it wasn't meant as a threatening gesture. "Come on." I led Xiv away from the front gate and the annoyed MPs to the Community Fund trailer. It looked like an ordinary comms trailer, but had been loaded down with extra soundproofing and shielding against a variety of scanning methods. When this had become a long-haul operation, the Fund had it trucked in so we could have a place away from prying eyes.
A pair of twins whose powers I was unfamiliar with stood guard. They stopped me at the door. "Shadowdemon is trying to bring the dragon boy inside," one said over the intercom.
"Let them in," Dad called back, "I'm the only one here."
"Affirmative," he said, nodding towards me and opening the door. The entryway was an antechamber, almost like an airlock. There was no direct line of sight from outside to the interior. Passing through the inner door, we were in a small lounge with couches and a kitchenette. There were no windows, but there was a television bolted to the wall next to the door to the comm room.
"Why did they stop us?" Xiv asked.
"Not everybody in the community knows who everybody else is under their masks. Protocol says newcomers get announced so they don't walk in on someone unmasked who didn't want to be seen that way." Xiv looked confused, but seemed to accept it. God, we are a paranoid bunch. Dad emerged from the comm room, mask on.
"Morning Xiv," Dad said.
"Morning Mister Demon."
Dad chuckled. "The question remains, what do we do with you?"
"Can't I stay with you guys?" Xiv asked. "I promise I'll be good."
"There are rules we live by," Dad said, "And if you want to stay with us, I'm going to hold you to all of them." Xiv looked at him eagerly, not sure if he was supposed to speak up. "The second most important of these rules if that if you know someone's secrets, especially their secret identity, you do not tell anyone without their permission. Do you understand?"
"I think so," Xiv said, "But what if the secret's bad?"
"Then you talk to the person, and try to convince them to come clean with everyone else. You don't go behind their back."
"I see," Xiv said. "So what's the most important rule? You said that was the second."
"Most important rule is we don't kill," Dad said. "I started with the second, because if you're going to stay with us, you're going to end up learning our identities. So you have to keep them a secret."
"I understand," Xiv said.
"I'm surprised you're so casual about this," I said to Dad.
"We started checking out Xiv before you woke up," Dad said. "He's got no implanted recording devices, no psychic triggers, no magical geas. There's no evidence that he's a Trojan horse, just a lost young man in a confusing situation. You forgot the adage, trust but verify."
"You've riddled me with so many adages that it's hard to keep track."
"Remember Xiv, everything from here on is a secret."
Xiv nodded. Dad pulled back his mask. He looked like a more gaunt version of me. His salt-and-pepper hair had more salt than pepper these days, but his eyes were sharp as ever. Letting the hood hang behind him, he extended a hand. "I'm Lenny," he said.
Xiv shook his hand. "I'm still Xiv." I took off my goggles and tucked them in the front pocket of my BDU jacket.
"And that's my son, Travis."
"Nice to meet you again," Xiv said. "You're still my favorite person."
"Thanks, Xiv." We passed through the door into the comm room. The walls were painted black, and it was dim save for a spotlight around the focal point of the camera, and the glow from the wall monitor. Dad had apparently already warned Donny and Nora. Neither had their masks on. Donny was in a similar comm room, presumably in the base of the team he was training with. Nora sat at the workbench in my hideout, probably using my laptop. Nora pretended to be blasé about Xiv's appearance, but Donny leaned forward.
"Whoah, cool," Donny said, "You really are part dragon." Donny was the only surviving member of the family to have Mom's light-brown hair. Jeremy had it too, but, well, he was dead.
"Donny, this is Xiv, Xiv, that's Donny, Travis' brother."
Xiv hurried up to the screen. "Nice to meet you."
"I can't see you any more," Donny said.
"Xiv, the camera's pointed here," Dad said, putting a hand on the simple chair in the spotlight.
"Oh," Xiv said, moving to the chair. "That better?"
"Much," Donny said.
"Tell me you really found him," Nora said, "and Travis didn't knock up some lady dragon when we weren't looking."
"Nora!" Dad, Donny and I exclaimed.
Xiv just looked quizzically at her. "Dragons are extinct," Xiv said, "That's why the Final Star wanted to clone them."
"Looks like they did it," Donny said.
"No," Xiv said, shaking his head, "I was a reject." Hearing the sadness creep into his voice, I put a hand on Xiv's shoulder.
"We're not rejecting you," I said. Xiv smiled. It still had a very wrong appearance.
"So you did find him," Nora said. "And now you're taking him in like a lost puppy."
"There's nowhere else to send him," Dad said, "He's better off with us than locked up in a lab like the army wants to do with him."
"How'd you talk them out of it?" Nora asked.
Dad sighed, "We had to give them the Ygnaza. We weren't going to win that argument anyway. There were just too many aliens and no facilities to hold them. We picked helping the innocent over defending slavers' rights. It wasn't as hard as it sounds."
"I saw that leaked video of the interview with the alien overseer," Donny said, "I'd have picked the dragon boy over them if I was in your shoes."
"Regardless, we should strive to help everyone we can."
"Yes, Dad." I realized what it was that had really saved Xiv from an army lab. The scientists would be too busy studying the alien tech and biology to spend too much time looking at a curiosity made by human science. There was only so much research capacity to go around. Someone already knew how to make Xiv, their notes could be read later. The conversation moved on to other things, and for a brief while, we were a family again, despite the thousands of miles in-between.
Part 13
I tried to return Omegaburn's wrist computer, but she told me to keep it, since she didn't use it much anyway. It was orange, and an older model, but the case could be changed, and it was still useful for cloning keycards, SIM chips and RFID modules, following a tracer, following a feed from a wireless camera, or a dozen other things. It had a feature newer models tended to omit for space reasons, a gas piston launcher for firing tracers or camera jammers a short distance. It was bulkier than the newer models, but it was still better th
an what I had before.
I did not regret leaving Minnesota behind, and Xiv's wonderment as he gawked out the aircraft window at each new sight was somewhat endearing. The whole world was new to him, and I think he was just starting to realize how much of it there was. Torquespiral met us at the airport. His limo was driven by a shapely young woman I tried desperately not to leer at, especially since I think she was his granddaughter. During the ride, Xiv called the venerable hero "Mr. Spiral," much to his amusement. Torquespiral formally apologized on behalf of the board for almost getting me killed. Technically, under the mass of laws and regulations that applied to our work, they weren't strictly liable. But, the Fund was made up of members of the community, and mishaps like that were not taken lightly.
Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus) Page 17
