by E. J. Blaine
“Whoa, what is it with your language lately? First I thought, okay, she’s just scared, but…I didn’t think you knew half those words.”
Doc sighed and shook her head in exasperation. “I was a battlefield nurse, Jack! If scared, dying men scream it, I’ve heard it. I can curdle milk from across the room in five languages! Plus a few random obscenities in Hindi and Afrikaans. I just didn’t use them around you before. I was minding my manners.”
“Right,” Jack said with a grin. “I remember now. You stopped because I don’t rate anymore.”
She playfully hit him in the shoulder. “You rate just fine, Jack. Maybe I don’t feel like playing a role around you anymore. I did that for a long time. I hid the truth from you because I thought it was the right way to play it. But that didn’t do either of us any good. So I don’t want to hide things from you anymore. This is me, Jack. I’m not always very ladylike. I swear sometimes. When I get going, I’m actually pretty good at it.”
He reached out and placed his hand gently against her cheek. “Sure you are. I’ve noticed you’re pretty good at a lot of things.”
She smiled back at him. “Damn right. So no more of this acting like I can’t take care of myself anymore just because you love me. Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ve got Captain Stratosphere watching my back.”
Jack winced. “I deserved that, didn’t I?”
“You did,” said Doc. “But you deserve this too.” Then she leaned in and kissed him.
“Come on,” she said after she broke away. “Let’s get back in and join the fun.
Jack nodded, then stole another kiss.
Duke and Padger were teaching the others some English drinking song as they came back inside. Even Rivets was getting caught up in the mood of celebration.
“Come on, Jack,” Duke called out, “Stop monopolizing Doc. We need an alto here.”
Doc gave him a smile and squeezed his hand. She was right, he thought. It was a tough world out there, and they owed it to Ellen to do what they could to make it better. But they were together. They’d won this fight, and with their friends beside them, they’d win the next ones too. It was going to be a hell of a world when Doc was done with it, Jack decided. He couldn’t wait to see it.
He took Doc’s hand and they joined in on the chorus.
Well it’s all for me grog, me jolly, jolly grog,
All for me beer and tobacco.
For we spent all our tin, with the lassies drinking gin,
And across the western ocean we must wander…
###
As the Luftpanzer neared Samarkand, Maria Blutig felt an intense need for sleep and knew it wasn’t natural. She left Ecke in command and retired to her cabin. She prepared a magic circle on the metal deck and sat down in the center. With her hands on her knees, palms up toward the heavens, she focused her energies outward and let the summoning take her. She closed her eyes and was asleep in moments.
She dreamed herself in a blasted stone circle atop a mountain. It was an ancient place, marked with age-old runes and lit by torches and lightning that flashed silently through the clouds overhead. She knew this place well. It was where she’d sworn allegiance to Crowley and the Silver Star in exchange for the power to take her revenge.
Crowley stood on the far side of the circle, waiting.
“My master,” Maria said as she approached.
“This is a setback, Maria,” Crowley said. “A significant one. Shambala was an important part of our plans.”
“It couldn’t be helped,” she replied. “We underestimated AEGIS once again.” Her unspoken meaning, of course, was that he had underestimated AEGIS. Under her command, Shambala Base had been producing powerful weapons. It was Crowley who had overreached in his plan to remove AEGIS and invited a counterattack before they were ready. But that criticism would remain unspoken. Crowley was still the master, for now at least.
“McGraw has resurfaced,” she added. “He’s working with AEGIS again.”
“Your obsession with McGraw is becoming a liability, Maria,” Crowley said.
She accepted the observation but wasn’t threatened by it as she assumed he intended. “But not one large enough to outweigh what I bring you.”
The closed line of his mouth moved into something not quite a smile. “Not yet.”
“We can return to Shambala,” she said. “Luftpanzer can land a team in the mountains nearby. They can make their way in overland.” It was true. It would be more difficult than flying in, but it could be done.
“No, that avenue is closed to us,” Crowley said. “At least for now. I’ve attempted several psychic probes since you chose to abandon Shambala Base. The valley has found its guardian. We must seek another way.”
“What would you have me do, my Master?”
She studied his face, his expression shifting subtly. It was getting harder to conceal the insolent tone behind the words. Their alliance meant different things to each of them. To Crowley she was a tool, a weapon like any other in his arsenal. More capable, perhaps, and so more highly valued. But still a means to an end. He would discard her when it suited his purpose.
But she would never be the slavish acolyte he required. Most of Crowley’s tools and weapons were broken when he picked them up. They devoted their very souls to him because he promised to make them whole again, to repair what the war, or just the world in its turning, had done to them. Maria was different. What she’d gone through hadn’t broken her; it had forged her. Serving Crowley was to her advantage and as long as that remained true, she would be his weapon. But if that ever changed…
“AEGIS is the power that opposes us,” Crowley said at last. “So I set my best weapon against them.”
He paused a moment, and Maria noted the parallel with what she’d just been thinking. How far into her mind had he managed to burrow? Did he trust her, or did he realize the danger she represented?
“But my best weapon has failed me,” he said. She noticed his dream form growing taller, his posture more aggressive. “In my visions, I see you destroy my enemies. I see you shatter AEGIS to clear our path. Yet again and again you fail. And McGraw is always at the root of it.”
His aspect was terrible now. She saw the leering expressions of Crowley’s demonic advisers flash across his features.
“I see the flaw in you now, Maria. No matter how strong I try to make you, your obsession with McGraw makes you weak. If you’re to be of use to me, we must first deal with that.”
Crowley towered over her now. The rocks trembled, and Maria saw a darkness in his eyes beyond darkness. He was becoming something other than human, she sensed.
“McGraw is the keystone!” Crowley’s voice boomed. “If he is destroyed, then AEGIS must inevitably fall. I’ve considered what motivates him, what makes him strong, and what makes him weak. I know how we can annihilate him utterly.”
Maria looked into the abyss of Crowley’s eyes, and smiled. This was why she followed him; because he always saw the next step forward.
“I am yours to command, my Master,” she said in earnest.
###
Christopher Rhys stood on a hilltop and looked out over the valley. There was the river, there the waterfall, there the broken grassland where the Tarasques hunted, there the high slopes with their pines and the nests of night birds. Rhys leaned on his spear. He could feel the energy of the place coursing through him. He was part of this land, and he could feel its strengths and its illnesses. The valley was a living thing, and everything here was a part of it. He had become its consciousness, the part that recognized threats and defended the land.
He knew the canyon leading to the outside world was sealed now. No aircraft would come through it again. He was alone here, but he was safe, and the land was safe. For now at least. It wouldn’t always be that way.
The sages who had once made their way here and returned to the outside world had written of the voices of the spirits speaking to them. If Rhys closed his eyes and remained
very, very still, he could almost hear them. Not voices, exactly. And not speaking words. But concepts would come to him and while his mind translated them into his own terms, he knew the ideas didn’t originate with him. The destroyed canyon would keep the outside world away for a time, they said, but not forever. Eventually, outsiders would come again to explore and to plunder. Dangerous times were coming, when the valley’s secrets could be hidden away no longer. It was important to protect the valley from the outside world, but it was equally important to protect the world from the dangers of this place. He might be called to leave the valley someday and return to the larger world for the good of all.
Rhys opened his eyes and looked up. A flight of vultures circled overhead. He knew they were interested in a goat carcass near the northern cliffs. All around him life began and ended, but the valley was eternal. Close enough, anyway.
He would protect this land, he thought, as the sun settled over the mountains. Yes, enemies would come looking for the treasures the valley held. And when they came, he would be ready for them.
The End
About the Author
E.J. Blaine has enjoyed a writing career best described as “eclectic.” While working as a trade journalist covering the telecommunications and energy industries, he moonlighted for a major media company, covering upcoming genre films for its print publication and writing movie reviews and other content for its web site. He produced background material and scenarios for a number of role playing games, and occasionally published short fiction. He attended the prestigious Clarion workshop for science fiction and fantasy writers.
He lived in Vancouver, British Columbia for several years where he attended film school and worked in the Canadian film industry as a story editor. While there, he also wrote film and comic book scripts, and did development work for animation and live action television.
Currently, Blaine lives in Virginia with his wife and infant daughter, where he is massively overextending himself in an attempt to produce an ambitious array of novels and other fiction projects while dealing with a very demanding baby. Assassins of the Lost Kingdom is the first of these projects to reach print. His next project is Smuggler’s Log, a space opera serial to be published by Waterhaven Media.
* * *
Edited by Nina Sullivan and Dan Heinrich
Published by Deep7 Press, Port Orchard, WA www.deep7.com
In association with E.J. Blaine www.ejblaine.com
and Waterhaven Media, Reston, VA www.waterhavenmedia.com)
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