“I think the Narlavs would like Florida.” Karen broke her own reticent silence at last. “If only we could let them settle here, but then someone would decide they should pay for all this.”
“We’ll get there in time. What you did in New Leeds will spread, though not in the same dramatic way, of course!”
“I suppose.”
“Hey! Lovebirds!” A familiar voice called out from behind them. “I got under that bridge again. You should have seen the water dance behind us!”
Richard stood as he twisted and turned, as did his wife. He’s not happy unless he has a new challenge!
Harold was standing on the grassy slope behind them, tiny Miyoko a strategic step or two up the slope, though the top of her head was still only up to the level of his nose.
Karen crouched down again as Kristal ran at top speed past her brother and sisters, making sounds like a steam train. “Wooah!” The child crashed into the waiting outstretched arms and she shrieked with excitement as the reddish-brown fox Kirrina had befriended earlier bounded up behind her and, springing up, bounced off the young girl’s shoulder, dropping into the compact gap between the adult and the child.
“The world may be a damaged and wilder place now,” Miyoko said in wonder, “but it seems gentler wherever you go!” She walked up and stroked the shiny fur as the animal sniffed at the fingers on her youngest child.
Kirrina sat down on the grass and the fox bounced down and ran around in circles like an ecstatic puppy. She looked up at the sky, her resolve strengthening under the confident admiration of the faith-filled mother of four. “We will bring this world back, find a way to reverse this before it does any real damage. That pretty peril up there will not stop us. And soon, we will become the cavalry again, for our distant brothers and sisters on Fepnine.”
“Now, that sounds like a great adventure!” Harold staggered closer, his daughter Chelsey and son Aaron hanging out sideways from him as the overly serious Brittney sat down to stroke the enlightened and fearless fox.
“You can do it, aunty Kirrina… you can do anything!” The serious nine year old, most senior of the Morton ‘brood’, nodded, her curly black hair waving around as she moved it so emphatically. “You will out-fox them!”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thorby Rudbek grew up in England, where, from an early age, he fell in love with reading. As a teenager, he often had three books on the go at once. (Is that a male kind of multitasking?) Science Fiction became his favourite kind of book, and he particularly enjoyed many of the works of Robert Heinlein. Of course, once he graduated from University, he found it a natural progression to pursue a career in science; he worked around the world, dabbling in high vacuum physics, microwave, radar, laser, and ionising radiation.
As he grew older he found it harder to locate novels that he enjoyed, and finally he decided to write his own.
The Galactic Citadel series, begun in 'Ascent', is about seemingly ordinary folks who find themselves tasked with extraordinary challenges. They might seem to harken from an earlier time, when heroes were really heroes, and the only wars worth fighting are ones which will protect the defenceless.
If you can escape from reality for a while in his stories and come away with that 'feel good' sensation - Thorby will feel he has succeeded.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Thorby is pleased to announce that, thanks to the creative talent of Donna Harriman Murillo, Cavalry is starting life with a glorious cover featuring the principal characters... and a certain fox! You can see other examples of her work on the 99designs website… and in other Thorby Rudbek stories!
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[1] Quequan = Quetibb ‘needle’ ship, small, silvery and streamlined. Inter-planetary vessel, 50 foot long, maximum diameter: 3 foot
[2] Quabaque = day
[3] Quil = cub (child), or cubs (children)
[4] Quyz = carnivorous plant: native on Quelood; equipped with vine-like tentacles to pull in animal life (the Quetibb) for nutrient extraction (a deadly process).
[5] Quotent = a year, about three hundred and seventy seven Earth days
[6] Quidolque = a Quelood unit of time equivalent to a month
[7] A strangely coarse, spiked layer of pale green vegetation about an inch deep – Arshonnan ‘equivalent’ of grass
[8] By tradition, Batamon was the first to exit, as he was the most senior member of the team, being more than 200 years older than the next candidate.
[9] Basp = mote, the word is used because of the small size and relative innocuousness of the devices, and has become semi-formal terminology for 4 cm diameter, self-directed devices, the Fepnine equivalent of movie cameras, or more accurately, news service cameras, as their ‘data’ is broadcast planet-wide whenever an event of public interest is known to be occurring
[10] Arshonnan term for a year, (one complete planetary orbit around its star)
[11] Yes! Congratulations, well done, keep it up, almost completed…
[12] Literally: ‘more yes’, i.e. better, correct – implying progress or improvement.
[13] Cub, or cubs, in this context.
[14] A carnivorous plant, equipped with vine-like tentacles to pull in animal life (the Quetibb) for nutrient extraction (a deadly process)
[15] An edible plant
[16] A period of twelve days, and a twenty-fourth of a year on the twin Quelood planets
[17] The bakedlands, or literally the burnt surface
[18] The underground train used to access the hazardous hemisphere of each of the twin worlds
[19] ‘months’, though Quetibb months are only twelve local days long
[20] Hetwin Schept – literally: Sublime University
[21] Dap = the Arshonnan ‘equivalent’ of the metre, though about 1.8 times larger
[22] The artificial gravity was programmed so that the full force would be almost, but not quite totally nullified during the take-off. The difference was enough to make the ‘ride’ into space equivalent to the kick of a drag-racer, but over a much greater extended period than the three or 4 seconds a top drag-racer would take to run the quarter-mile ‘strip’
[23] Phaethid = dissociator
[24] Karalk = Arshonnan for loud
[25] This of course is the Restored version of Mason, and indeed the additional height he had gained in that Arshonnan Medic process meant that he had become too large – too tall – for the fighter aircraft he used to fly
[26] Quitquel quevat: about 1.25 km
[27] The film was “The Longest Day”, a story based on recollections of combatants caught up in the Allied invasion of Normandy, 6th June, 1944, in World War Two, and the quote related to Major Howard and the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, ordered to take control of and hold Pegasus bridge until reinforcements arrived.
[28] Melleny’s mother and one of the founders of the Scout movement
[29] Naval Station Newport (NAVSTA Newport), where the Marine Corps Detachment Newport is based, and where the helicopters used for the attack on the hangar near New Leeds had been on assignment, when the snows immobilized them… and just about everything else.
[30] As estimated by the Medic, during his first Restoration session, as he has no knowledge of his birthdate or age
[31] RV - A Recreational Vehicle, American terminology for a motorhome or caravan, a kind of mobile ‘summer cottage’
[32] Chelsea Anita Buchanan (nee Brandon). Her initials are CAB and she was born in New York city, so this nickname is almost inevitable
[33] BOAT = Bank Of America Tower
[34] Its fantastic power rating had been achieved by simply doubling the number of Drive spheres to twenty four.
[35] Hiffanty: the Arshonnan word for sword
[36] Lonna was the eldest of the twins, by five minutes, but Mizza was two yibadap taller!
[37] This part of the island is very wild and rugged. The ground is fractured and rocky and there are the most amazing cliffs, with caves and rock pools when t
he tide is out. When it is in, the sea pounds against the cliffs with a rage, even on calm days, and that is because the next island is a thousand miles away, across an ocean with weather like the Atlantic. Or so it was, long ago…
[38] Mecuba is the Narlav word for dust… Paranak had coined this name for it, unwittingly duplicating the terminology used by his distant relations from New Rhaal.
[39] MLA = Member of Legislative Assembly. In Canada, members of legislative assemblies are members of the elected provincial government and are called MLAs in all the territories and most provinces
[40] Patan = Narlav word for seed-pod, used since the War as a derisive label for Scout Craft, based on the slight similarity in shape to the seed-pods of the main Narlav vegetable, Korpatnal.
[41] Siph = Narlav word for pebble, used since the War as a derisive label for Patrol Craft, based on the similarity in profile to wave-smoothed pebbles.
[42] Gich = Narlav word for three
[43] Harklat Thangstorn = the ‘Great Conquest’ = Narlav name for the Narlav-Arshonnan war of AD 1431
[44] SPF = Structural Protection Field
[45] Main chamber – variously known as the Assembly Room. troop room, or combat area – in the smaller Citadel, this was referred to by Karen (Kirrina), from the earliest of her recollections, as the ‘Moss Room’
[46] This apparent contradiction is accurate: the observation and command area is within the peak in the centre of the crater, so it is technically subterranean but also above the floor of the crater.
[47] Subterranean Production Facility
[48] bush-like purple humps of Arshonnan vegetation that often grew in clumps, 3 feet to over 10 feet tall or more (in the view from Apartment building 1476)
[49] Saarab is Narlav for helper
[50] Darmid is the Narlav word for friend
[51] A spherical Narlav tool that works in base four (of course). It is a timepiece, a calculator, and can be used either as a relaxation or a concentration device.
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