Penny

There's Always a Price: Sci Fi Bounty Hunters

Jocasta plopped happily into the pilot seat, the old familiar synthleather conforming to her perfectly. Cygi blinked on in hologram. The AI appeared to be naked, though her modesty was preserved by an artful splash of bubbles at key locations, the outlandish look completed by a shower cap marked with a pink flower print. Jocasta recoiled slightly.

“Cygi, what the fuck?” she asked as her ships AI lowered a long handled wooden scrubbing brush. Cygi was highly idiosyncratic, possibly as a result of running a learning algorithm that most frequently sampled Jocasta herself, as well as a variety of media in the ships rec system.



“I wasn’t expecting you back so soon,” the computer responded as though that explained everything, she turned her holographic eyes to Dirk. “Or you back at all.” The illusion was somewhat spoiled by the fact that the bubbled didn’t pop or dissipate. Jocasta stared for a minute and then returned to the controls.

“Moving on…” she said, “can you put some clothes on and plot me a course to anywhere other than here?” The AI shimmered and was suddenly wearing a version of Dirk’s armor designed by animators more concerned for the titillation of viewers than with practical concerns with a ridiculous swell of breast and unrealistic pinch at the waist. The AI’s dark hair cascaded down her back in a set of braids that, were they unwound, would have dropped her hair to her knees.

“If you are quite…” Jocasta began in exasperation, but three separate courses had appeared in her nav computer as had authorization for departure. Holographic screens flashed up all around her, including a duplicate of her optical feed which showed the last of her drones fluttering down the air ducts and into the Grasshopper’s recovery chutes. The intake ports sealed with a clac and Jocasta held out her hands. Holographic control spheres winked into view around them, centered on the implants in her palms. The repulsor drives lit with a gentle whine and the Grasshopper lifted from the pad. The ships operating budget ticked down a hundred credits as the docking fees were assessed before the hanger doors opened and the blast shield rose behind them. Once it was fully extended Jocasta lit the main drives and the ship leaped out and upwards towards space. Although the sensor board was busy with incoming shipping, there was nothing of particular concern in the orbital lanes. That wasn’t surprising, she doubted a Union warship had been seen here in a generation, and if one did show up the locals would probably wet their collective trousers.

“Ok, lets see,” she said scanning the courses Cygi had prepared. There is habitation on one of the moons of the gas giant. “Some tourism, probably safe enough from your friends.” She keyed in the course and the drive keened, kicking them upwards and looping around the moon in order to blind anyone watching their departure.

“You will have to tell me about the job.”

The Sunday Group

How are we doing? Does anyone need any info?

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

It took a frustratingly long time to link one of the BO holoprojectors to the Vickie’s astrogation computer. The consoles out here were old, nearly eighty years old, and many iterations behind current operating systems. Anything used out on the frontier had massive backward compatibility for obvious reasons, but this thing had been made when Sabatine’s grandmother had been a midshipman. In the end she solved the problem by simply slaving the unit to her commo helmet and using the existing link. It was a little grainy but it was able to project a 3D representation of the Rayleigh Stars and the surrounding sectors. Although it bore some relationship to actual sidereal positioning the chart actually depecticted average sailing times at ambient conditions in the matrix.



“We should send word back to Cinnabar and warn them what’s going on,” Sabatine mused aloud. There was no chance this was an isolated attack. Fighting here meant there was fighting everywhere, but they still needed to report the loss of the rest of the RCN. Otherwise Cinnabar ships could blunder into a minefield that they still believed was in friendly hands.



“You want to take the destroyer back?” Rachet asked, sounding a little wistful. Riding in on a prize of war would burnish an officer’s reputation, not to mention put some coin in the pocket of its captors, something the disheveled Rachet could have clearly used.



“No we cut her rig all to bits when we took her,” Sabatine replied, “It’d take us six weeks at least to make it back with the cobbled together scraps we have aloft. Maybe we could pool spacers and re-rig but without dorsal A and with ventral D fracturing…” Kaiden cut off the discussion with a decisive gesture.



“K-21 isn’t going,” the prince declared with aristocratic authority, “with the best will in the world it would be too slow, plus we are going to need to shift missiles to rearm the Vickie. We only have four rounds left.” A corvette like the Viceroy only carried 20 missiles in her magazines a dozen of which had been expended before they arrived back at Herculaneum.



“Even if we didn’t it would take more time than we have to re-rig her,” Kaiden continued, swirling his drink in his glass. Rachet straightened clearly expecting Kaiden to order him to make the run back to Cinnabar orbit. Instead he turned to Sabatine.



“You think if we pressed a tramp freighter that Otis could handle it?” he asked, a genuine question not a rhetorical one. Sabatine sucked her breath in through her teeth. As first lieutenant it was her job to see to the education of the midshipman and so she had a lot more day to day experience with them than Kaiden did.

“Uh… midshipman Otis’ heart is in the right place sir, but that is more than I’d be willing to say for any ship he was astrogating alone.” Otis’ astrogation was something she was working on, but it was clear to her he had no talent for the business. Fortunately for Otis he seemed to possess a certain steadiness under fire, a trait that would secure him a future in the RCN more surely than skillful shiphandling or a feel for the matrix. Rachet drew in a breath, clearly about to volunteer but he was cut off again, this time by, of all people, Tilda.



“What about Captain Micha, you said he is a good astrogater didn’t you?” she put in, setting the now empty bottle down on the bar and rummaging underneath for a new one, deliberately or accidentally affording a view of her cleavage. Sabatine opened her mouth to suggest that she leave RCN business to the actual spacers, but the words died in her mouth. It was actually a pretty good suggestion. Micha was a good astrogater, the best of the group infact. The captain had also come up through the merchant service and so had more experience on small ships with short crews. He was also very, very, motivated to get to Cinnabar as quickly as possible to lay his complaints before the admiralty. That last bit gave her pause but she was sure that if he was given sealed dispatches he would deliver them. It would be as good as admitting to cowardice to do otherwise. Their duty to the republic outweighed any embarrassment his arrival on Cinnabar might cause them, plus it would get him off the ship and out of the way, something that everyone would feel better about.





“Well its not the worst idea,” Sabatine admitted, feeling almost physical pain in doing so.

“But before we get to details we should probably hear what the Captain has in mind.”

Maverick Malediction

Calliope never afterward knew how long she lay dazed in the throes of the spell burn.. Indeed, given the method of their escape, it was possible that the question itself did not make sense. Spell burn, aetheric dissonance, witches ague, arcanis magus synoscopia, all were names for the illness that descended on a mage who drew too much power too quickly. Most mages suffered a bout the first time they successfully worked a spell and were smart and careful enough not to experience it again. Calliope was in a worse state than Therman would be, assuming he survived, because she had used blood magic. In addition to the normal spell sickness, vitaemancy had boiled away a significant portion of her blood plasma and afflicted her with blood sweats. Unconsciousness in such a state was a blessing. Not an entirely unalloyed blessing however. Her mind whirled in strange fever dreams. Versions of herself made entirely of blood offered her cryptic advice and dire warnings she couldn’t quite understand. A parade of those she had killed filled past, each balancing the exact amount she had been paid for their lives on their heads. Neil arm-wrestling the gargoyle she had animated to kill him. A dead Neil making wise ass comments at his own paupers funeral. A great wyrm that burrowed beneath the earth, hungering to devour entire cities. Her own body transformed so that vast black wings and a long tail shadowed the sun. A forest made entirely of metal tress stretched from horizon to horizon, each copper leaf, burnished and razor sharp, clung to branches that dripped with ancient verdigris. Armies of animate bones, not arranged in skeletons but simple masses of spindly limbs marched spastically across night mare landscapes, to tear mindlessly at other such armies with endless clacking and splintering sounds to keep the beat. Faceless gods threw dice for stakes beyond her understanding. Cold… cold…. cold…



The dreams pulled back as she opened her eyes. Immediately the feverish delirium didn’t seem so bad. Her body was shivering and burning all at once. She was nude, save for her undergarments and a badly soiled but finely made vest that had been drapped over her like a blanket. Her stomach roiled and she tasted blood. She was in some kind of a hollow perhaps the kind cut under a bank by spring floods, with the roots of saplings interweaving the dirt of one wall. The other wall was piled snow, disturbed where a doorway had been dug out and then resealed. A small fire, pushed as close to the dirt wall as possible , smoldered low. Calliope shifted closer trying to pick up a piece of timber to add to the meager flame. It was hard. Her fingers were clumsy and she had no strength at all. The battle she had fought with the Magister had drained her to the breaking point. A few more spells and she would have been among the corpses cooling in the ballroom. The timber fell from her fingers and onto the fire with a shower of sparks. A simple spell would have been more than enough to warm her, but even the thought of magic made her vision swim. Where was she? Had Neil brought her here? That seemed likely, she was pretty sure the vest was his, but things got a bit hazy in her memory. She remembered cutting the throat of one of Therman’s flunkies and then trying to climb the stairs, but nothing beyond that. There was a scratching at the snow bank. Calliope turned as best she could looking for some kind of weapon, but she hadn’t found anything by the time familiar hands dug through the snow. Neil squeezed in, looking extremely cold and carrying a pair of silvery fish on either end of a short stick.



“Hey, you’re finally awake,” he said as he saw her by the fire. He stepped in hurriedly, set the fish down, and hurriedly began heaping up snow to seal the entrance. There was a howling wind outside that gusted in fresh snow as he worked, but it only took a minute to seal up the hollow.



“Where are we?” she asked, wrapping the vest around her chest. There wasn’t enough fabric to warm her whole body and she coiled her legs closer to the fire. Neil must have been freezing too, having gone out into a snow storm in what appeared to be nothing more than an undershirt and trousers.

“No clue,” he admitted, “just grabbed you and jumped through some portal in the atrium right before the whole place collapsed.”



“The building had collapsed? How?” she asked. Had they unleashed so much destruction they had leveled the palace of a Magister? Apparently so.

“You tell me, I came downstairs to find everything on fire and the whole damn place falling in on itself. I only just managed to drag us out of there before the whole thing went down.”



Calliope was silent for a long moment. She had probably killed half the nobles in the space of a few minutes. Violated the sanctuary of a senior magister, killed several members of the Arcane Council and destroyed one of the most ancient and venerated palaces in the city. If there were any witnesses, they were in big trouble. She was going to have to do something very difficult, something she rarely did, but there was nothing for it so she pushed on before she lost her nerve.

“Thank you. For pulling me out of there.”

The Pavonis Campaign - Warhammer 40000

Katia had never felt thirstier in her entire life, which was kind of ironic considering she was about to die in a water reprocessing plant.



“Fire in the hole!” Prax shouted and lobbed a bundle of hessian cloth at the orks charging down the access way between two immense water tanks. The leader of the group swung his choppa at the bundle but Katia and Prax both ducked back before the thing detonated with a thunderous crash. The improved explosive was cored by a krak grenade, and packed with as many ork bolter shells as could be made fit. The resulting detonation began with a sharp crack and roared into a score of secondary explosions as the sub munitions cooked off. Pieces of shrapnel clanged off piping and storage tanks with surprising musicality. Their supply of frag grenades had been expended in the desperate minutes following the fall of the gate, and they were down to whatever they could cobble together. For a while it had seemed they might hold the facility at least till their ammunition ran out, but just after dawn the Orks had changed the game. A warbike, painted entirely red, had gunned its way across the causeway, plowing into the gate at full speed before a load of explosives had gone off. The gate house had been vaporized, as had four out of the five troopers defending it at the time. Katia herself had been on her way up to check on the troops excited reports about the approach of the bike and had only been spared by the fact one of the troopers, whose name she had never learned, had shoved her back into the stairway the moment before the bomb went off. It was only by the grace of the God Emperor that she hadn’t been killed, either by the blast or the fall. It had been chaos after that, as the Gudrenites tried to rally and retake the wreck of the gatehouse, but it had been useless. Three more guardsmen had been killed, literally cut to pieces by blood crazed orks, before the survivors had managed to pull back into the interior of the pump station, trying desperately to make some kind of defense among the twisting masses of pipework.



“Waaaaaghh!” a single ork voice roared, and it was picked up by the others that were hunting the Imperials through the maze of tanks, pipes, ducts and reclamation stations that made up the pump station. Katia stuck her head out and saw that all but one of the orks was down. The survivor had lost a hand, an eye, and most of a leg, but was still dragging himself forward. She leaped at him, spinning her powersword and driving it down into the back of the orks neck with a satisfying sizzle. Bolter fire crashed out, hitting the tank above her and spraying sparks in all directions. Fragments clanged and whined across the convex metal surfaces of the tanks, echoing and redoubling as they went. Katia spun towards the threat, four orks rushing from a machine shop, close packed but she had no ammunition left for her bolt pistol. Another of the improvised explosives lofted from the shadows, tossed in the peculiar overarm manner many of the Gudrenites seemed to prefer. It burst with a flash of dirty smoke and eye searing light and all four orks were down, one grabbing angrily at its own spilled entrails. Muddy water poured from a tank where the crack warhead had punched the thin plate, spilling down over the offal like a cleansing rain. The air stank of mud, cordite and hot metal. More cries of Waaagh echoed through the facility. Katia had given up on any coherent defense, it was hide and seek among the tanks now, just trying to hold out a few more minutes. Those too badly wounded to fight, the dying really, had been pulled back to the inner sanctum of the Mechanicus. That would be their last stand, a courtesy that Kaita felt was owed to the Clockwork Emperor given that his facility had kept them alive a few hours longer than they had any right to expect.



“Commisar!” Prax called and las fire cut past Kaita, she whirled and lit her powersword, just in time to parry a great rusted axe that arced down to split her in two. A trio of orks had appeared from the level below, leaping the six feet up onto the working floor with whoops of excitement. Katia fainted left and then cut back right, taking the leg out from under the first ork with a sizzle of burning flesh. The remaining two drove her back, looping cuts coming too fast to even parry, her only option was to fall back away from the still firing Prax. The non-coms shots struck the back of one of the orks, blowing steaming chunks of flesh and armor away. The ork spun with unexpected grace and fired his bolter from the hip. Like all ork marksmanship it was pure wildfire, but if you through enough dice eventually you got boxcars. Prax’ arm flew off in a spray of blood that splashed up the side of a tank, his las gun clattering to the ground. The veteran fell to one knee, tried to steady himself with an arm he didn’t have and screamed as he mashed the bloody stump against the tank, before pitching onto his face. Katia shouted in frustration and tried to step in to stab the second ork but it whipped its axe around with unexpected speed, Katia tried to catch it in a block but the power of the blow lifted her off her feet and flung her into a relay lectern with a crash that jarred her bones. The creature loomed forward and lifted its blade to cut her in two. Katia jammed the point of her blade into a nest of piping and a great gout of steam burst forth with a scream like a storm siren, engulfing the orc from knee to crown in scalding cloud of boiling vapor. It howled and staggered back, stinking of cooked flesh and boiled blood. Pain burning through her body, Katia pulled herself to her feet and lunged after it, plunging her glowing blade through its sternum and bearing it over with her weight. She landed atop it with a splash and felt the disgusting mix of burned ork flesh and blood beneath her free hand. Twisting the blade she yanked it free and came unsteadily to her feet. The ork which had shot Prax was charging her, spittle flying from its gaping, yellow toothed maw. Katia tried to raise her blade, but it was so heavy, she felt slow and ungainly and there was an unpleasant ringing in her ears. The Ork’s mouth exploded in a spray of teeth as two las bolts punched into it at a steep angle. The beast staggered and tripped forward and Katia whipped her blade up, taking its ruined head off its shoulders. She glanced up to offer her thanks, but the steam made it impossible to discern which one of the guardsmen it had been. Several were up in the pipework, firing down where they could. Katia staggered through the stinking steam, by now the muddy water was sloshing around her ankles. Prax was lying face down and she pulled him up only with an effort. His face was very pale and his breathing rapid. Bright arterial blood still pulsed from the stump of his right arm, but the rhythm was slow and the output meager.

“The Emperor…” he began in a reedy voice, but he died before he could complete the aphorism.

“Grant you rest,” Katia replied, letting the dead corporal sag into the film of waste water. Katia pulled the canteen from the dead soldiers webbing and emptied it in a gulp. She almost sprayed it out of her mouth as she realized it was cheap joylik.



“I should put you on report,” she told Prax’ corpse sadly and placed the canteen down on his chest. Orks were shouting all around her now, and the steam wouldn’t hide her for long. She sheathed her powersword and picked up Prax’ lasgun. It was wet but a standard issue las gun would fire under almost any condition imaginable. The power readout showed empty. Almost any condition. She pulled open several pouches on the dead corporals webbing, but this had been his last powerpack. She lay the rifle beside the canteen and pulled herself to her feet. It was getting time for that last stand she owed the Omnissiah. Suddenly the timbre of the ork shouting changed. The cry of Waaaaagh! still predominated, but it was interspersed by the guttural barks of their speech in what sounded like interrogatives. A pair of brutes charged passed Katia, not even noticing her in her dark greatcoat as they splashed through the ankle deep water, rushing back towards the entrance and howling for blood. Katia shook her head and pushed herself to her feet. What in the Emperor’s name was going on?

The Hyborian Chronicles: Of Sword and Sorcery

Sythemis worked hard to control her breathing and still the swell of her chest. Many times she had stood before the serpents of great Set, whose bit was death and who feasted upon fear. Many times she had delved into ancient tombs for hidden relics or fragments of arcane lore from creatures whose form and memory were lost to the minds of men. All these things she had done but never had she felt herself so surely on the edge of death. The glittering knife and hard eyes of the thief were a hot death, not the cold of a serpent’s fang or antediluvian spell. It thrilled her to consider.



“For three hundred and thirty three years a precious jewel has lingered in Xareme,” she began, her voice was melodic but lacked any suggestion of hypnosis of coercion sure to bring a swift hot stroke of the blade.

“It is no earthly gem, but a piece of the Moon itself, fetched back in the times before men rose from the mud of the southern jungles, from before great Atlantis was sunk beneath the waves. Strange beasts brought it in their black galleys which rode the stars on their thousand oars and silver sails,” she explained, gesturing up to the waning gibbous moon that hung above the spires of the city. It seemed to peer down at them like the lidded eye of a waking lover, warm and expectant.

“Once there were many such gems, prized by the Elder race above gold and silver, above even the glittering anthrax for which they traded armies of slaves and mountains of riches. They are gone now, taken up to the stars or lost in the abyssal depths to the hunger of things that lay below the ocean which men fear to even think of save in the dim recesses of dreams,” the stygian continued, her words redolent with forgotten lore and the blasphemous secrets of past ages which had been dredged from the ancient crypts, or drawn from the lips of things long dead but undying.



“Only one such gem now remains upon the earth, locked in a chamber within the Emir’s palace,” Sythemis continued, nothing the glimpse of hungry avarice on the thief’s hard face with pleasure.

“It is written that during the dark of the moon, in this auspicious year, a great thief will come to Xareme and take the jewel. The Emir’s astrologers have seen this written in the stars, as others have seen it in augury and dream. I have come to Xareme to make this prophecy come true so that I may lay my hand upon the Moon Stone. One who has touched it may ask a boon of the moon, and I have such a boon to ask.”



The air shivered as warm wind blew in of the desert, the smell of hot sand and the cedar of the distant hillsides that made Xareme famous throughout the cradle of the world.

“I asked Ishtar to reveal to me the thief that would take the stone, and you stood before me in a chamber where you ought not stand, in a temple which you ought not enter.”

The Sunday Group

In Eleanor’s defense she had a lot on her mind. Having dealt with the state police, only temporarily if she were any judge, she got back into her car and drove off in the general direction of the city with the vague plan of grabbing a quick bite before heading back to the office. She didn’t spot the tail until she was back on 55 heading south. A dark blue crown vic four or five car lengths behind her, completely unremarkable save for an odd feeling of recognition. At first she dismissed it, her thumbs hadn’t pricked, but as she crossed from one lane to another to pass the slower traffic it stayed with her. Frowning she tried joining the slow pokes and the blue car also seemed to lose the haste of moments ago. There was a lot you could tell by the way someone tailed you. A professional team used several cars and rotated through them to stop you from getting suspicious. Cops and feds tended to favor drive bys. Extraction teams wanted to close the distance. This tail appeared to simply be content to follow, staying well back but not doing anything beyond that to conceal its interest. Amateurs? Eleanor was about to make a more serious attempt to shake the tail when her phone played the snippet of Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ which was assigned to Emmaline’s number. Eleanor plugged the phone into the hands free and picked up, her eyes still on her rear view mirror.



“What’s up babe?” she asked, shifting lanes yet again to get in front of a semi-trailer, hoping to lure her playmate into moving closer.



“Are you with Mal?” Emmaline asked without preamble. Eleanor frowned and turned her attention to the phonecall.



“No, why?” she asked, confused as to why Emmaline was asking. She didn’t normally take an active interest in a case unless Eleanor specifically sought her opinion, which she tried not to do unless they were at a dead end.



“He is in danger,” Emmaline declared portentously. Eleanor thought she could hear the mixer running in the background. Danger evidently didn’t include a respite from whatever domestic task Emmaline had in mind for the day.



“How do you know that?” she asked, watching through the mirror as the crown vic moved up to get a look around the big rig. The windows were tinted dark, but the moment it saw she was still there it dropped back again. Too eager, too obvious.



“I’m forecasting him,” Emmaline replied cagily. Forecasting was a type of fortune telling, a sort of predictive surveillance that you could run magically. In the basement of their home Eleanor and Emmaline kept a large clear section of polished marble with naturally occurring veins of silver in its matrix. Using various algorithms one could interpret the returns generated by certain items belonging to an individual, blood and hair worked best. The problem with forecasting was that it had a non-zero effect on the skeins of probability, by observing the future it was easy to change it, no matter how mathematically rigorous you were. The changes induced by a probability function were rarely good ones. It was a tool best used infrequently and with exceeding care.

“Ok... Next question. Why are you forecasting him?” Eleanor asked. There was a long awkward pause.



“Remember that conversation we had last week?” Emmaline asked, her accent sounding more Austrian than usual. A dead giveaway that the blonde witch was nervous. Eleanor goggled in shock.



“Are you serious right now?!” she demanded. “Emmaline Godzilla Von Morganstern!”



Emmaline coughed awkwardly. Eleanor knew she wouldn’t have called unless she was sure of her numbers and felt that the threat was both real and immediate. Unfortunately they couldn’t call Mal directly because doing so would be a direct intervention in the skein of probability Emmaline had just read. That was certain disaster.



“We can talk about it later. Dump the forecasting. I need to work and I don’t want to be entangled,” Eleanor replied, shrinking the call screen to an inset and pulling up her arcanalytics app, hurriedly punching a preset ritual. There was a sound on the other end of the line. You had been in the game way too long when you could recognize the sound of chalk marks being scrubbed out with hair over a phone line.



“It’s done,” Emmaline responded a moment later. Eleanor nodded despite the fact Emmaline couldn’t see the gesture. She shifted over to the far right lane glancing at the thick trees that lined the median as she muttered calculations to herself.



“Is there anything else I can do?” Emmaline asked urgently. Eleanor glanced at the app. A green circle was marked with 88%. Electronic fidelity was much better than a coven of humans chanting, and an order of magnitude faster.



“Can you take up 2 or 3 miliSterns?” Eleanor asked. Sterns were the unit of entropic dissonance that Emmaline and her sisters used to quantify the chaos that all magic depended upon. Their tendency to use variations of their last name for almost everything was both endearing and annoying. The app clicked up to 99 percent as, fifty miles away, Emmaline added her mathematical clarity to the spell. Eleanor pulled a stylus from her console, pricked her thumb and made a few last minute notes on the dash of her car in fresh blood.



“Ill talk to you when I can. Love you.” Eleanor said, taking a few deep meditative breaths.



“Love you too,” Emmaline replied and the call ended. Eleanor hummed gently, the bitter taste of lilac root scratching at the back of her throat. She closed her eyes. Closing one’s eyes while driving was not a wise choice under most circumstances, but it beat the next step all to hell. With deliberate calm Eleanor yanked the wheel hard to the right. Tires screamed as the lexus swerved off the road, going momentarily airborne as it leaped over the shallow ditch between pavement and verge. The car bounced slightly and then plowed straight into the strip of trees which separated 55 south from 55 north. Branches slapped at the windscreen as the lexus crashed through the undergrowth. The odds of missing a tree were a million to one. Actually it was more like six million five hundred thousand to one to within 4 standard deviations, but luck, like fate, could be managed if you knew how the chaos of the universe worked. The interior windows of the car beaded with condensation and every light on the dashboard lit as the arcane backwash played merry hell with quantum mechanics for a few moments. Horns blared and Eleanor felt her tiers thump onto the northbound, she reefed the wheel, fishtailing slightly into positon between a minivan and a delivery truck. Leaves and forest debris flew from the windshield as the wind whipped past, whisking away the smell of burned rubber. Eleanor blew out a breath and killed the app, punching up one of the fake sim cards which Fynn had installed and dialing 911.



“911 what is your emergency?” a voice came back immediately. Eleanor took a few deep breaths as though on the verge of hyperventilating.



“I just saw some men shoving a woman into the trunk of a car… oh god … they had her tied up and…”



“Ma’am,” the dispatcher replied, her voice growing from professional to intent in the single syllable. “Can you tell me where you are?”



“They are pulling onto 55 north near exit 23. It’s a late model crown vic with number plate CD 3455. I need to…” Eleanor dropped the call. Her amateur tail was in for an interesting time when they got of the south bound and tried to follow her north. Every police cruiser would be on the look out for them.



“Amateurs,” she muttered to herself, and gunned the engine, heading back towards the gas station and hoping she would be in time to help.

The Knight's Song

Juliette stood frozen, hand halfway to the hilt of the short sword that she wore thrust through her belt. The bisected child twitched slowly and then was still, the animal aspect fading until it was just a small boy wretchedly butchered. Blood leaked from both halves in a brackish stream, soaking into the loamy forest soil.

“By the Saint and the Sister,” Juliette breathed, feeling the gorge rise at the back of her throat. The sight and the smell competed to make her lose the stew she had eaten for dinner but she forced it down. Feeling foolish and too late to be of any help she took her hand away from her sword.



“They will never believe us that he was tainted,” she said after a moment. The corpse of the child had a cherubic innocence about it, his mouth open in death in what looked to be gentle surprise, not the devouring snarl she had seen a moment before. Juliette had seen mobs before, and in town where the people were not nearly as scared as they were here. They needed to be on horseback and putting as much distance between this place as they could manage before the killing was discovered.



“Something infected the boy,” Torm replied, a steely tone to his voice as he knelt down and seized the boy’s hat, wiping the great blade clean with practiced ease before tossing the soiled cloth to the ground. Julliette was shaking her head.

“They wont believe us,” she repeated, hand fiddling with the hilt of her weapon in spite of her best efforts. A wolf howled in the night, a long keening moan that seemed to shiver the trees around them, giving them a nightmarish aspect in the moonlight.

“You misunderstand, I do not shrink from the deed, but its author must be destroyed. Another howl split the night, seeming closer, though that could have been a trick of her nerves. They headed deeper into the forest, following the trail as best they could. It was clear that it was little more than a game run. Perhaps it had once been used by woodsman, but if so that was long ago. The howling continued every so often, often enough to make Juliette suspicious that they might be being led into a trap. Around midnight they came up onto a small rise where a hilltop broke the trees. Across a shallow mist shrouded valley another hill was visible. It was crowned with tumble down ruins of some ancient structure, perhaps a church or abbey. The skeletons of mostly rotted timber buildings stood around it like the stumps of decayed teeth. In the moonlight Juliette thought she saw movement at the base of the ruin.

Tales of Tamriel

When Kris had first joined the Legion she had been given the choice between an engineering unit and the scout. Few women had the physiques for the line companies or the cavalry though a number of them usually found their way into the archers. Becoming an engineer was a coveted position because after your twenty years you had a trade as well as your pension to live on but Kris had declined. In her heart she loved the outdoors and the wilds. Cities and towns were find places to spend your pay, but give her an open sky and a dense forest any day. In this regard Skyrim did not disappoint. As they trudged up the steep roadway, they were treated to magnificent views of the city and the bay beyond. Mountains seemed to claw at the sky in all direction, their sides covered with thick pine forests that chirruped and hummed with birdsong.



It was almost enough to make her forget she was working for traitors.



The thought was sour in her mouth and she uncorked a bottle of mead and took a swig. It was too sweet but had a warming burn to it that was bracing in the chill air. It had been a simple matter to memorize the map and dispositions in the Stormcloak war room, but it seemed unlikely they would run into any Imperial troops to share the information with. Tulius was, by all reports, up near Solitude with his legions, reluctant to plunge ham fisted into a cauldron of rebellion, trying to work with the local Jarls while that remained an option. Maybe she could send a raven when they got where they were going. Hello General, you don’t know me but I got a look at Ulfric’s war room and know where all his troops are. You can definitely trust me and this is not a trap. Bah. The road was thick with refugees moving down towards Windhelm, their meagre possessions piled on their backs. A few of the wealthier sorts had wagons, loaded to the axels creaked with furniture and other belongings. No one seemed to be heading west up the road. Kris got more than a few hard looks, her leather armor was distinctively Imperial even though she had forgone her red cloak in favor of a forest green one to reduce the chances of being shot from ambush by some would be Stormcloak. Veterans were common in Skyrim afterall regardless of political affiliations. Skyrim had long provided more than its share of Legionnaires. Only Cyrodil herself produced more, and Cyrodil had ten times the population of this mountainous land. With the White Gold Concordite and the disbanding of many legions, there were discharged troops a plenty. Some were with Ulfric now, eager to fight and die for something, even if it was the dream of a self-important moron. Others had, no doubt, turned to banditry or mercenary work. A small fraction had maybe even settled down and made lives for themselves, though Kris found that hard to fathom.



Dax walked confidently along beside her, oblivious to the hard looks he got from many of the refugees. Like Dark Elves, Argonians were not popular in these parts. Too different to be comfortable at a time when so much was up in the air. Even in the legion Argonians were rare, though that didn’t mean unknown. Some had even won renown. Skixti Blackskin who had swum the Colovia in full flood to burn the Thalmor supply train before Kendas. Kamois Twice-Bitten with his great axe that could cut a horse in two in a single blow. Gam-Kur Nine-Toes who had stormed the breach and Enden. She glanced at Dax, wondering what he made of all this. Did it matter to him? Was it just human nonsense far from Blackmarsh, none of his business? Was it any of hers? High Rock was on the other side of the province and Daggerfall even further. A disturbance up ahead dragged her out of such thoughts.

Three men in tattered pieces of armor had come out of the trees and were shouting at one of the wagon drivers. The man shouted back, his face red. Two women, possibly a wife and a daughter were drawn up atop the wagon, trying to keep out of the range of the grasping men. Kris and Dax exchanged looks. They weren’t in High Rock or Blackmarsh, but they both hurried forward. One of the bandits had stopped the wagon by grabbing hold of the reigns of the tired dray pulling it. The beast whickered and whined nervously.



“We are questioning refugees,” the leader snarled, “Ulfric Stormcloaks orders. Cant be too careful!” That brought a laugh from his men, who were continuing with their game of trying to grab the women.

“I suggest you sod off before we have to question you too outlanders,” he added, patting a rusted axe in threat. There was a slight rustle in the trees in the woodline above. Kris didn’t turn her head, but her eyes tracked upwards, making a pair of men, probably archers, crouching in the woods above.

Maverick Malediction

Calliope continued to dance, moving through partners as they came, keeping one eye on the door to the wine cellar and the other on the stairs up which Neil had moved. She hoped she hadn’t just sent him to a second death. The magical tool she had created was a potent one but Therman was renowned for his traps both magical and mundane. Could she really hope that she could triumph over him? That was the reason she had planned to kill him and steal the book from his heirs after all. Well they were committed now, all she could do was wait for Neil to return or an alarm to sound.



“May I have this dance my dear?” a deep basso voice enquired. Calliope turned to find herself staring at a portly man in quite the most remarkable outfit she had seen, even among a company so distinguished by garish extravagance. It was made of a checker board pattern of rich burgundy and cloth of gold. The gold was stitched with red silk thread and the red with gold in perfect counterpoint. Complex scenes of some mythological motif were woven through in waves that shimmered and seemed to move as the eye tried to follow them. Each seam was picked out with a ruby the size of a child’s tooth held in an intricate setting of woven gold and silver. A dark green half cloak was thrown over the man’s shoulders and his balding pate was set off by a head dress made up of a score of peacock feathers wrapped in gold filigree. Bejeweled rings dripped from his fingers and a great gold chain depending an onyx pendant hung around his neck. It was Magister Therman himself. Unable to think of anything to say, Calliope held out her hand with courtly propriety. The band struck up a lively roundel and they began to dance. Despite his weight and the elaborate costume, Therman was a remarkable dancer, moving with unexpected grace. Calliope whirled through the steps of the dance, the music growing faster and faster. One by one the less adventurous dancers stepped aside until only Calliope and Therman remained on the floor. The Magister moved impossibly fast, whirling and lifting the sorceress in time to the music before finally catching her around the waist and lowering her in the crescendo, back arched and hair hanging down towards the floor. The onlookers erupted in cheers and applause and Therman slowly lifted Calliope and bowed to the crowd before turning to her.

“You dance very well my dear. It is almost a shame I will have to kill you Calliope Black,” he said conversationally. Whether by some orators trick or some subtle magic, his word carried and the applause died by degrees until the only sounds were the grunts of passion from the bowers where the revelers were too drunk or too lost in their pleasure to notice. Calliope straightened.



“The,” she said, brushing a curl of hair out of her face. Therman arched an eyebrow in indulgent interest.

“Hmm?”

“Calliope ‘the’ Black,” she explained, taking a step back from the magus. Therman nodded.

“Has a better sound for the epitaph I suppose,” he agreed, “now do you intend to come quietly or shall I impose on you for a second dance?” As he spoke Therman shifted sideways, taking up a duelist’s stance. Quiet murmuring filled the room and armed footmen began to appear in the doorways. A woman in one of the bowers cried out in ecstasy. Calliope sighed and seemed to deflate, then flung up her arms. The brass wristlets exploded into their individual strands, shards of razor sharp metal flying towards the Magister. Therman didn’t even flinch. He flicked his left hand and scattered the blades away with a clatter while at the same time he lifted his right. Fire flashed from his outstretched fingers, meeting a counter spell from Calliope that deflected it into the floor in a spray of sparks.



“Oh bravo miss Black,” Therman mocked, then clapped both hands together. Calliope gasped as the stone floor seemed to liquefy beneath her. She leaped upwards, catching a branch of a tree as the stone flowed into hands that grasped for her with long ugly nails. Snarling a word, she hurled lightning at Therman who ignored her as completely as ever, his own counterspell stopping her working dead an arm’s length from his head. Screaming in frustration, Calliope raised both hands and crossed them with a savage twisting motion. The metal filigree in the elaborate gown tightened, ripping seams and tearing fabric. The priceless rubies fell to the floor like drops of crimson fire that sparkled and clinked. The feathers writhed as if alive and began to wrap around Therman’s neck, digging into the pudgy flesh. A flicker of annoyance crossed the Magister’s face, the first emotion other than smug superiority he had shown since the uneven duel had begun.



“You are becoming a bother Miss Black, do you have any idea how much this garment is worth?” he inquired, then flicked his wrist again. An unseen force hit the sorceress in the chest, driving the air from her lungs and sending her sprawling across the floor. The crowd retreated like the water before her and Therman saunted after her with lazy self assurance.

“I think we are about done here,” he declared as he stood over her. Calliope began to laugh, a high weird sound that set the teeth on edge. Therman kicked her in the head with his pointed boot, the tongue of it hanging loose from where her previous spell had ripped out the eyelets. Calliope continued to laugh, chocking slightly from the blow.

“Very well, what is so amusing witch?” Therman asked. Calliope pushed herself up onto all fours and then slowly lifted her head to face the Magister. Blood dripped from her split lip and made a long streak across the floor.



“Thou shalt invoke not blood or vitae, lest ye die,” she intoned, quoting the first line of the prohibition against blood magic. Therman’s superior grin just had time to take on a shocked look before Calliope shouted a word. Every paver that had been speckled with her blood exploded upwards in a shower of dust and flying chips of masonry. People began to scream as sharp shards of stone cut into them like bitter hail. Therman stepped back, done toying with his prey now, and lifted his own arms to finish the bussiness. Calliope shrieked an invocation and lightning crashed down from the faux sky above. Therman deflected the energy and the overspill struck two guests dead in smoking piles of salt. Several refreshment tables exploded, scattering burning fragments of table cloth into the air like enchanted confetti. Therman began his own chant, drawing back his hand as he conjured a spear of sepulchral blackness. With a shout he hurled it at Calliope’s heart, but even as he moved, one of the trees tore itself free of the ground and staggered into the path of the bolt. Grave dust and leaves exploded in a cloud and Calliope dove aside, rolling into the stunned crowd.

“Take her!” Therman screamed at his guards, his face contorted with rage and hatred. One of his apprentices stepped forward, weaving his hands and mumbling his own spell. Calliope snapped her fingers and a hundred champagne glasses shattered and flew into the air like sand on a drum head, then she slashed with her arm and the mass of razored glass came down like a whip, dropping the luckless apprentice in a shower of blood, gristle, and flayed bone. It was pandemonium now. People were screaming and trying to flee, others were trying to fight. Lightning struck from three different sources, in some cases striking those trying to help Therman. Guards rushed in towards Calliope, one nearly reached her before another of the now animate trees caught him by an arm and a leg and tore him in two, flinging the gory halves into the crowd before a ball of fire from Therman blasted it into flaming woodchips. Another apprentice conjured a rope of inky darkness, but just as he tried to snare the sorceress the trio of undead sex slaves burst from the bower behind him. All three were naked and one of them was slicked with blood from mouth to breasts, the binding that had been placed on her shattered by the titanic forces being unleashed. They pounced on the apprentice, ripping his neck open with their teeth and gouging at his stomach with their fingers. Crossbow bolts flashed past Calliope, one so close it plucked at the hem off her dress. She screamed a word of power and two knights and a damsel, who a moment ago had been a tiled fresco on the wall ripped there way free in showers of plaster dust. The knight cleaved the head of one of the crossbow men in two, and the damsel grabbed the other and hurled him at the wall which suddenly sported a fresco of a screaming crossbowman frozen in an aspect of terror. An armsman ran at Calliope with a billhook but a tree branch as thick as a mans leg swept down and caught the soldier across the chest, cracking ribs and launching him across the room into one of the columns, the snapping of his spine audible even over the incredible cacophony of destruction. Hoarfrost coated everything and weird ball lightning hovered and snapped from place to place. Dismal phantasms swept through the sky between the two wizards, locked in mental combat. The whole place stank of eviscerated bodies, burning blood, and the odd spicy scent of untrammeled magic. Men and women died as they trampled each other running for the doors, as the two mages hurled energy at each other. The glittering whip of shattered glass cracked over Therman’s head but he fended off the strike while he prepared his next spell, screaming in an infernal tongue. A great roar sounded as a being of pure flame stepped up out of a glyph Therman had marked on the floor. It strode towards Calliope, the bodies it trod on flashing into steam and flame. Two of the animated trees grabbed for it, only to recoil as they two burned. Calliope stopped running and lifted both hands, screaming at the top of her lungs. The pavers she had ripped free flew into the air, coiling and whirling into the form of a great misshapen dragon of animate stone. It flapped its wings, showering the devastated ballroom with mortar dust before lunging for the fire elemental, great marble teeth grasping for its neck.



Calliope was sweating now. Literally sweating blood as she worked her spells. It covered her in a tacky film that mingled with the dust, she tasted it in the back of her throat as she screamed her arcana at her foe. Therman was worse for wear too. A great and mighty Magister he might be, but he hadn’t been prepared for the level of destruction that had been unleashed in his own home. The costume he wore was ragged and the peacock feathers were smoking where spell fire had singed them. Sweat rolled down his bald pate and blood ran from a pressure cut in his scalp where he had been caught by a piece of flying tree. He glared hatefully at her, casually obliterating one of the mosaics knights with a thunderous detonation which flung shards of brightly colored tile in all directions. His acolytes, wide eyed and terrified were trying to drag him away to safety. Hatred and balked pride turned his face a livid purple and he stretched out a hand. A vast bird of inky shadow flowed from his palm and streaked towards Calliope. She laughed at him, the same weird high pitched laugh she had uttered when the duel began a subjective lifetime before, then raised both her palms and ripped the stars from the faux sky. Destruction rained down across the ballroom. incandescent stars, balls of planar fire the size of watermelons fell indiscriminately. One struck the shadowy bird, breaking its back and driving it to the ruined floor. Other fell among the fleeing crowd, reducing great lords and noble ladies to blazing gobbets of flesh. Everything burned, smoked, or exploded, the floor itself shattered and fissured under the assault, even the great columns cracked, raining hundreds of pounds of dust and masonry down in an obscuring cloud. Burning leaves and flower petals fell like snow, covering corpses with rhymes of ash. Calliope staggered out of the ball room and up the first flight of stairs, just as Therman’s apprentices managed to hustle their master out of the side door of what was now a shattered charnel house. One of Therman’s guards was on his knees, gibbering madly from a phantasm that had been conjured. Calliope cut his throat with one of her knives and half staggered half crawled past his cooling corpse, watching with morbid fascination as blood ran down the steps in a series of crimson cataracts. She managed two step and then fell to her knees, vomiting blood across the front of her ruined dress. Her vision swam through blown pupils and blood dripped from her nose, eyes and fingernails.



“Though… shalt… invoke…” she mumbled and then fell forward onto her face, swimming in darkness.