NOW: FLEET NIGHTBEAK’S RESPONSE, 6 MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE FESTIVE NIGHTBEAK

The fleet Nightbeak’s Response arrived at the largest moon of Sol 8, locally called Triton, where long-range gravatic scans had picked up some anomalies. Assuming there was a base there, the fleet vanguard - the Mbth destroyer DdRcknng, a carrier and six squadrons of gunboats arrived a half day earlier to scout and engage. Since scans seemed to indicate not any ships in the system, the tugfleet and another division broke from the main group and headed to the asteroid belt to grab something convenient.

Upon arrival, the DdRcknng surveyed the surface and found only a single structure - a pre-fab structure of flat buildings under a couple of protective domes, like what you’d expect, and one curious building.

On the command deck, various Mbth floated, strapped into acceleration bands, while one sash-wearing Cyph’d watched from thir own couch at a new console installed for Hirm. “It’s a church,” said Cyphishop Dram, squinting at the visual on the holo. Hir looked down at the console. Attached to it in various places were silvery wires connected to hammered geometric runes.

“They must be very devout,” said Captain Qgg, “to have barely built a base and yet built that whole structure.”

“That’s odd,” squeaked an Mbth Scan-officer. “The structure is coming back from scans as old. Like, five hundred or more years old, based on decay on some of the organic bits.”

“It’s an ancient church.” Dram zoomed in on some markings. “My guess is they transported it here.”

“Doubtful,” said Qgg. “They’ve not yet shown they have a ship large enough to move something of this size in-system.”

“We’ve seen what they can do with Tunneling. They probably just transported the whole damn thing. Their powers seem to be mystical in nature. Bringing a religious building, no-doubt charged with Kha and connected to the Thirders home over a link of some kind provides them a forward point to utilize their powers from.” Dram sighed. “Such a pity. Is there anyone at home?”

“We’re getting a single hotspot on the front steps. Looks like a Thirder.”

Suddenly an alarm on the console that had been installed for Dram went off. Hir checked the board and smiled. “Someone is trying mind-to-mind contact. The psychic screen is interfering. Weren’t expecting that, were you, Thirder?” Dram smiled. “Won’t get much further than the surface, will you? Not today!”

“I am still surprised this technology exists, Cyph’d,” the Captain said. “It’s not something you share with your allies?”

“It’s not something we ever thought about using this way”, Dram replied, pivoted in hirs seat. “Our sacred cadre uses mind-to-mind prayer communication. It’s a highly involved discipline. Sometimes a psychic loses their mind in the vastness of the void and, if that happens, we need to isolate them psychically from other sensitive minds they could hurt or contaminate. This-” hir said, gesturing at the console, “is an application of that.”

Dram heard a grainy, barely-audible voice is hirs mind. “One moment, I think they are trying again. Be prepared to extricate me if I do something unusual.”

Dram turned his attention inward. He had a psychic memory palace, as all sacred Cyph’d did, and he carefully verified the protection runes were still up on the walls. He then went to the threshold and opened the door. Standing outside on the undefined ground around the chamber was the Thirder, a female of their species, wrapped in simple clothes - what looked like blue work pants and a cloth upper covering that said “Primus Sucks”, obviously a taunt to the Prime Cyhp’d, Myriopus Rex.

“Hey,” the Thirder said. “I’m Tamra Sinopoli. Welcome to St. Swithun-upon-Kingsgate. I know you figure you’ve won here, but you haven’t. I know you’re coming, so now she knows you’re coming.”

“She who?” Dram asked.

“You’ll see.” The Thirder grinned sadly.

“What else do you know, I wonder?”

“I know about your fleet. I’m a seer and astral traveler. I can see everything from my vantage point here. I have to ask though,” she said, cocking her head. “Why not just stick to the twenty light-year buffer we asked? We weren’t going to come after you. In a generation or two maybe we could have opened a dialog.”

“That’s nice to hear,” Dram said, smirking. “But we can’t risk it. Your species seems like it really enjoys fighting. And with your abilities... Best to just handle it before it becomes a real problem.” Back in the real world, Dram made a gesture to the Captain. “Besides, you people seem intent on some kind of awful escalation for just the few probes that crashed. It speaks to your nature.”

“Just the probes? Just the probes! Which probes!? Do you know how many people died?! Hundreds of…” she sputtered and then let out a huge sigh. She looked at Dram closely again. “You know, your psychic defenses are sad. If I had a few hours, I could crack your mind like an egg, and I’m not even certified.”

Dram bowed. “Sadly, that’s no longer your concern.” The Thirder winced, her image flickering and wildly looking around. Dram assumed the railgun attacks had started. “Anything else?”

The Thirder pinned him with a look. “This isn’t going to go well for you. You don’t know her. She’s not going to… She’s barely rational. She’s…” She started sputtering in hirs vision now, and it seemed like she was sitting down. “...great and terrible… think of your…” More flashing, then her again, lying face up, propped against something. Strangely, she was looking up, not at Dram.

“...a lovely Kha-vault you have up there,” she said as she died.

-

THEN: UNKNOWN, IN FAERIE. JAN 10th, 2016 ON EARTH.

“What an intreeeeguing fellow! Ah-hmmm! I knew letting you in was going to be entertaining, yes yes!” chortled Zaramat, warlock of Tower Halcyon. He looked into the cup he was drinking from, saw it was half empty, waved it about a bit, and a small sprite flew in with a bottle as big as itself and topped it off. He raised the glass to Din and Gus and took a swallow. He was a slight fellow, with a long oiled and curled beard, long hair tucked behind a short cap and wearing a robe covered in runes and various embroidered astrological signs.

Din and Gus looked at each other. The inside of Tower Halcyon wasn’t what one expected in a fortress of the most powerful warlock in Faerie. Mostly it looked like a rave, musicians playing, half-naked fae scampering about or screwing in the corners, filthy artwork or piles of food. Din had been polite and taken a glass of wine, even though he didn’t really eat or drink, just to have it in front of him. Gus was just gawking. This was probably the first time Din had seen Gus excited enough to be quiet for more than five minutes.

Din wasn’t sure sometimes about whether it was right to have Gus see stuff like this. He didn’t know enough about his mind to know whether he had the maturity. I mean sure, you could be a semi-omniscient database-driven godmind, but that doesn’t mean you are hip enough to carry on a conversation while people were going at it on a pile of pillows at arms reach.

They had arrived from the Tunnel a few kilometers from the Tower, which in the distance looked like a tall, slim, silver spire, with gaudy banners and fireworks. A few small clouds floated near to it, with small tents and pavilions set up. Even from here you could hear the music and smell the herbs they were burning for some unknown reason.

Din then realized the server pile weighed a lot - almost fifty kg. And they had to drag it with them. So they dragged and hefted it for a few dozen meters before they had to put it down, panting and covered in dust. Din squinted and looked around. “Maybe we can hide it until we’re done in there,” he murmured, looking, but there wasn’t much cover around the Tower. “Bury it or something.”

“WE CAN’T BURY IT - IT’LL OVERHEAT,” Gus said. “WE COULD POP BACK TO QUEEN MAB’S FOR A CART?”

“No no no,” Din said quickly. “If we go back they may stop us from leaving. Can we cast a spell on it to make it lighter? I mean, not from out here, but from Volm?”

Gus nodded, then frowned. “IF WE BOTH GO WE’LL BE VULNERABLE OUT HERE.”

Din thought for a moment, then pointed at himself. “I’ll go. You stay out here. Pull me out if you need me. I’ll be quick.”

Gus saluted Din with his blue hand and jacked it in. Din’s head lolled down in front like he had been shot.

Gus paced next to the server (he couldn’t pace far since he was plugged into it) when he noticed in the distance some movement. Approaching was a sort of tiny parade: there were a couple of dancing jugglers, a bear wearing a tuxedo in front, various fluttering sprites, and a wagon being drawn by two enormous lizards. The wagon glowed neon colors and organ music drifted along with it, and was covered in silks and parasols. In the back, two half-dressed Dryad maidens lounged on the silk pillows, eyes half-closed.

Gus’ eyes widened as he watched it approach. Eventually it got close enough that the bear could hail Gus. The bear looked Gus up and down, lifting an eyebrow, sighed, and said loudly, “Hello there! Are you the famous dragon Sir Din? Our master Zaramat the powerful wanted to see if you and your magic egg needed assistance?”

“I’M SIR GUS. HE’S DIN,” Gu said, pointing at Din’s wobbling head. “IT’S NOT AN EGG, IT’S A DELL BLADE SERVER ARRAY WITH-”

“I see, I see,” the bear said, clearly bored with the whole thing. “My master would like to help transport your… thing. We can load it on the wagon in the back. However, I have to warn you - the bacchanalia taking place at the Tower, while a bit ‘reserved’ for our tastes, is perhaps objectionable to mortals. Are you alright with a little… festivities? For we are celebrating the first full moon of spring, and -”

“THAT LOOKS AND SMELLS LIKE A SEX AND DRUGS PARTY,” Gus said.

“A-hurm. In a sense… but that’s such a simple description of the cultural awakening that-”

“YES PLEASE YES WE’D LIKE TO GO.” The bear looked down at Din’s rolling head. “What about him?” the bear asked.

Gus nodded enthusiastically. “YES YES HE’S FINE WITH IT.”

An hour later, the servers suddenly made a soft “fwing” sound and floated an inch off the floor. Din’s head shot up straight, splashing the scented bath water his body was in.

“OK, we should be able to… what the error?” Din said, floundering around in the water, looking around.

They were in a shadowed chamber, a harp trilling by itself in the corner, in what appeared to be a giant steaming sunken tub. Gus was having his blue hand sudsed and massaged by a beautiful naked Naiad using a giggling sponge, holding it a bit too close for Din’s comfort. His left hand was getting a manicure by an also naked, also beautiful and chiseled Satyr, also holding it even more a bit too close.

“ERROR. Wha… who! Gus? GUS.”

“THE WARLOCK SAID HE WOULD SEE US AS SOON AS WE CLEANED UP.” The Naiad dropped the hand she was soaping and extended a finger, hooking it in a sexy come-hither. Gus shifted and brought out another hand. She nestled it against her blue and slightly-scaled breasts, scrubbing part of it, and then, smiling, going in to suck on a claw. The Satyr looked at the Naiad and they both tittered. “I LIKE BATHS,” Gus said.

Din angrily trundled them out of the bath, dried them on some hanging towels and before they knew it they were found by the same tuxedo bear majordomo and brought to be seated with the Warlock, given drinks and had a chance for the Warlock to examine them.

“So you’ve seen the Tower,” the warlock said, “and met my majordomo Master Snarl Von Honeymuffins, and-”

“ARE YOU RELATED TO CAPTAIN MURDERPAWS VON HONEYMUFFINS AT-”

“Honeymuffins is a fairly common bear name,” sniffed the majordomo, “and, no, we aren’t related.”

“And had a chance to freshen up,” the warlock continued firmly. “My. So yes, what can I help you with? I’ve got this… ahem…party obligation in a few minutes, so no rush, but once the potion kicks in I won’t be able to focus as easily, oh my yes. Love potion, you understand.”

Din could see the potion’s purple Kha coiling about in his abdomen and moving down to his crotch and sighed to himself. “Your brother Tamaraz put a spell on our server cluster… uh, the egg over there… to provide electricity to keep it alive. Without it we’ll stop existing. The problem is we’re not getting enough energy going in so we’re slowly bleeding out. Can you help?”

Zaramat squinted down and smirked. “Ah yes, I can see my brother’s sloppy spells all over your egg’s energy ahhh orifice. Amazing! Amazing to see Faerie magic integrating with your foreign sciences. Well,” he said dryly, “he was always good with slapping stuff together, hmm. Unfortunately He’s got his runes locked down tight. I’d really have to do some work to counterspell them to get them off.”

“We’d be very grateful and I’m sure we could come to some sort of arrangement,” Din pleaded.

“Yes yes. The thing is,” Zaramat droned, “I’m not sure why I should interfere. I don’t mind undoing something he did for the sport and the fame of it, but this is not… difficult. Just time-consuming. Not really worth it for me to deal with his ire.” The warlock looked off, thinking. “Having a dragon in the tower might be interesting, though. Something of a draw. Maybe if you agreed to be my guest for a period of, say, ten years, I might be willing to consider it.”

“Why is it that nobody in Faerie wants to help us without pinning us to an obligation?” Din said, exasperated. “I assume if I go to your brother he’ll say something similar.”

“Probably! But see here, you are making me out to be a villain, and that’s not exactly fair,” the warlock said, standing up and walking around the table they were seated at. “Yes, for all the nobility in the Unseelie lands, we’re not that noble sometimes, it seems. Very transactional, it would appear. To begin with, you’re asking me to spend a lot of Kha and materials for no return.”

“I’d pay you back,” grumped Din. “Would you? Maybe you would!” returned Zaramat jovially. “And maybe you wouldn’t. An obligation ensures you will. Faerie runs on deals, bound and honor-promised. I mean that quite literally. It’s one of the rules, after all.”

“I READ THE BOOK OF MAB’S LAWS IN THE SUITE AND DIDN’T SEE ANYTHING ABOUT-”

“Not laws, Sir Gus. Rules.” The warlock extracted a wand from the sash of his robe and waved it. With a small pop, floating in the air appeared lines of script. Din trundled over and looked at it. It was Enochian lettering but modified. The semantics looked more like… huh.

“SOMEONE USED THE ENOCHIAN LOGOZ-ALPHABET TO ENCODE LOGICAL STATEMENTS FROM THE FINNO-UGRIC,” Gus said.

“Faerie was a formless place, formed at the beginning of time like all dimensions,” Zaramat said, marveling himself as he scrolled through the script, first slowly and then more rapidly than the eye could follow. “Most dimensions have their rules encoded in their own Akashic libraries, undecipherable to all but the highest powers. Faerie did not. When the first sorcerers arrived from other planes they created rules to govern how Faerie worked, and around these rules the Seelie and Unseelie lands coalesced… like sugar candy on a string.”

He gestured widely, the script disappearing. “These rules aren’t just rules such as “deals can’t be broken”. These rules govern the very stuff we are made from. Of course, right now, they don’t govern you, exactly,” he said, pointing at Din. “You aren’t made from Faerie-stuff. You are a magical construct, made by your living self inside the egg, and the egg itself is made of mortal un-Fae matter. So we have to be extra careful when dealing with you, yes yes. Oh, my goodness.”

The warlock grinned widely, looking down at his midsection. “I have to be going as my potion is…ahem, taking effect. I wish you-”

“I understand you have rules and whatever, but we’re going to die if we don’t fix this. Can’t we make a deal that doesn’t involve us being enslaved?” Din begged.

“Oooo, enslaved is such a loaded word. Obligated! Eh, slave is fine. And I’m afraid I can’t. Won’t. Feel free to stay in the tower as long as you like! We can talk later… maybe tomorrow. Oh my yes!” The warlock swept out, his robes held at the back by several bored-looking sprites. All the other adjutants followed, leaving Din and Gus alone in the room.

Din and Gus slowly made their way out of the tower, pushing the egg (still floating) through rooms of orgies, a wine-fountain, and some kind of sea-foam party filled with dancing Naiads. After a few minutes they stood outside on the ramp leading up to the tower gates. Gus looked back at the tower forlornly.

“How much of the text did you get?” Din asked. “It scrolled above my frame-rate at the end.”

“A FEW MEGABYTES. I’VE ALREADY CROSS-COLLATED WITH WHAT YOU SAW AND AM INDEXING AND COMPARING TO THE OTHER LANGUAGE DATABASES.”

They pushed the egg for a bit, down the road to where a clear path cut through some sparse woods. “Obviously we’ll go through the whole thing,” Din said, “but one thing sticks out from the conversation with the warlock. If Faerie was encoded with rules, that means there’s a place where the underlying Logoz-structure is malleable enough to be altered. A weak spot in the physics here, or maybe a logical knot, or-”

“ZÄÄNTÖ SHZEN GIRJÂ - THE BOOK OF RULES,'' Gus said. “THERE ARE SOME SELF-REFERENTIAL RULES I’VE DISCOVERED THAT REFER TO ITSELF IN THE FORM OF A PHYSICAL AVATAR - AN EXTRUSION OF THE RULES THEMSELVES INTO THIS DIMENSION.”

Din nodded. “And where do we find it?”

“THE BOOK RADIATES CHANGE, CHAOS AND DANGER,” Gus said. “AS SUCH IT WOULD BE AN IDEAL PLACE FOR A SORCERER TO RESIDE, IN ORDER TO TAP INTO THOSE POWERS, BUT IT WOULD BE-”

“Aw, error.” Din said.

“-MOST PERILOUS.”

-

THEN: APRIL 4th, SIGMA LABS

Pendit took a look at the mechanism in front of him and pulled back on the iron lever very slowly. The shutter on the lead-lined lantern slowly drew back and purple-green light flowed out; as it flowed, the apparatus groaned and shuddered and the indicator arrows clicked upward onto the spot labeled “50 KG”.

Nap had decided, once the boat was more or less constructed in his mind, that he wanted to be able to sail it around. He had started trying to engineer sails but ran into a situation where he realized that the stuff he built in his lucid dreams - what he now realized was his own memory palace, after a fashion - needed to follow consistent rules. He didn’t know enough about air and sailing and his mind rebelled when he tried to wing it.

On the other hand, he had more than casual knowledge about mechanical engineering, and on top of that had dabbled with so many fictional words in gaming and literature the concept of alternate engineering didn’t seem to bother him (or his sleeping mind) as much. It was easier to just assume he could build an engine for the boat rather than using sails, and once he started doing that, it wasn’t as much of a leap to want to make something that flew.

He had made and discarded various methods based on what his subconscious could tolerate. Anything too high-tech or too realistic didn’t work, because his science-brain would dismiss it as unreal. Putting a gas-bag overhead worked, but filling it with hydrogen was deadly and he’d need an enormous one if he used helium. He considered a more fictional gas that had more lift but his brain cramped on that one, too.

Lately he decided to just go for something exotic and was experimenting with Cavorite. The radiation negated gravity and followed its own rules, and it seemed to be something he could live with, probably because he read all the Jules Verne as a kid. Now it was just a question of building enough lift to get the boat out of the water.

Interesting to him was how the stuff came up with its own rules, too. He never specified the color of the radiation, or the strange slow-light, almost fluid characteristics of it. It just seemed to form on its own.

He didn’t get a chance to experiment longer because the alert from the base labs resounded through the lab dormitories, so he woke up annoyed and groggy.

He burst into the main conference room, ready to chew someone out, when he saw the concerned look on all the techs, scientists and the few army and CIA minders there. Everybody was there. Xeniya was standing, frowning, in front of the big display, looking at a news broadcast. On screen were anxious newscasters, while in the background a rocket of some kind was warming up on a launch pad. From the captions, it looked Russian. On the other side was Robert Breyan, the recent Dr. from MIT who spent all his spare time messing about with the armor and hammers. He was doing gentle grounding exercises, something he picked up from his years of martial arts training. While he did it, Nap could see his Kha slowing and cooling. Robert went on and on about how martial arts disciplines were mirrored in the mystical runic tech they were investigating, but seemed happy enough to squash things with hammers, too.

“What’s going on?” Pendit said. Xeniya looked over, saw he was present and waved him over. As he walked through the assembled Sigma group, Xeniya showed him her tablet, showing a globe of the Earth. Various points were marked with an x along with orbital vectors as labels near each. She rotated the globe and Nap counted.

“OK,” he said. “We knew there would be more. There’s… four here. So eight, total. Did we find them?”

“Roscosmos, if you can believe it, found the rest of the probes,” Xeniya said. “They reverse-engineered one of our Seeing-Eye spells and did something with a dozen observers and… I don’t know the details yet.”

The TV switched to a UN security council session. People were arguing with the Russian Ambassador. The launch was on monitors in the council room.

“What’s with the launch?” Nap said, watching the council debates.

“Russia says they’ve figured out a way to get at the probes using stealth. They claim it’s to protect us from another touchdown, but it’s obvious they want to capture a working one. They aren’t wrong, exactly.” Xeniya changed channels. On another screen Air Force One touched down and President Ashe walked out, looking pissed as usual, stomping down to the limo on the tarmac. “Capturing one would be a logical next step. But we don’t seem to be in any danger, and the tech is still beyond us. There’s no reason to do this now unless you are just racing to get it first.”

An engineer sitting down at the table, typing on a laptop spoke up. “I’ve got a friend over at Roscosmos who sent me some snaps of the runes on the orbital vehicle they assembled. It’s basic Ignore-Me and optical redirection stuff. It’s enough to stealth-distract anything someone here on Earth could engineer, but the probes? I doubt it.”

“Everybody at the UN is arguing to postpone the launch,” Xeniya said. “If Wendy gets there before they launch I imagine she can stop them.”

“What if disturbing the probes de-orbits the rest of them?” a panicky scientist asked from the table. Another one answered her, saying “The probe touchdown appeared to be an accident. I doubt they’re going to attack. I’m more worried about accidents.”

“Wendy’s arriving at the UN” Xeniya said. “Wait-”

Several people in the council room pointed at the monitors, as the Russian rocket slowly took off.

Suddenly Tommy Brey, Wendy’s Secret Service chief, appeared in a window. He was lit from behind from the limo’s passenger area and looked scared. “Xen, Wendy’s having another episode!”

Tommy turned his phone around to show the back. Wendy was rigid, sitting upright, hands outstretched and floating off the seat, her eyes brightly glowing green, wind whipping around the interior. The two agents in the back were holding on to handles and the compartment was filling rapidly with vines, leaves and branches.

“YOU DO KNOW A STORM IS COMING, RIGHT?” Wendy said, her voice eerie and multi-harmonized. Then in a normal voice she cried “No! No, not now!” Then she shrieked and went rigid.

“She’s been doing that for a minute now,” Tommy yelled. “We’re pulling up to the UN. What do I do, here?”

“She’s come out of these before,” Xeniya said. “Just stay with her. I’ll try to get someone to get over there with something to calm her down.”

-

Eight minutes after launch, a small shuttle-like vehicle detached from the top of the Russian rocket, and the rest fell down to Earth. The vehicle had a small crew. As soon as orbital insertion was completed, the warlocks on board activated the stealth runes on the outside and vanished from regular radar and ground-side telescopes.

Several teams could still see them though. The Department of Defense, now equipped with special Seeing-Eye optics, could pick it out. Several other nations with more primitive versions of the same thing could make out the general outline. A small team of Buddhist Japanese monks who’d been tackling Astral Projection had a single monk up there, watching from an astral vantage point.

The vehicle slid along through orbit, approaching the first one that had appeared over Russian but was now moving in orbit along towards Europe on an arcing intercept course.

Everybody on Earth watched, hoping that nothing was going to happen. “If the probe can see them,” Pendit said, “it has to know they are coming in to-”

Suddenly on other screens, the probes, one by one, were making a flash and vanishing. Replay of the flash showed the probes erecting some kind of red ring around themselves and a split second later stretching through it and leaving. “Tunneling rings,” Pendit said. “They’re rabbiting.”

“The Russian vehicle better clear out then,” Xeniya said. “We don’t know what proximity will do to those-”

The vehicle let out a burst of accelerant and closed in on the probe location and extended grapplers. The rest of the probes started winking out.

The vehicle got its claws on the space where the probe was, and the probe became visible. At the same time red rings appeared around both the vehicle and the probe. The rings sliced through the vehicle, but the rings didn’t flash - instead they seemed to vibrate.

“Tunnel calibration is off,” whispered Nap. “It can’t compensate for the added mass and torque. They have to let go.”

The vibration of the ring increased, and the probe started to roll and pitch in place as the remains of the vehicle grappled with it. Suddenly there was a red flash and the probe disappeared, taking half of the vehicle with it.

Everybody was silent at the UN, but then people started picking up phones and started yelling at each other. The monitors there shifted to an overhead view of the Earth over Europe. Where the middle of Italy was, a massive fireball was spreading under a dark cloud.

There were silent moments as people in the Sigma labs frantically contacted the scientists and military contacts they had as reports poured in.

“Was it another touchdown?” someone said.

Xeniya looked at the readings and emails she was getting, and shook her head. “It looks like the probe came out of the Tunnel underground, right under Perugia, Italy, and probably close to light speed. There’s a lot of ejecta. Jesus… It's basically a meteor strike. Everyone!” she shouted. “We’ve got maybe twenty minutes before the shockwaves, if any, get here. Everyone get to shelters! Tommy!”

Tommy appeared back on the screen. “Wendy’s passed out. We heard what happened. We’re going to the secure shelter now.”

Xeniya turned to Pendit and Robert. “You two, c’mon. We’re gonna go armor up and reinforce the structural defenses outside. Just in case.”

The room emptied. On the monitor, the destruction spread, like a dead hand opening over the Earth.