Bruglia (aka the Mesa). Palinor.

3201. Frostfield.

The season was cold, the mesas offering little in the way of protection. The city was built for the baking Brightsun heat, when enclosed courtyards and stone dwellings made perfect sense. Come the depths of Frostfield and the lack of formal heating systems in most homes became uncomfortably apparent. The most better nights didn’t last for long, mercifully, but those few weeks felt long each year.

None of that was a problem in the palace, of course. Daryla was quite comfortable with the open fire in the centre of her chamber, or the fires of the central dining hall, with its huge extraction chimneys that were larger than most houses. She felt entirely luxuriant wrapped in her furs while she ate grapes and strawberries imported from Mid-Earth. If there was one thing the Mid-Earthers were good at, it was getting things from one place to another. The notion of the shipping container had not caught on in Palinor: cargo unloaded from the portal station was transferred to a true menagerie of transports. Horse-drawn, camel-borne, wyvern-slung - there was no shortage of imagination when it came to moving things inefficiently.

Daryla’s fortunate circumstances were ironically the precise source of her discomfort. She was all too conscious of the plumes of smoke rising from the palace, drifting over the city, mocking its inhabitants as they huddled together for warmth. Such was the privilege of the aristocracy in the city states of Palinor. She was highly educated, even at only eighteen, trained as a skilled micrologist and heir to a family wallet that meant she would never need to work a day in her life.

Comfortable. That was the fate of a princess on Palinor. She would wield increasing power, as it was passed to her, so long as she maintained the family name.

She pulled the furs a little tighter around her as she sat on her bed and turned the page of the morning’s newspaper. There were the usual reports of infighting in the other city states, and of how wonderful everything was in Bruglia. Everything on the up, always getting better. Daryla always skipped to the section of the paper that covered foreign news - as in, foreign dimension. What happened in the other realities somehow felt more real than anything on Palinor.

Ah yes, the kengto incident in London. An embarrassing incident, caused by a tiny portal tear opening up in a most inopportune location at the Bruglia museum of zoology. A newborn kengto slithered its way through before anyone had noticed and popped out in London. The portal tears worried Daryla. They suggested that whatever spell had been cast two centuries prior was still active in some form, but with its wielder now long-dead there was no-one at the rudder. It was surprising that the one at the zoo hadn’t been spotted and isolated sooner.

There was a photograph of the detective, Lola Styles, alongside some of the Six Blades. She was amusingly diminutive compared to them. Daryla sighed, thinking back to the reception aboard the Pluma, when she’d met Lola. There had been many meetings that evening, of course, given the nature of the event, but Lola’s had been the one to fix in her memory. It occurred to Daryla that she’d invited the detective to visit Palinor, but had never followed up formally. Whispering a few words, the fire in the room dimming as a flicker of its energy was drawn towards her, she severed the paper bonds and cut the picture from the surrounding newspaper, floating it in front of her.

It would be fun to have some Mid-Earthers come to stay. She would send out word.

*

London, Mid-Earth.

1973. February.

The White Horse felt so ordinary that it made Lola feel out of place. The last time she had been in there it had been to locate the Six Blades, and the days since had been one adventure after another. The kengto incident had been terrifying and terrible, with deaths now estimated to be in the forties and property damage unlike anything outside of an actual war, which made Lola feel all the more guilty for mourning its ending.

There was a richness to her encounters with people from Palinor. Even the kengto, as horrible as it was, remained an undeniably impressive and imposing creature, a beast unlike anything she might find on Earth. Or Mid-Earth, as anyone from Palinor or Max-Earth called it. Mid-Earthers. That’s what she was. In the middle.

It sounded mundane.

The Six Blades had departed, back through the portal to a land more fantastical and exciting. She supposed that to them it was their normal, yet the reverse was not true. There was no scenario in which Ellenbrin or Halbad or Ngarkh found Mid-Earth London exciting and fantastical. It was just a dirty city in an average reality.

“It’s not that bad,” Clarke said, pulling up a stool. “Is it?”

Lola sighed into her empty glass.

“Come on,” her partner said, “I’m supposed to be the grumpy one, remember? I’m the old fart here. Grumbling about retirement. What have you got to complain about, Lola Styles, monster hunter extraordinaire?”

That elicited a smile. “Sorry.”

Clarke gestured at the bartender and ordered them drinks. “Look, I get it,” he said. “You’re young. Ambitious. You meet these monster hunters, like characters out of a book or a movie, and it makes everything else feel boring. You want to have adventures. That’s natural at your age.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Patronising, much? Is this the part where you tell me I’ll get over it?”

He took a long, slow swig of beer, musing into his glass. He gulped, put the pint back on the bar. “No. Maybe I would have, not long ago.” He wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “No, I say go for it. Hanging around waiting doesn’t get you anywhere. Life’s too short.”

“Waiting?”

“Waiting for someone to give you permission,” he said, smiling at her. “You don’t need my permission, Lola. You want something, you’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

Shrugging, she shuffled on the stool, her feet dangling in the air. “Your opinion matters to me, Yannick.”

“Shit, well that’s your first mistake.”

“I get what you did, on the airship, and on the towers,” she said, putting a hand on his. “I know how hard all of that was, after - well, after what happened to Detective Callihan.”

He pulled his hand away. “Yeah, well. Bad things happen to good people. Didn’t want anything happening to you.” He voice caught slightly in his throat.

“I thought you were a grumpy old sod when I met you,” she said.

“That’s why they made you detective, instincts like that.”

“Hah. Anyway, you are a grumpy old sod, but you’re my partner. And friend.” She put an arm around his broad shoulders and leant her head against him. “So, thanks for that.”

“You’re welcome, kid.” He took another glug. “So what’s next on your list of grand ambitions?”

“Reckon the SDC could do with a liaison officer on the other side of the portal?”

*

Bakker sat in his office, Kaminski opposite. They were silent for a long time. Kaminski stubbed a cigarette into the ashtray, lit another. Bakker was leaning back in his chair, one leg crossed onto his other knee, his fingers steepled as he stared at nothing and contemplated.

Kaminski shifted awkwardly in his chair, wishing he were at the pub with the others. “You sure they’re all gone?”

Bakker grunted, nodded. “Every single container we’d impounded from Barrindon. Actual inspection was snarled up in red tape, but we had them locked down in a storage unit next to the portal station.”

“Disappeared? How many were there?”

“About twenty-five.” Bakker picked up a letter opener from his desk, examined it, then set it back down, aligning it carefully with the other items there. “They weren’t taken through the portals, that’s for sure. Whole place was in lockdown while the kengto was loose, and we’ve got our own security people doing checks there now.”

Kaminski nodded. “So they went elsewhere. Somewhere here, on Mid-Earth. Where? And why?”

“They used the chaos during the kengto incident as cover,” Bakker said, slowly, considering each word, as if he were weighing up the likelihood of his theory for the first time as he was saying it out loud.

“Taking advantage of the moment, or reckon they knew it was coming?”

“You always find a way to make a bad situation somehow worse, Kaminski.”

“Thanks, that’s what Chakraborty always says about me, too.”

"She should know.” Bakker put both feet back on the floor and swivelled his chair so that he was back at the desk. He picked up a pen, turning it over between his fingers. “We don’t know why, we don’t know what the final destination was supposed to be, but we do know that those containers were originally supposed to go through the portal to Max-Earth.”

“Whisked off into the future.”

Bakker held up a finger. “Not our future. Divergent timelines, and all that.”

“Figure of speech.”

“Details matter, Kaminski. We closed off that route, which leaves them only one option.”

It was obvious, Kaminski realised. “Addis. The African portal to Max-Earth.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. They’re taking those things out a whole new door. Cutting London out of the picture.”

“You think they’re going to use the Atlantic portal to Palinor? I thought that was basically only used as a scientific station?”

Bakker grimaced. “Maybe we should be taking closer looks at both, eh?”

*

It was a seedy room, even by the standards of the Barrel. Frank Holland didn’t care. The moral bankruptcy suited his mood. The venue, the décor, the smell, the clientèle, the whores - he needed them to be the worst of the worst, absolute scum, so that he could feel good about himself.

Normally he went for the costumed places, where girls wore pointy rubber ears and larger men and women clad in Halloween koth outfits would beat the unworthy into pleasurable submission. Sometimes there would be role-play experiences on offer, for a price. Kill the dragon, fuck the princess. There’d always been an appetite for knock-off exotic Palinor experiences, without needing to actually get your hands dirty.

This time he’d gone to a new place in search of something more legitimate. Only Frank Holland’s self-loathing outweighed his disdain for everyone else. The metal-framed bed, paint flecking off, held a crumpled and near-flat mattress. He was paying for a slight aen’fa girl, who was distracted and cold. That was fine: he couldn’t stand any pretence of emotional investment. There was something bestial about fucking another species, he thought, observing himself in the strategically positioned mirror at the head of the bed.

The kengto farce had been a disaster. He’d been made to look a fool. Clarke and Styles’ absurd attempts to play at being the hero had put them all at risk. It was a miracle any of the SDC had survived - the same couldn’t be said for the crew of the airship, torn apart or sent overboard by the creature’s attack.

Holland was supposed to be the hard man.

He was the one they sent when a suspect needed roughing up.

He was the one who ran investigations in the worst areas of the city.

He was the one who ought to be feared.

He was the one who made an underworld pub go quiet when he walked in the door.

He was the one who should have been on the Westminster clock towers.

He looked at the aen’fa below him, imagined the face of the Six Blades archer on her instead.

It should have been him.

Sighing, satisfied, he pushed her away and collapsed onto his back.

In the upper corner of the room, hidden in the crumbling coving, a video camera continued its recording.

*

Space, approaching Mars high orbit. Max-Earth.

2543. February.

Humans called it a wild goose chase, though there were sadly few confirmed records of such incidents. It occurred to Just Enough that Wild Goose Chase would make for quite a wonderful ship’s moniker. When another megaship was constructed, which should be within seventy years-or-so, they would suggest it as a possibility. Megaships were rare, so getting the name right was important. Though, perhaps they were not to be as rare as expected.

Although Just Enough could remote into a host anywhere in the solar system, the lag would be prohibitive and require fully sharded operation - not entirely unlike sending a sliver of their consciousness through the portal to Mid-Earth. For a time the host would exist as a distinct entity, operating independently, until it was time to merge again with the ship. That seemed like too great a risk, given the stakes. Too much potential for something to happen to the host which could prevent it from reporting back. No, far better to be physically proximal so that a direct link could be maintained throughout.

Megaships being unmanned had none of the awkwardness associated with human space flight. There was no chance of a small organic meatbag being overly compressed due to extreme inertia and bursting messily, which rather remove the stabilisers and enabled megaships such as Just Enough to travel as fast as the rules of physics would allow. An Archimedes drive at maximum burn could cross the distance between Earth and Mars in less than twenty days, at least when the planets were on close approach.

If they were right about the contents of the mysterious container that Detective Kaminski had found himself in, then Mars was the first obvious port of call. The planet was the only one that could compete with Earth for manufacture and sophistication of industry in general. It was all circumstantial, and reliant on the visual testimony of a highly stressed human, so Just Enough had kept their suspicions off the network. No need to provoke panic until real evidence was uncovered.

The dark, irregular shape of the megaship Just Enough moved silently through the void, a mixture of curves and protrusions barely visible in the edge light from the distant sun.