The Emerald Sea by John Ringo

Prologue
The fifteen-thousand-ton asteroid had been named, in the deepness of time when 
men still did such things, AE-513-49. In the latter twenty-first century, when 
every chunk of ice and rock that was of any conceivable danger to the earth had 
been mapped and tracked, it had been concluded that AE-513-49, which looked a 
bit like an elephant's foot and was composed of nickel-iron, had a probability 
of impact with the earth low enough that the heat death of the universe was a 
more likely problem.
AE-513-49 had been considered for mining until it was determined that, as a 
Helios asteroid, one close in to the sun, bringing out the materials would be 
more costly than those on the relative "downslope" towards the outer system. 
Then asteroid mining, after a very brief heyday, went away as the human race 
started to dwindle and, with it, the need for metals from beyond the atmosphere.
Thus AE-513-49 had been permitted to continue on its lonely orbit, circling the 
sun like a very small planet, hanging out at the very edge of the "life belt" 
between the earth and Mercury.
Until a curious thing happened.
A couple of years before, small gravitic nudges were applied to it. They first 
sent it inward towards the sun where it would, of course, have impacted without 
any noticeable trace. But then it encountered the gravity well of the small 
planet Mercury and "slingshotted" around it, headed back "outward" in the 
system.
More small nudges, some of them infinitesimally faint, adjusted its trajectory 
until it was precisely aligned with a point in space through which the earth 
would pass. Then, for almost a year, nothing.
As it approached the earth, however, more nudges were applied. A few adjusted 
the course so that it would assuredly hit the earth and, what's more, on a 
particular circular zone of the earth. Other nudges sped it up or slowed it down 
so that it would hit a particular point on that circle. Then, as it approached 
the atmosphere, the nudges became more distinct. It was now targeted on that one 
small point.
As it entered the atmosphere, thin and high, it began to fluoresce, coruscating 
waves of fire leaping off of it as the lighter materials it had picked up on its 
two-billion-year journey through the solar system burned off leaving the solid 
nickel-iron core revealed. This, too, began to burn as it hurtled closer and 
closer to the face of the earth, the metal subliming off in waves of fire.
Thus it was a melted ball of nickel-iron, hurtling downward at far more than 
orbital velocities, trailing an immense line of fire behind it, that slammed to 
a stop in midair thirty-five meters from an unassuming home that was sitting, 
against all reason, in a pool of lava.
In keeping with the laws of physics the nickel-iron, which was half ionized by 
heat, exploded outward in titanic fury. But this, too, stopped in midair and the 
enormous detonation, which would have destroyed much of the local area, was 
captured by some invisible force and quickly dissipated.
The nickel-iron that had once been AE-513-49 spread itself across an invisible 
hemispherical barrier, practically covering the house and shutting off all light 
to its interior for a moment, then slid away, bubbling as if from the 
application of some tremendous energy, to join the rest of the lava.
Inside the hemispherical protection field, the asteroid impact was noted as only 
a simple thump. At the thump, Sheida Ghorbani opened up a view-screen, as she 
did at least once a day, and looked at the lake of boiling lava that surrounded 
her home. The whole valley around her home was a mass of red and black liquid 
rock, fuming and spitting plumes of yellowish sulfur-laden steam. As always she 
called to mind the lofty Douglas firs, winding paths and crystalline mountain 
stream that had once been. Back in the days before the Fall.
The human race had brought itself so far. Rising through the mists of history. 
Surviving wars and famines. Until they had finally come to a technological point 
where so much was available, war, and even government, had been all but 
forgotten. The AI entity called Mother, which had started as a security protocol 
for the nearly mythical "internet" had morphed over the years until it was She 
who was the final arbiter of need. Mother, with her Argus eye and processors 
ranging from extradimensional quantum field systems to the honeycomb of bees, 
knew all and could see all. Beyond who was naughty and who was nice, it was She 
who saw the sparrow fall.
But the dangers of such an entity were known long before it was possible to 
create one. And Mother's creator, knowing the danger that She represented, She 
who was the first true AI, had established human controls upon her. Thirteen 
"Key-holders," each with a physical pass item, who could "tweak" Her protocols 
and, in extreme cases, open up her kernel and reprogram Her. The latter, 
however, required complete unanimity.
The Keys had first been held by major corporate heads and by governments in the 
early days of Her youth. But over the years some of them had fallen into a 
shadowy underworld. As Her power grew, more and more capabilities and decisions 
were loaded upon Her shoulders until in the last millennia She had become the 
defacto world government. She was controlled, primarily, by the overt "Council" 
of thirteen Key-holders. They were the human link in the chain and mostly 
ensured that Her protocols were tweaked and maintained while She did the grunt 
work of managing distribution of goods and services. The last human-controlled 
world government had dissolved nearly two hundred years ago from sheer lack of 
utility.
The reason for the lack of utility was simple; with no want there was limited 
conflict and crime. Replication, teleportation, nannites and genetic engineering 
had created a world where any human could live as they desired. A house on a 
mountaintop was easily created and the mountaintop could be anywhere in the 
world, since with teleportation going elsewhere was a matter of wishing. Body 
modification had taken wide forms, with humans Changing themselves into mer, 
unicorns, dolphins and a host of other shapes. All conflict, and crime, comes 
down to a breach of written or unwritten contracts. It was Mother that ensured 
that contracts, by and large, were not breached. In the rare case in which they 
were, the individual involved was hunted down by an efficient, if small, police 
force and "adjusted," in extreme cases by a memory wipe and replacement to 
create a nice, docile, well-adjusted human.
But there had been problems with unlimited wealth and ease. Over the years both 
human birthrates and scientific progress had fallen by the wayside. World 
population had peaked at twelve billion in the latter twenty-first century and 
then had started a long, slow, decline until the population, pre-Fall, had been 
a mere billion or so individuals, mostly residing in widely scattered homes and 
small hamlets. With limitless recreational activities, and birth, thank God, 
removed from the bodies of women and moved to uterine replicators, raising 
children was at the very bottom of most people's wish lists. And strong 
protocols, enforced by Mother and voted upon in earlier times when massive 
social mistakes had occurred, prevented any group from willy-nilly producing 
children. Each human being created in a uterine replicator had to be from the 
base genetics of two humans and one or both had to take responsibility for 
rearing the child "properly." Failure to do so resulted in the loss of birth 
privileges to both individuals.
In the year before the Fall, less than ten percent of the population had 
produced children. Using straight-line projections, in an estimated five hundred 
to a thousand years, the last human would have closed the door on an extinct 
species.
Scientific progress had gone the same way. While there continued to be 
individuals who liked to "tinker" with the borders of science, the last major 
breakthrough, teleportation, had occurred nearly five hundred years ago.
Looking at both of these trends, the most senior council member, Paul Bowman, 
decided that Something Must Be Done. He had decided that humans needed to learn 
to work again. That humans needed to learn to be "strong" again. That 
implementing a work ethic, by limiting power to only those who "produced" for 
the community, would bring back the science, and art and literature and 
birthrates, which had languished over the past millennia.
Over the years he had gathered members of the Council who, for their own 
reasons, looked to him for leadership. And in the end, when the rest of the 
Council refused his demands, they had struck, attacking the others at a Council 
meeting with insects that carried a deadly binary neurotoxin.
Sheida was one of the Council who opposed him, arguably the leader of the 
opposition. And she, a student of history as most of them were not, had feared 
that his fanaticism would lead to violence. She had consulted with a friend who 
was even more steeped in the history of violence and had prepared as well as she 
could. Very little that was dangerous could be brought into the Council chamber. 
The toxic wasps had only worked because individually they were not poisonous; it 
was only with the sting from two different types that the neurotoxin activated.
She had been stung, twice, by one type. Others of her faction had died.
But at the same time, they had struck back, killing members of Paul's faction. 
The late Javlatanugs Cantor, a werebear, had killed one, falling himself in the 
battle. Ungphakorn, a Changed quetzacoatl, had killed another, and seized that 
one's key.
However, in the end, Sheida and her surviving cohorts had retreated. And the war 
had begun. And the Fall started.
The Council now waged war amongst itself with the energy that had once powered 
the society. The lava outside her home was the side effect of the massive energy 
beam being directed upon the shields of her fastness by Paul's side, which had 
taken the name "New Destiny." Just as other energy beams attacked the power 
stations under the control of her faction, which had taken the name "The Freedom 
Coalition." The Coalition had attacked in turn and now virtually all of the 
energy that had supported human society had been used in attacks and defense by 
the Council.
This had left the rest of the world in a truly apocalyptic state. Food had been 
teleported or replicated for centuries. Homes were often in places impossible to 
live without ongoing power. Failure of personal energy shields had doomed humans 
from the bottom of the ocean to the photosphere of the sun. Failure of food 
delivery, or being left on a mountaintop, or far out at sea, had doomed others 
more slowly.
Thus had begun the Fall, and the Dying Time that followed it, when more than ten 
percent of the population of the world, some one hundred million human beings in 
their various forms, had died. Some, mercifully, before they knew what was 
happening. Others to falls or drowning or slow deaths from starvation and 
exposure.
And the lives of those left after the Dying Time were anything but easy. The 
world had descended to a preindustrial environment with farmers scratching a 
toe-hold in the land, and armies fighting a thousand small battles with bandit 
gangs to hold the line and maintain some semblance of civilization.
The most important single group who saved the remnant population of earth was 
made up of small groups of "reenactors," people who had wrapped their lives 
around earlier times. There were small communities where people lived the lives 
of their forefathers, using hand tools and domestic animals to replicate the 
lives of the ancients.
Many of these people had been living their hobby for decades, or even centuries, 
and knew techniques that no single person from any period in history would know. 
They had used every trick, every technique, to save the lives of the refugees, 
an old word that had been forgotten prior to the Fall, who arrived at their 
doorstep.
In the area that had fallen to Sheida's purview, the areas of the former North 
American Union, the reenactor societies had gathered the refugees, taught them 
how to survive, and in extraordinary cases even thrive, and slowly rebuilt 
society and government. Not so slowly, even. In no more than a year there was a 
core government, a constitution and a burgeoning ground and naval force.
The latter two were vital because in Ropasa Paul had been doing the same thing. 
But he was taking a different tack, establishing himself as dictator and using 
the power in the bodies of people to Change them into a form "more suitable for 
the current conditions." His Changed legions, growing in size every time they 
took another section of Ropasa, had quickly overrun the entire area and 
established an iron-fisted rule. And then he had begun his plan to invade the 
Norau heartland of his enemy.
Sheida often wondered if she had been right to oppose Paul. On the face his plan 
was not nearly as horrible as what had actually occurred. And he was getting 
most of what he wanted from the war, anyway. Populations were booming since the 
release of energy and most protocols had caused women to become fertile again. 
People were certainly learning how to work.
But all she had to do was look at what had happened in Ropasa. Over the 
centuries the strictures against using Mother as a universal eye, a universal 
tool of coercion, had grown strong. Mother knowing your innermost secrets was 
one thing; a person could handle that if they were sure no human was watching. 
But everyone had secrets they didn't want the world to know. Everyone had the 
occasional minor moral slip. Under the protocols pre-Fall, Mother could not be 
used for criminal surveillance, period. For the small, volunteer and chronically 
overworked police to track a criminal, to prevent a crime, to read a person's 
mind, meant using other methods, other systems, rather than the All-Seeing 
Mother.
If Paul had taken full control of the system, Mother would change from a 
distant, uncaring, deity to one that was poking into everyone's lives 
constantly. The way that Paul was going, She would be used for the most extremes 
of coercion. To Change a person, now, required direct, personal, intervention. 
If Paul had control of Mother, he could turn the whole human race into a series 
of separate, specialized, insects.
It was a just war, she thought, turning off the view-screen and going back to 
the myriad duties of the chairwoman for the Freedom Coalition, and the newly 
crowned "queen" of the United Free States. It has just cause, it has a chance of 
winning and the group against which it is fighting is clearly and unmitigatedly 
evil, for all that the evil, on Paul's part at least, stemmed from "good" 
intentions. 
Now, if they could only win it.


CHAPTER ONE
The horseman reined in at a side road and looked at the fields stretching to the 
east.
The rider was massively built, but he sat the war-horse lightly despite his 
armor. He was wearing a gray cloak fastened with a bronze brooch worked in the 
figure of an eagle, loricated plate—segmented armor that was overlapped like the 
plates on a centipede's back—steel greaves and bracers and a kilt made of straps 
of leather with iron plates riveted on the outside. Tied to the right side of 
his saddle was a large helmet with a narrow T slit in the front while on the 
left was a large wooden shield with iron rim and a boss worked in the figure of 
a stooping eagle. The armor, the bracers, the helmet and the shield were nicked 
and battered but well polished and maintained.
His right hand rested loosely on his leg while the hook and clamp that 
substituted for a left hand held his reins. The device was decidedly out of 
character considering the tech base of the rest of his equipment; it was a 
complex curved prosthetic clamp with a sharpened inner blade. It looked as if it 
were made for cutting small limbs and would probably make opening bottles a 
treat. There was a small scar under his right eye and more scars could be seen 
scoring the skin of his right arm wherever the bracers didn't cover.
Also tied to the saddle were a short sword in a scabbard and a large bow case. 
On the rear of the saddle there was a large pack, a blanket roll, a quiver of 
arrows and a bag of feed for the horse. Despite the size of the rider and the 
weight of the equipment, the horse bore the load with no sense of worry. It 
stamped after a moment, but that seemed more impatience than fatigue. The rider 
shushed at it and the horse settled down without another shiver.
The rider, his panoply and the horse were all covered in a thick layer of dust.
Despite the battered armor and weather-beaten look, the rider was a young man, 
good looking in a hard-faced way with short black hair and green eyes. It was 
hard to tell from his expression but he had just passed his nineteenth year. And 
a good bit of the fields he was looking at were his.
They were being harvested in a late autumn Indian summer with the skies blue and 
warm above. On the far side of the large field two men were managing the take 
from a combination harvester. One drove the harvester while the other drove a 
wagon that was capturing the grain. The grain was short and as the ox-drawn 
harvester passed it left behind stubble and straw that was laid out in rows for 
baling.
The rider paused, indecisively, then turned his horse into the field. The near 
end of the field hadn't been harvested yet and the horse whickered at him until 
he paused to let it strip a mouthful of the grain.
"Go ahead, Diablo," the young man said, humorously. "Mike shouldn't begrudge 
it."
The harvester looked up at a shout from the man driving the wagon and pulled the 
oxen to a stop. They nuzzled at the grain but since their mouths were covered by 
feed bags they couldn't emulate the horse. He said something to the man on the 
wagon then climbed down off the harvester and walked across the fields towards 
the rider. At that the rider pulled the horse's head up with a word and tapped 
him into an easy trot. When he approached the other man he reined in and smiled.
" 'I will feast my horse on the standing grain,' " he said, then dismounted, 
hooking his reins onto the saddle to tell the horse to stay.
"Herzer," the harvester said with a smile, holding out his hand. "It's good to 
see you, man."
"Good to see you, Mike," the young man replied, clasping his friend's forearm 
and gesturing with his hook at the fields. "Damn, you've been working hard."
"Yeah, but it's paying off," Mike said, looking at his friend and shaking his 
head. "You look tired."
"I am," Herzer admitted. "And I'm glad to be home. But I'm due for a tour at the 
Academy, so maybe I can chill there for a while."
"What do you have to learn?" Mike asked.
"What do you have to learn about farming?" Herzer replied.
"Lots."
"Yeah, same here. But Edmund's talking about an instructor position. I figure 
I'll be doing some research at the same time. Time to brush up on my ancient 
Greek."
"Makes sense," Mike said, wiping at his brow. "What are we doing talking about 
this out here? Let's go up to the house."
"What about the field?" Herzer asked.
"It'll keep," Mike said. "The rain's supposed to hold off for another couple of 
days and this is the last one I have to cut. I saved mine for last."
"Yours?" Herzer asked, waving at the horse to follow as they walked back towards 
the reaper.
"I could scratch up enough capital to float a loan for the reaper," Mike said. 
"I've been harvesting half the fields in the valley the last month. And, yes, 
this is actually your field."
"That wasn't what I meant and you know it," Herzer said with a grin. "I wouldn't 
know the first damned thing about farming this place."
"Well, I'm learning," Mike admitted. "I'm learning every day."
The helper had been watering and feeding the oxen during the break and he nodded 
at Mike and Herzer as they walked up.
"Harry, this is Herzer Herrick," Mike said. "Herzer this is Harry Wilson. He's 
got a small farm down the river."
"I've heard of you," Harry replied, wiping his hand and shaking Herzer's.
"I'm taking Herzer up to the house. Go ahead and use the basket on the reaper, 
then cross-fill. I'll be back in a while."
"Okay," Harry said, getting on the reaper and clucking the oxen into motion.
"Slower that way, but it'll get some of the field done," Mike said.
"You want a ride up to the house?" Herzer asked, gesturing at the horse.
"I can walk," Mike replied gruffly.
They strode up the side road towards a distant hill, passing through a screen of 
trees that was apparently kept as a windbreak. On both sides of the road, before 
and after the trees, there were fields. Some of them were ready for harvesting, 
in grain and corn, others had plants that were not quite ready for harvest and a 
few were apparently fallow. The latter were covered in an odd golden plant that 
looked like a weed.
"Cover clover," Mike said at a gesture from Herzer. "Very good for fixing 
nitrogen and it forms a 'standing hay' that horses and cattle can eat in the 
winter." He gestured to one of the fields where low bushes were covered in 
purple-green berries. "Olive bushes. I'm hoping to get a good crop of olives off 
them."
"I thought olives grew on trees," Herzer said, fingering the eagle emblem at his 
throat. In the left talon it held a bundle of arrows and in the right an olive 
branch. The eagle's screaming beak was pointed to the left.
"They do. And the trees take decades, centuries really, to grow to maturity," 
Mike said with a shrug. "These grow in a season and you can get more olives per 
acre than with trees."
"Seems like cheating," Herzer grumbled. "You know why the olive is the symbol of 
peace?"
"No."
"Because it takes so long for the trees to grow. If you have olive trees it 
shows that armies haven't fought over the land in a long time. Take away the 
long maturity and what does it mean? Nada."
"Great, but I'm getting fifty chits a barrel for mature olives," Mike said, with 
apparent grumpiness. "And I can get two crops a year off the bushes. Even with 
the cost of field hands and preparation I'm getting ten- or elevenfold profits 
per season. So you can take your philosophical objections and stuff them."
Herzer laughed and pointed to a group of trees on the back side of the olive 
field. They were short and had broad glossy leaves that were a dark, rich green.
"Rubber plants," Mike replied. "I'm trying them out. They're supposed to be 
freeze resistant and fast growing. They grow fast, that's for sure, but this is 
the first winter they've been out so we'll see how they do."
There was more. Growing fruit and nut orchards, stands of hay, partially cleared 
fields with cattle on them. Herzer pointed to the latter in question.
"I got together with some other farmers and we rounded up more ferals last 
year," Mike said as they passed the last field. "That's where I got the oxen, 
too. And you've never lived until you've tried to turn a feral bull into a 
plow-ox."
Herzer laughed again as they came in sight of the house. It was a low, log 
structure, rough in appearance but sturdy and well made. The barn to the side of 
it was much larger and made of a combination of logs and sawn wood. There were 
two or three other outbuildings as well.
"Leave it to you to have a better barn than you do a house," Herzer chuckled.
"That's what Courtney keeps saying," Mike replied. "But we're not made of 
money."
The woman in question came out the door as Herzer was loosening Diablo's saddle. 
She was a short, buxom woman with fiery red hair and an open, smiling face. 
Having watched her negotiate, Herzer was well aware that that heart-shaped face 
masked a mind like a razor, but he was fairly sure the smile in this case was 
genuine.
"Herzer," she yelled, pulling her skirts away from the child at her side and 
running to the hitching post. "Where did you come from?"
"Harzburg," he said, picking her up and kissing her on the cheek. As he did he 
noticed a decided roundness to her abdomen. "Got another one in the oven?"
"Yes," she said with a tone of asperity. "This will make three."
"Three?" he asked then nodded. "I hadn't realized I'd been gone that long."
"Little Daneh is in the crib," she said, gesturing at the child that was still 
hiding by the door. "Mikey, come here. This is our friend Herzer."
The boy shook his head and then, as her face clouded up, darted in through the 
door.
"I doubt he's used to strangers in armor at his door," Herzer said then frowned. 
"I hope he doesn't get familiar with strangers in armor at his door."
"Trouble?" Mike asked.
"Not down here that I've heard," Herzer said. He finished loosening Diablo's 
saddle and lifted all the gear off, then led the horse to the trough and tied 
him off. "That was why I was up in Harzburg. Tarson had been taken over by a 
band of brigands, for want of a better term. They had been raiding Harzburg and 
the city fathers requested federal help. They got me."
"That must have been a pleasure for them," Mike said with a chuckle.
"Yeah, they'd requested a century of Blood Lords, as if we have a century of 
trained Blood Lords to send. And they had a militia but they'd never founded a 
local Blood Lord chapter. Or even sent anyone to the Academy. So I got to go 
whip them into shape." Herzer laid his saddle, tack and blanket on a railing, 
then grabbed the rest with his hook and slung it over his shoulder. "Lead on, 
Macduff!"
"How'd it go?" Courtney asked as they went in the house. She brought over a 
flagon and set it on the table, then laid out cold pork, cheese and bread.
"Thank you," Herzer said, taking a slice of the cheese. It was sharp and tangy 
and went well with a slice of the cold pork. "I'd thought about eating on the 
road but I figured I'd stop by and you might be willing to feed me something 
other than monkey on a stick."
"Not a problem." She smiled, nibbling at the cheese herself. "And I repeat, 
how'd it go?"
"Well, it was a little sticky to start," Herzer admitted. "They'd expected 
someone . . . older."
Mike chuckled and shook his head. "You've got the silver sword and the laurel of 
valor."
"Which meant just about nothing to most of them," Herzer said around a mouthful 
of cheese and bread. "So I just worked at it until they realized they could do 
it my way or die. I made it pretty clear I didn't care which. The Tarsons 
finally attacked the town, where we wiped out most of their fighters, then more 
or less walked in and took Tarson over. The leader of them had set up a 
'citadel' made of a free-standing stockade and a couple of log blockhouses. They 
burned quite nicely with the application of a little tallow and brush." He 
frowned at the memory, then shook his head.
"You make it sound easy," Mike said.
"Easy. Yeah. Only took me a year and a half." Herzer shook his head again and 
took another bite of the pork. "Nice. So what's been happening around here?"
"It's been quiet, thank God," Courtney replied. "We had a petroleum prospecting 
party through here."
"I've heard about that," Herzer said. "They sold some processed product to the 
Academy and we've been experimenting with it."
"Doing what?" Courtney asked.
"Well, it burns a treat," Herzer said, grimly. "Useful if we can figure out a 
way to get the burning stuff over there where the bad guys are," he continued, 
pointing in a random direction. "There's a device called a flamethrower that 
we're working on. If we perfect it we're going to have to figure out a new way 
to fight because it's going to make tight formations suicidal, especially 
wearing armor."
"Ouch!" Courtney said. She shook her head and changed the subject. "The town's 
pretty much stopped growing. Hotrum's Ferry has been drawing off a lot of 
people. We're starting to sell a lot of produce down the river."
"Getting good prices for it, too," Mike said. "They can ship it up river to the 
dwarf mines from there more easily than we can truck it from Raven's Mill."
"I hope they've got decent defenses," Herzer said. "Paul's going to make a grab 
for Norau sooner or later."
"Well, that's their beef," Mike replied. "Were the Tarson brigands working for 
Paul?"
"We never were sure," Herzer replied. "If I had to guess I'd say yes. Paul and 
Chansa have got their fingers in a lot of the pies that are causing us trouble."
"But it's settled now?" Courtney asked.
"As far as I can tell." Herzer shrugged. "The people of Tarson are certainly on 
the side of light. Harzburg . . . you can burn the place to the ground for all I 
give a damn."
"So are you staying the night?" she pressed.
"No, unfortunately," the soldier said with a sigh. "My orders were to report 
'without delay.' So I'm going to have to head into town pretty soon. But I 
figured I could take enough time to stop by and have some real food at least." 
He grinned and carved off another slice of the pork. "You're both looking good. 
The farm is looking good. I'm glad." He chewed on the pork with a thoughtful and 
sad expression for a moment, then smiled again. "Life could be a hell of a lot 
worse."
"Herzer, tell Duke Edmund that he'd better let you get some rest or he'll be 
talking to me," Courtney said dangerously. "And you had better take it, Herzer 
Herrick."
"I will," Herzer replied, looking around at the low room. It was clean and homey 
in a way that nothing in his life had been in a long time. It was like a slice 
of some peaceful place that he was afraid he would be shut out of for all 
eternity.
"I've got to get going," he said after a bit. "Thanks for lunch. Hopefully we'll 
be able to get together some while I'm around."
"We'll do that," Courtney said with a smile. "We'll make an event of it."
Herzer grabbed his gear and headed back out to the horse. Diablo looked at him 
balefully when the gear started going on but the horse sat quietly as Herzer 
saddled up and loaded item after item.
"Is all that necessary?" Courtney asked.
"Not really," Herzer said. "I suppose there are things that I could pick up 
along the way. But I like the tools that I have."
Finally he was saddled up and gave Courtney a hug and shook Mike's hand.
"See you in town," Herzer said, mounting the horse with a grunt. Diablo sighed 
and shook himself, not so much telling Herzer to get off as settling his own 
gear to his satisfaction.
"We'll take care of your farm until it's time to come home," Courtney said. "You 
just come back, okay?"
"Home," Herzer said, shaking his head. "What an interesting abstract notion." He 
smiled and waved as he trotted back down the road.


CHAPTER TWO
Herzer turned left and headed south when he reached the road, then quickly moved 
Diablo to the side as a dispatch rider came trotting from the direction of town. 
The rider, who was a private in the Federal Army by the look of it, gave him a 
glance then a salute as he passed. Herzer returned the salute abstractedly, 
concentrating on a problem.
At the time of the Fall, world population had been just about one billion. The 
aftermath of the Fall had not seen as much die off as anticipated, mostly 
because of small towns like Raven's Mill. But the effectively total loss of 
technology had created enormous implications that were just beginning to sink 
in. The one that was near and dear to his heart was military manpower. The 
military technology available was pregunpowder because of the explosive 
prohibitions still slavishly followed by Mother. Historical battles in 
pregunpowder days meant that each side had a near parity of forces. But raising 
large armies was practically out; there was too great a labor shortage. 
Conscripting large groups meant that something vital simply wouldn't occur; 
farming, manufacturing, something was going to fail.
Thus it was up to relatively small handfuls of soldiers to protect civilization 
from the barbarians. And to protect the new and faltering United Free States 
from the various feudal warlords and the technological despotism of New Destiny.
Like a ship captain of old, Herzer lusted for more men, more soldiers. Too many 
times he had had to fight in battles outnumbered. Mike would make a superlative 
soldier but he needed to be right where he was, farming.
Some of the pressure was relieved by new/old technology. The harvesting that 
Mike was engaged in would have been done by a team of six, at least, in 
preindustrial times. Powered looms, Bessemer forges, meant that there were fewer 
people producing more per person. But even with the productivity increase there 
weren't enough workers for all the potential positions. Which meant fewer 
soldiers as well.
It was an insoluble problem, but one that Herzer wrestled with constantly. The 
dispatch rider, for example, was supported by way stations in the controlled 
areas of Overjay. Each of the way stations had to be manned, and what's more had 
to have horses at it. Figuring out a better means of communication would mean 
freeing up all of those people, and horses, for soldiers. Which might have meant 
sending more than one barely trained lieutenant to Harzburg and ending the 
problem in a week instead of a year and a half.
These musings carried him through the fields on the way to town and up to the 
gates. Most of the fields had been cleared before he left but he saw new 
orchards on the hillsides as well as new outbuildings. The town, whatever 
Courtney might think, continued to build.
There was work going on at the top of the hills north of town as well but it was 
more martial in nature. A wooden gate was under construction and a stockade 
stretched up the hill to the Academy on the right. On the left the stockade had 
been torn down and a bed of gravel followed the track of the top of the hill.
"Lieutenant Herrick," the team leader of the gate guards said, nodding his head.
"The duke's pushing ahead on the curtain walls?" Herzer asked, nodding at the 
gravel that was being dropped by ox carts then leveled out by prisoners. More 
than a few of the prisoners were Changed, taken in the brief foray by Dionys 
McCanoc against the town. They were, as far as anyone could tell, normal people 
who had been caught up by McCanoc and converted, against their wills, into 
soldiers for him.
The actions of the raiders even before their attack on the town had been such 
that life sentences had been handed down for all of them. There was, however, a 
good bit of sentiment suggesting that at some point the "normal" humans might be 
rehabilitated. The Changed, however, short of being Changed "back," were subject 
to no such sympathy. Generalized sympathy for what had occurred to them, yes, 
but not direct sympathy for their plight because they were as vicious as a pack 
of oversized weasels. They were incredibly strong, short, and brutish in 
appearance and had the personalities of rabid pit bulls. They had been 
christened "orcs" on first sight and the name had stuck.
Whenever Herzer, personally, felt sorry for them he just watched a group of 
them, like this one, working, and got over it. They were unwilling to work 
except under threat of immediate punishment and even then spent more time 
fighting among themselves than working. Slowly, over the last couple of years, 
their numbers had been reduced through one accident or murder or another until 
it looked like clemency might be unnecessary; in another couple of years they'd 
have killed each other off.
In a way the use that the prisoners were put to was a shame; they'd make decent 
sword fodder. For that matter, the Changed were apparently New Destiny's idea of 
what made good soldiers. Which just showed that New Destiny had its head firmly 
up its ass. They were tough and aggressive but they also had a strong tendency 
to break if they took too many casualties and were impossible to discipline. 
They were just fine with scream and charge but no damned good at holding a 
shield line.
Using them as garrison in a town that was being particularly resistant to reason 
had its attractions. Renan came to mind as did Tarson. But Raven's Mill, not to 
mention the Freedom Coalition, couldn't do something like that; they were the 
good guys.
Diablo knew the way home and had broken into a trot beyond the construction on 
the wall so before Herzer knew it he was at the gates of the Academy. He 
realized it when he heard a familiar voice.
"You appear to be thinking deep thoughts, Lieutenant."
"Just considering the lack of manpower, Gunny," Herzer replied with a grin.
Master Centurion Miles A. "Gunny" Rutherford had been a reenactor prior to the 
Fall. In his latter career he had specialized as a noncommissioned officer in 
the Norau Marines, a position called "Gunnery Sergeant," and he had lived his 
life for years in that role to the point that he lived, ate and breathed the 
model, in his mind, of such a person.
As it turned out, he had more background for the role than most people had 
realized. He was born shortly before his parents decided to move to the province 
of Anarchia, a region that was maintained, prior to the Fall, in a 
nontechnological environment. Gunny had never been too sure what happened to his 
folks after they emigrated but it was probably similar to what had happened to 
Duke Edmund's brother. It was an area used as a "bleed off" for people who 
didn't want to live in paradise and it was anything but. Anarchia, in those 
days, had been run by groups of feudal warlords, and newcomers had a tendency to 
die in distressing numbers. Gunny had grown up in that environment, eventually 
becoming one of the punk soldiers of the "Baron" of Melbun. It was there that he 
had first run afoul of Duke Edmund, when the man born by the name of Charles 
came looking for his missing brother and decided that Anarchia needed a good 
shaking up. The "Baron" had learned, the hard way, that undisciplined gang 
members didn't stand a chance against a disciplined army. The survivors of the 
Baron's men had been inducted in the burgeoning army of Charles the Great.
That had been years ago, centuries before Herzer was born. Afterwards, when 
Anarchia was pacified and the sad story of his brother pieced together, 
"Charles" had returned to the world and become "Edmund Talbot," just another 
reenactor. And with him had come his friend, Arthur Rutherford.
After the Fall, Gunny made his way to Raven's Mill and took up his position 
again, trainer for the new corps of Blood Lords.
Of which Herzer was, by far and away, the best known member.
"You do what you can with what you've got," the NCO at the gate said with a 
shrug. "We're doing well enough," he added, gesturing around.
The area at the base of Raven's Hill had been part of the Faire grounds prior to 
the Fall. As the town began accepting refugees the area had first been used as a 
processing area, then with the establishment of the Blood Lord Academy the Hill 
had been turned over to the Academy.
Where a few buildings had once stood there were now headquarters, barracks, 
stables, and on the top of the hill, one of the highest in the area, was a 
building fortress.
Herzer considered the answer as he looked around. While it was true, it was also 
the reason that Gunny was going to always be an NCO. His focus was on the 
troops, not where they might come from. Training them was his passion, using 
them in battle was a close second. But Gunny always thought at those, 
essentially tactical, levels. Herzer was, slowly, learning to think beyond the 
here and now, a trick he was picking up from Duke Edmund. The New Destiny forces 
had the same manpower problems as the Freedom Coalition. Their answer had been 
to support Norau forces that were hampering the Coalition while building, from 
reports, a large army at home in Ropasa.
Gunny could, and would, focus like a laser on training the raw troops given to 
him. And the end product was excellent, as Herzer himself had proven. But he 
distrusted allies and gave most of his thought processes to better use what he 
was given. It was up to officers to find more bodies and integrate untrained 
allies.
Because no matter how good the Blood Lords were, and they were very good, there 
was no way the relative handful of fully trained soldiers could stand up to the 
army that Paul was building.
"Well, we'll be getting some new recruits from Harzburg and some of the 
surrounding towns, soon," Herzer replied, walking Diablo over to his paddock. 
"Then we'll have more to do with."
He dismounted and started stripping off Diablo's tack as a pony-sized unicorn, 
followed by a young colt nearly her own size, came trotting over.
"Hi, Herzer," the unicorn said in a high-pitched voice. "I'm glad you're back."
"Hi, Barb. Admit it, though, you're glad Diablo's back." Herzer chuckled, 
opening up the gate and letting his mount into the paddock.
"H'zer!" the colt shrilled then butted Diablo in the side with his short, stumpy 
horn. "D'ablo!"
"He doesn't really know who you are," Barb replied, ignoring the jibe. "He does 
that with everybody."
Prior to the Fall, Barb Branson had been through several Changes and just prior 
to the Fall she had turned herself into a unicorn. The Fall had caught her in 
that form and, after several unpleasant experiences in the aftermath, she had 
been recaptured from Dionys' forces. Despite the fact that she was now in better 
hands she found herself unable to adapt to "human" society and lived with the 
horses, and Diablo particularly. The relationship had been the source of some 
crude jokes initially but now had become so normal the people of the town barely 
considered it. The colt was the result of mating with Diablo and seemed to be 
progressing somewhere between a human baby and a horse. He had been able to walk 
almost immediately but speech was a relatively recent acquisition.
"He's growing fast," Herzer said with a nod. The colt, from reports, had been 
barely the size of a cat when born and now stood taller than his mother at the 
withers. He looked as if he was going to try for his sire's size.
"And getting into everything." Barb sighed. She went over to the feed supply and 
slipped her horn into a hole. A lever inside dispensed a measure of grain and 
she nipped at the colt to keep him away as Diablo walked over to feed. "We had 
to fix this so his horn wouldn't reach; he figured out how to use it when he was 
about three months old."
"Well, take good care of Diablo," Herzer said. The horse in question looked up 
at his name, then took another mouthful of grain and, still chewing, walked to 
the center of the paddock. When he was in the right spot he lay down and rolled 
onto his back, writhing from side to side to get the dust good and thick. He 
rolled until he was well covered in dust, then walked back to the trough to 
finish his feed. Barb had stood by patiently, keeping the youngster away, until 
he returned. "Anything you need?"
"Nope, we're fine," Barb said. "Thanks for setting this up."
"Not a problem," Herzer said. He carried the tack into the barn attached to the 
paddock and put it away, then picked up his baggage and headed to the barracks.
As a Blood Lord officer he had a room of his own but it was Spartan in the 
extreme. Every time he returned he promised that he'd do something about 
decorating but he never did. The room had a rough bed, a desk, a footlocker, an 
armor stand and a wall-locker. He dumped his gear on the floor and then stripped 
off his armor, working his shoulders around as the weight came off. Then he 
carefully put away everything that didn't need immediate cleaning. He knew there 
was an orderly around somewhere and he could leave the cleaning of his clothes 
and armor to the orderly's attention.
He drew the short sword he'd been carrying and checked its edge but he'd cleaned 
and honed it since the last time he used it so it didn't need anything. He 
polished and oiled it out of habit, then considered his next moves.
He was supposed to report to Duke Edmund but he figured he could at least get 
the road grime off before he did. The question was whether to walk across town 
and use the baths or just shower at the barracks. Finally he decided on the 
latter and stripped off his clothes, wrapping a towel around his waist.
The showers had been added to the barracks just before he left. There wasn't 
much to them, just a series of spigots overhead surrounded by concrete floor and 
walls. Compared to the bathhouse they were positively primitive, but it beat the 
heck out of walking all the way across town. For some reason he really didn't 
want to talk to half the people in town, which was more or less what would 
happen if he headed to the baths.
The barracks were deserted this time of day—the instructors were out chivvying 
students or working in their offices, which were across the quad, and the 
permanent guards were drilling—and he wandered down the corridor alone. The 
showers were at the center of the wooden building, past officer territory and 
into the area where the NCOs bunked. He nodded at the charge of quarters as he 
passed, then turned into the bathroom.
There was an orderly in there cleaning up but, again, he just nodded at him, 
then walked into the shower room, pulling the towel off and hanging it on a hook 
before turning on the water.
The water took forever to get hot, but at that it was still better than anything 
Harzburg had had for a long time. There was a sliver of soap on a ledge and he 
used it liberally including on his hair. The latter was starting to get long 
again and it was about time for a cut. But that, at least, would have to wait. 
By now the duke would have heard he was back. He turned off the shower and 
grabbed his towel, heading back to his room.
In the main bathroom there was a row of spigots spilling water into a concrete 
trough with a long metal mirror mounted over it. Herzer paused by it to survey 
his face. He'd had hair-growth on his face stopped prior to the Fall so he 
didn't have to worry about five o'clock shadow. His hair was a tad long, 
starting to touch his ears at least, but it would pass inspection. Only the 
Blood Lords conformed to Gunny's remarkable standards of personal grooming.
He headed back to his room and began donning a fresh uniform. It was a tad 
loose—he'd lost weight on the Harzburg mission along with everything else—but it 
still fit well enough. Cosilk underpants and shirt, gray cosilk trousers and the 
kimonolike overtunic. The latter's lapel and trim was in light blue, from time 
immemorial the color of infantry, and there was a blue stripe down the outside 
of the trousers. Blue for the infantry, yellow for cavalry, green for the 
archers and red for engineers. He stopped before putting the tunic on and pinned 
the two pips of a lieutenant to the lapel. He looked at it for a moment, then 
shrugged.
"Might as well go full blast," he muttered, opening up the footlocker and 
extracting a small leather box. From it he pulled a device like a shield, which 
he pinned on the left upper breast of the kimono. Below it he pinned four 
medals. The one on the uppermost row was a representation of a gold laurel. The 
three on the row below were a silver eagle, wings outspread, another shield, 
formed in bronze and pair of crossed swords.
As soon as the medals were arranged to his satisfaction he slipped into the 
kimono and belted it with his sword-belt. He picked up his sword, gave it an 
automatic check, and slipped it onto the belt. Normally the weapon sat high on 
his right side, attached to his armor but he'd spent so much time in both 
configurations either one was relatively comfortable.
He stepped out of the room and down the corridor to the main entrance.
"If anyone asks for me I've gone to report to Duke Edmund," Herzer said as he 
headed for the double doors at the front of the building.
"Yes, sir," the charge of quarters replied. He was reading something and didn't 
look up.
Herzer paused and turned on one heel. "That's the sort of thing you're supposed 
to write down, Private," he growled.
"Yes, sir," the private replied in a much more focused voice. He opened his 
ledger and reached for the quill standing in an ink bottle.
Herzer nodded at him, then turned and walked out the door.
* * *
"Come," Sheida said at the door chime.
Her aide Harry Chambers came in, followed by a tall, thin, dark-haired man. He 
could have been anything from thirty to two hundred. He had an expression of 
slightly distracted amiability on his face as he nodded at the council member.
"Joel Travante," Sheida breathed. "Welcome. Most welcome, sir. Sit, please. 
Harry, if you don't mind?"
"Not at all," Harry said, stepping out and cycling the door shut.
As the door shut the man in the float chair changed subtly. Whereas he had been 
smiling, the smile dropped from his face to be replaced by a blank, hard mask, 
and his languid pose, while not shifting a millimeter, dropped away. He went 
from seeming to be a nice, simple, professional to something that looked more 
like a drawn sword.
"How are you?" Sheida asked, nodding at him, hard. "Where have you been?"
"In the Asur Islands, ma'am," the inspector said, sitting forward and nodding 
back. He had a deep, baritone voice and his eyes were blue and cold.
Prior to the Fall, the world had had little crime. With nearly infinite wealth, 
personal protection fields and the availability of semilegal means to fulfill 
even the darkest fantasies, there was very little opportunity or need to cause 
it.
There were, however, individuals who for various reasons committed offenses of 
one sort or another.
Given that people could live any sort of life they desired, it required an odd 
person to commit crime, especially particularly vicious and predatory crimes. 
And with a life of luxury, it required an even odder person to devote their life 
to finding criminals.
But just as there were persons who could not resist breaking laws, there were 
others who had something in them that drove them to search, find and just as 
often destroy the worst of the criminals. These were the Council Inspectors. 
There were very few of them, no more than a hundred in the year prior to the 
Fall, and most of them worked part-time. But among them there was an elite, the 
Special Inspectors, who had powers nearly equaling those of the Council. And 
Inspectors only got to be Special Inspectors by both having a long career of 
tracking down the worst of the criminals and by showing exemplary conduct doing 
it.
Joel Travante had been a Special Inspector for nearly forty years prior to the 
Fall.
Direct access to Mother's DNA database was closely restricted. To obtain a 
general DNA search required a plurality of council member approval, and a direct 
location search required a super majority. But prior to the Fall the inspectors 
had enormous resources to find their subjects. The slightest clue at the site of 
a crime could be used to track down the perpetrator. A shred of DNA, a fiber of 
clothing, any distinctive chemical or biological residue, and the inspectors had 
a lead that they would follow until they died or hell froze over.
Or the whole world came apart.
"What were you doing there at the Fall?" Sheida asked.
"There was a person who had committed a string of offenses," Joel said, one 
cheek twitching for just a moment. "Primarily rape and murder, concentrating on 
very young females. He would . . . seduce them in order to get them to drop 
their shields and then . . . ensure that they were too overwhelmed to raise them 
. . . afterward." His jaw worked for just a moment and he shook his head 
angrily.
"I had a hard gene coding on the person, he'd been going by the name Rob 
Morescue, mostly, but he had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. None 
of the secondary surveillance systems picked him, or his DNA, up, anywhere. I 
was able to secure the information that the person had turned himself into a 
kraken. I had reason to suspect that he was residing somewhere in the deep 
trenches near the Asur Islands. I had been asking around; there was a pretty 
large delphino population in the area as well as orcas and various fishermen and 
sailors. At the time of the Fall I had gotten three confirmed sightings of a 
kraken in the area and was about to perform a search of the depths. Then, with 
the Fall, I was forced to forego my investigation."
"And since?" Sheida asked.
"I took a job with one of the local sailors who had converted to commercial 
fishing," Travante replied. "In time I was able to secure my own vessel, a small 
sailing caique. When New Destiny forces took over the island I maintained my 
cover as a visiting tourist and post-Fall fisherman. When the time was right and 
the weather looked good I set sail for the mainland."
"In a fishing caique?" Sheida said, aghast. "How large?"
"Four meters, ma'am," Joel replied. "I had reason to suspect that some of the 
orcas that had willingly joined the New Destiny forces had suspicions that I was 
not all that I had said. Some of my questions, pre-Fall, had apparently been 
insufficiently circumspect. And, frankly, ma'am, I didn't think much of New 
Destiny's charter or actions. So as soon as I felt it was probable I'd survive, 
I set sail. It's not that difficult a sail from the Asur Islands to Norau, 
provided nothing goes wrong."
"Charts?" Sheida asked. "Navigation?"
"I was able by that time to secure a compass and had some training from my 
previous employer at stellar and oceanic current navigation," Joel said, 
shrugging as if a three-thousand-kilometer voyage across empty ocean in a small 
boat was no great feat. "Dorado tended to congregate around the boat so that I 
had a ready supply of food. I had a large store of water when I left and picked 
up more from occasional rain showers. I made landfall on the coast of Flora 
ninety-three days after setting sail, made my way up the coast to the base at 
Newfell, contacted a person that I had known prior to the Fall and was put in 
touch with the Freedom Coalition rump of the Council. Upon being summoned by you 
I traveled by stagecoach and horse to Chian and was ported here."
"Amazing, Inspector," Sheida said. "Will it bother you if I say 'a bit too 
amazing'?"
"No, ma'am," the inspector replied. "If you wish to perform truth detection, 
feel free." Like most intrusive protocols, truth detection required permission 
of the subject or agreement by a plurality of the Council.
Sheida frowned and then shrugged, drawing a smidgeon of power and running a lie 
detector test on the surface of the inspector's thoughts. There was no 
indication that he had any reservations about his story. He had some personal 
problems that were beating at him, though.
"What's wrong?" Sheida asked. "You're calm on the surface but you're not so calm 
underneath."
"It is . . . personal, ma'am," the inspector said, then sighed. "My wife and 
daughter are missing. I'm aware that most families were broken by the Fall, 
ma'am, but it doesn't make me any happier. Now that I'm back in contact with 
higher, I am hoping that I can search records to try to find them. The problem 
is . . . as far as I knew, my wife was in the Briton Isles at the Fall. What is 
worse, my daughter was in Ropasa visiting friends." He paused and then shrugged 
again. "Frankly, ma'am, I'm afraid that if New Destiny finds out who they are, 
and that I'm working for you, they will use it as a hold on me. If they do so . 
. ." He paused, his face hard. "I will be in a very uncomfortable position."
"An uncomfortable position indeed," Sheida frowned. "For reasons that I'll get 
into in a moment, don't discuss that with anyone except myself. If you encounter 
anyone who knew you before the Fall, tell them that you have definite proof that 
both of them died during the Fall."
"Yes, ma'am," Travante said, his face hard. "They might have."
"I hope not," Sheida replied. "We have very few assets in Ropasa or the Briton 
Isles. I think it unwise, furthermore, to put out any sort of feelers about your 
wife and daughter. Our intelligence assets have been being . . . 'rolled up' is 
the term, compromised and just as often interrogated and then Changed, with 
unfortunate regularity."
"In that case, ma'am," the inspector said, "please do not put out any feelers."
"The unfortunate regularity is what I wish to discuss with you," Sheida said. 
"I'm beginning to suspect that while we have not been able to get much 
intelligence out of New Destiny's areas, the reverse is not the case." She 
summoned a holographic representation of Norau and pointed to a series of red 
dots.
"While we can prevent Paul's associates from teleporting into our territory, we 
cannot prevent communications or avatars," she said. "But by the same token, 
since we've locked out virtually all programs under pass codes, we can detect 
when non-Coalition pass codes are being used, and non-Coalition avatars or 
projections are entering our territory. These are records of all such 
transmissions over the last six months."
"That's . . . bad," Travante said, looking at the traces. They dotted the map 
like pustulant sores and were found wherever there were latter day 
concentrations of survivors. "This is just the last six months?"
"Yes," Sheida frowned. "Some of them might be avatars appearing for a look at 
some occurrence. Paul still has a slight surplus of energy over ours and he is 
apparently using it for the development of intelligence."
"Wise of him," Travante said. "Trying to throw it at your shields, unless it's 
extremely high power, would be a waste of assets."
"But the problem is that we're losing agents," Sheida frowned. "And bleeding 
information to the enemy. You're not the first inspector to turn up, although 
you're the first Special. And I've set most of them on this problem. Eventually, 
I want you to have a close look at . . . possible problems in our higher 
command."
"You mean in the Council?" Travante frowned.
"No, I'm sure of all of our council members," Sheida replied. "I'd like you to 
investigate other possibilities. But before you do that . . . are you up for a 
long ride again?"
"At your command, ma'am," the inspector said.
"I want you to go back to Newfell Base," Sheida replied. "There's a mission 
being prepared there. We're definitely losing data from Newfell. There is 
probably more than one source. But I want you to insinuate yourself into the 
mission, probably as a sailor on the ship given your recent experience, and try 
to determine if there is an agent or agents amongst the crew. When you return 
from that mission, you'll probably stay at Newfell, or in the Fleet, pending the 
outcome of the investigation."
"Yes, ma'am," the inspector said.
"Just that?" Sheida smiled. "Back on horses and stagecoaches, all the way across 
the continent?"
"How do I contact you, ma'am?" was all Travante asked.
"Hold out your left wrist, face up," Sheida said. When he did she waved her 
fingers over his wrist and, for a moment, a picture of an eagle was superimposed 
on it as if by a tattoo, then faded.
"If you need to contact me, touch the eagle and say or think my name," Sheida 
replied. "Sheida, Sheida Ghorbani, whatever. Just think of me. Edmund Talbot, 
who is a long-term friend and as trustworthy as they come, is going to be on the 
mission. If you need assistance, contact him. He will be informed that there is 
an agent of mine present. Try not to step on each other's toes."
"I won't, ma'am," the agent said, rubbing his wrist. There had been no feeling 
to the invisible tattoo, but there was a psychosomatic tingle left behind.
"As it turns out, you won't have to take the coaches back," Sheida said with a 
smile. "Although you might prefer it. There's a dragon, a wyvern rather, that is 
headed that way. He'll take you to Washan. You'll need to hop once you get there 
to make it to Fleet headquarters before the mission leaves."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I will keep an inquiry out in my own awareness for your wife and daughter," 
Sheida said. "If I find any information about either of them, I will contact 
you."
"Thank you," Travante said.
"Harry will give you your traveling money and brief you on how to get more," 
Sheida said. "He's not aware of your mission; you're only going to be sent as 
far as Washan. Make the rest of the journey on your own."
"Yes, ma'am," Travante said, standing up. "By your leave."
"Good luck, Inspector," Sheida replied, standing up and touching his shoulder as 
she led him to the door. "I will pray for, and search for, your family."
"And I will pray for you and yours," Travante said, his face changing into a 
mask of amiable competence as the door opened.


CHAPTER THREE
The walk to Duke Edmund's was mercifully uninterrupted. Herzer couldn't figure 
out, for most of the walk, what was wrong. He knew that he was feeling 
intensively antisocial but it was more than that. Raven's Mill was the town 
where, in many ways, he had grown up. Admittedly he spent less than a year in 
the town after the Fall, but he should have felt at home upon his return. God 
knew he'd thought longingly of getting back half the damned time he'd been at 
Harzburg.
But for some reason "good feeling" just wouldn't come. For some reason the town 
felt like his uniform: Just a little too loose. Little changes, like a new sign 
over Tarmac's tavern, stood out and left him feeling even more irritable.
Just as he reached the town hall he started to get a handle on the problem. Part 
of it was uncertainty about his future. The plans that had been sent to him 
during most of the Harzburg mission had spoken of bringing him back as a 
trainer. Not one of the sadistic madmen who ran the first phase—Herzer 
understood the importance of running the trainees into the ground while having 
no desire to perform the job himself—but as an instructor in the forming Officer 
Basic course. He was, in his opinion, more suited to taking the course, but the 
pool of trained officers was so small he could understand the need to throw him 
into the breach.
However, the peremptory "return at earliest possible moment" did not bode well 
for a routine training assignment. What he particularly did not want was to run 
into someone who might ask him why he was back so soon. And be in the position 
of being able to satisfy neither their curiosity nor his own.
As he approached the entrance to the town hall the two guards at the door braced 
to attention. Gone were the days of half-awake guardsmen with rusting weapons 
leaning up against the wall. The guards were permanent members drawn from the 
militia and trained with the Blood Lords. Just enough to know they didn't want 
to be Blood Lords was the joke. Blood Lord training and "winnowing" was 
merciless and even after a recruit passed the tests to join the fraternity, 
training continued unabated. Running up and down Raven Hill in full rucksacks 
was just the start of a daily regimen that was brutal to the point of sadism.
But that, and a belief in teamwork that went all the way to the bone, meant that 
Blood Lords could outfight and, often more important, outmaneuver enemies that 
were their numerical superior. "Fight until you die and drop" was just one of 
their unofficial mottoes. And nobody fought like Blood Lords.
He walked inside and took the left turn to Edmund's office but was stopped 
almost at the door by a secretary. That was another new iteration.
"Can I help you?" the woman asked. She was faintly familiar but Herzer couldn't 
quite place her. Dark hair, just below median female height . . . nope, wasn't 
coming.
"Herzer Herrick," Herzer replied. "I'm under orders to see Duke Edmund 'at the 
earliest possible moment.' "
"He's very busy," the woman said with a sniff. Whoever she was, she didn't 
appear to recognize him either. "Why don't you just take a seat?"
Herzer didn't bother to smile; he just took a parade rest position, hands behind 
his back, legs spread shoulder width apart, and simply looked at her.
"Why don't you go tell Duke Edmund that I'm out here," he said in a totally 
neutral voice. He let his eyes do the rest. "Now."
It was a technique he'd picked up from Gunny and as usual it worked. The woman 
was more than willing to pass the buck to someone who, she clearly hoped, might 
put him in his place. It wasn't the most politic way to deal with a 
petty-power-hungry functionary, but it tended to work.
In this case the woman looked at him poisonously for a moment, then got up and 
knocked on the door.
"Duke Edmund," she said, opening the door without a word from the interior, "a 
Herzer Herrick insists on seeing you immediately."
"That's because I told him to, Crystal," Edmund replied, mildly. "Send him in."
As Herzer walked through the door he remembered where he had met her before.
"Nice to see you again, Crystal," he oozed insincerely as he stepped through the 
door. "How's Morgen?"
He carefully shut the door behind him and then saluted with right fist to left 
breast.
"Lieutenant Herrick reporting," he said neatly.
"Can it, Herzer," Edmund growled, standing up and stepping to a cupboard. "Care 
to cut the trail dust?"
"If you please, sir," Herzer replied. "What's with the Cerberus at the gates?"
"She's anything but a dog," Edmund replied. "But whether she knows it or not, 
she's temporary. I had a protégée of June's holding down the desk but she's on 
maternity leave." He handed the lieutenant a glass dark with liquor. "Salut!"
"Blood and steel," Herzer replied, taking a sip. "Very mellow."
"Laid it down nearly thirty years ago," Edmund replied. "It should be."
Herzer observed Sir the Honorable General Edmund Talbot, duke of Overjay, 
carefully but could see little sign of change in the last year. The duke was 
heavy-set with a full beard and a shaved head. He was wearing gray linen 
trousers and a blue tunic of a fine woolen material, the edging of which was 
embroidered in yellow. The clothing was worn smooth from use but had the look of 
being comfortable clothing rather than old. He could have been anything from a 
hundred to two hundred years old, judging by the fine lines on his face and the 
flaccid skin on his forearms, but Herzer knew he was closer to three hundred. He 
had a solid, calm look that he somehow projected to those around him. Wherever 
the duke went, even if it was in the middle of a battle, chaos lessened and 
order followed. It was another trick, like his ability to pitch his voice to be 
heard above a battle and the knack of always knowing where to be, that Herzer 
was desperately trying to figure out.
"You're wondering why I called you in so abruptly but we really should wait 
until . . ." the duke said, then paused as the door opened.
"It's fine, we know him," Daneh Ghorbani said as she stepped through the door. 
"I sleep with him every night, he won't mind me barging in."
Doctor Ghorbani was middle tall for a female, perhaps a meter and three 
quarters, with long red hair that was currently braided down her back. She was 
heavily bosomed and inclining to a plumpness that was decidedly odd in the 
post-Fall society. Prior to the Fall human genetics had been tinkered with to 
such an extent that all but minimum fashionable body fat tended not to form. She 
wasn't fat; the term "padded" came to mind, and on her it looked good. She, like 
her paramour Edmund, seemed to project a field of calmness around her, even when 
putting down annoying underlings. And she looked well, which Herzer found, to 
his surprise, was of sudden immense importance.
She was followed by what could have been her younger sister but was in fact her 
daughter. Unlike her mother, Rachel Ghorbani was anything but calm.
"Father, you have to get rid of that insufferable woman," she said hotly as soon 
as the door was closed.
"So I've been told," Edmund replied with a smile. "Daneh? A glass of wine?"
"Isn't it a little early?" Dr. Ghorbani asked, glancing at the drinks in their 
hands.
"I'm sure the sun is over the yardarm somewhere in the world," Duke Edmund 
replied, pouring a glass of wine that caught the light through the window like a 
ruby.
"Yes, thank you, Father, I will have some," Rachel said, acerbically.
"Of course." Edmund chuckled, pouring another glass and handing them to the 
women. "A toast: to a smooth sea and a fair journey."
"What journey?" Rachel blurted out.
"The one that Herzer and I, at a minimum, are going to be taking."
* * *
Chansa snarled and shook his head as the modeling projection completed its run. 
No matter how many times he ran the model, the current projections made invasion 
of Norau impossible.
The room that he worked in was low and cramped for his huge bulk, a subbasement 
under the council chambers that had only recently been found and reopened. It 
wasn't that he'd been relegated to a subbasement, it was simply that lately it 
fit his mood. Let Celine scamper about her laboratories and Paul create his 
insane workrooms to "do the work of the people." This tiny room controlled more 
raw power than any other room on earth. But with all that power, he still 
couldn't make the impossible possible.
It wasn't a matter of forces. The implementation of the Change program, while 
hampered by the various program lock-outs that bitch Sheida had started, was 
continuing apace. And the Changed males made more than adequate soldiers, while 
their females were sturdy enough to do most of the drudgery of food supplying. 
And arms were not an issue, either. Not only did Ropasa have supplies of them 
for historical reasons, inserting the same sort of training as the combat and 
farming training of the Changed was not difficult. A special class of Changed 
had been created that made excellent artisans.
No, the problem was logistics.
Lifting his entire force would leave Ropasa stripped of garrisons. Not only did 
that mean that Coalition forces could make strikes against them, it also meant 
being unable to prevent internal revolt, which was a very real problem among the 
Unchanged. Second of all, supplying that entire force over nearly two thousand 
kilometers of ocean was chancy at best. Impossible if there was any coherent 
resistance. And the likelihood of such resistance was high.
So any invasion would have to be attempted with less than his full force. Since 
projections showed that less than the full force would be inadequate to destroy 
current Norau forces, something had to be done.
Thus far the attempts to weaken the United Free States had been failures. If 
anything they had left them stronger. First the disaster with Dionys, which 
still left him cringing, then other attempts to take over territory had been 
stymied. There were neutrals in Norau, groups resisting integration to the UFS, 
but by the same token they also resisted aligning themselves with New Destiny. 
And projections showed that at the current rate of UFS increases in manpower and 
military buffering there was no point at which an invasion had better than a 
fifty-fifty chance of succeeding.
It was maddening.
He looked up as an avatar of the Demon appeared, and tried not to grimace. Just 
what he needed.
"Yes, Lord Demon?" he asked. The Demon was, like his namesake, a fairly chaotic 
entity. It always paid to stay on his good side, such as there was.
"I understand you suffered another setback in Norau?" the Demon rumbled. It was 
impossible to tell what the actual person looked like under the black armor, 
other than being an outsized humanoid. The armor was full articulated plate from 
the horns on the helmet, through the tusks, down to the talons on the boots. The 
rumor was that the being underneath was simply a smaller version. "Would you 
care to detail it?"
"Not particularly," Chansa said bitterly, then shrugged. "Harzburg is a town 
with some strategic importance to one scenario of an invasion of Norau. I 
attempted to take over the town using proxies. I supplied them with a small 
amount of power and some arms as well as guidance. They attempted to take over 
the town. They failed."
"Edmund Talbot again?" the Demon said, soothingly.
"He sent one, one damned Blood Lord, and a year's work went down the drain!"
"The man is incorrigible," the Demon replied. "But he does train good 
subordinates. I have always found that choice of subordinates is important in 
any endeavor. The Council, for all its strengths, has been a group that had 
little in the way, or need, of subordinates, so it is not surprising that you 
have less . . . experience with the handling of them. In that regard," he 
continued, gesturing in the air as another avatar appeared, "might I commend the 
services of my protégé, Brother Conner."
"You do me great honor in the term, lord," the man said. He was tall but 
apparently entirely unChanged with a lean, ascetic look and less than his first 
century in age. Dark hair fell to midshoulder length. He was almost normal until 
you looked at his eyes, the irises of which were almost perfectly white. His 
pupils were tiny black dots in the middle of them.
"You are too kind, Lord Demon," Chansa said after a moment. "But I'm not sure 
what to do with him."
"I would suggest that you do what you do best, prepare the armies of New Destiny 
for the invasion," the Demon replied acerbically. "And let Conner handle the 
destabilization. He has . . . experience in these matters."
"Ah." Chansa paused again, then shrugged. Favors from the Demon generally had a 
hidden cost, but they also weren't to be turned aside. "Thank you, Lord Demon."
"I'll be leaving you two to your work," the Demon replied, fading out of the 
air. "Have fun."
* * *
"Paul is preparing a fleet on the coast of Ropasa," Edmund said, pulling out a 
map and setting it on his desk. "Here in Brethan and in Neterlan. And he's 
assembling armies of Changed near both areas."
"Invasion?" Herzer asked.
"That's the apparent intent," the duke replied. "And it's borderline that he 
could be successful."
"At an invasion?" Daneh said. "How? He's got to cross the whole Atlantis ocean 
and then attack a prepared enemy. I'm not much on the military end, but that 
doesn't sound feasible to me."
"We don't have much in the way of troops, Daneh," Edmund replied with a shrug. 
"There's unorganized and organized militia, yes, but they're not going to count 
for much but positional defense. You can't even really use them for sallies. And 
the 'positions' that most of the towns have aren't much. And you'd be surprised 
how many over the beach invasions have been successful. If the country was 
castellated, that is if we had lots and lots of castles as Ropasa does, it would 
be impossible. As it is, it's just very risky.
"One of the ways to play a war like this is deterrence. That is, make it clearly 
so impossible for something to happen that nobody in their right minds would try 
it. And hope that your enemy is in their right mind. In this case, we have to 
eliminate any chance of such an invasion succeeding. To do that, we have to 
control the sea-lanes.
"We're working on that on the coast. The Navy has been working on a new class of 
warship that should make things very unpleasant for anyone attempting to cross. 
But a few warships, probably in the wrong place, aren't going to deter New 
Destiny. Nor should they.
"What we need are allies that control the sea-lanes." He looked up significantly 
at Daneh, who shrugged.
"I think that's supposed to mean something, but I have no idea what."
"The mer," Herzer interjected. "Weren't they reported as concentrating, 
post-Fall, down in the Southern Isles?"
"Exactly," the Duke said. "If we have the mer on our side, between them and the 
delphinos, who are going to follow their lead, and the dolphins they have 
attached to them, at the very least we have total reconnaissance of the 
potential invasion fleet. Fighting it might be another matter, but I'd be 
surprised if they couldn't do something along those lines too."
"So it's a diplomatic mission?" Herzer asked. "Why you? Why me for that matter?"
"It's a diplomatic mission with military implications," Edmund said. "I'm the 
best known, I almost said 'notorious,' person available on the East Coast and 
I'm probably going to be one of the point generals for any defense."
"You're probably going to command the defense," Daneh corrected.
"Probably. And Herzer for some similar reasons."
"So what this means is that while the rest of us suffer through the winter," 
Rachel said, somewhat bitterly, "you're going to go gallivanting down to the 
Southern Isles?"
"Sheida wants me to go handle the negotiations. She told me I could take 
whatever staff I thought was necessary. What I consider necessary is Herzer."
"So you are leaving us behind and sailing off to the Isles for the winter," 
Daneh said humorously.
"Well, maybe," Edmund replied, in a much more serious tone. "Herzer is a damn 
fine junior officer, but there's nothing absolutely vital he has to do here. 
Between Kane and Gunny the town should be good against anything but a major 
attack. And I know what's out there well enough to know that isn't going to 
happen short of invasion. So I can leave the town and be pretty sure it will be 
here when I get back. The question is, can the town do without both of its 
doctors?"
"I'm not a doctor," Rachel replied, but she nodded. "But I see what you mean."
"Say that you're the best of the trainees, then," Edmund admitted. "There are 
reasons that I want to take one or both of you along. Frankly, I'd prefer Daneh. 
But I don't think it wise to take both unless we can make provisions for 
adequate medical care here."
"Well, how long is this going to take?" Daneh asked. "I mean the negotiations. 
Port down, port back and a week or two there."
"One problem," Edmund grimaced. "Sheida says that it's important, but not 
important enough to port us. She's working on some sort of device that will 
reduce porting power drain; she has an experimental one up and running so she 
can get in and out of her house. But even that will be point to point. In the 
meantime, we're still down to the speed of horse and wind."
"How long?" Daneh repeated.
"A month? Two? Possibly more if the weather turns against us."
"I know my responsibilities," Daneh sighed. "And there's Charles to consider; 
I'm not sure I want to be away from him for that long. I'll stay." Daneh's son 
had been born as the result of her rape, shortly after the Fall, by Dionys 
McCanoc and his men. When the child was born it was clear who had bestowed the 
male genes. Just as clear as the fact that the father was no longer living. 
Herzer rather liked the kid who, except for a tendency for mischief, appeared to 
have gotten nothing but his looks from his father.
"I want you to consider carefully what I said," Edmund replied. "I would prefer 
you to go and Rachel to stay. Including taking you away from Charles."
"Why?" Daneh asked and was rewarded with a blank stare. "Edmund, quit being 
mysterious."
"I'm not being mysterious. I have my reasons and I have reasons not to give 
them."
"That's just Edmund's way of saying 'I'm being mysterious,' " Daneh said with a 
chuckle.
"I'll give you one that's up front," Talbot replied after a moment. "We want an 
alliance with them, a military alliance certainly and a trade agreement by 
preference. We need to know what they need, that we can supply, for that to 
happen. I won't say that I want you to go talk with the women while I do the 
'men talk' . . ."
"Good!" Daneh said with a smile.
" . . . But I will say that we have different strengths and areas of knowledge. 
I'd take Myron if I thought agriculture was going to be important, but I think 
that areas having to do with . . . lifestyle are going to be far more so."
"I'm a doctor, not an anthropologist," Daneh said. "For that matter Rachel has a 
firmer grasp on preindustrial cultures."
"You have a point. But I trust your judgment more than Rachel's." He turned to 
his daughter and shrugged. "That wasn't meant to be offensive, it's just Daneh 
is . . ."
"Older and wiser?" Rachel said, then shook her head. "I'm really not offended, 
because I understood what you meant."
"I can turn over control of the local power system to Emily," Daneh suggested. 
"She's up to just about anything that Rachel would be. And I assume that if 
something major comes up, we can consult. She's certainly up to deliveries and 
small repairs. Dr. Beauharnois is up in Hotrum's Ferry if something serious 
occurs."
Talbot thought about it for a moment then shrugged. "I guess you're in, Rachel."
"When do we leave?" Herzer asked.
"Not for at least a week or two," Edmund said. "I didn't think you'd make it 
back this fast and it's going to take at least that long for the rest of our 
party to get here."
"And who is that?" Daneh asked.
"You'll see," Edmund replied. "It's a surprise."


CHAPTER FOUR
Joel was surprised to see Harry practically hovering outside Sheida's office.
Sheida used what had once been her mountain home as her central headquarters. 
Since she often hosted parties and other functions it had been large enough to 
support the minimal staff that she needed.
But since it was now surrounded by bubbling lava, getting anything in and out 
required porting, which was extremely high in energy use.
The answer, as he had discovered on his way in, was a permanent portal. Step 
through the arch and you were suddenly "elsewhere." He wasn't sure what the 
energy level to the portal was, but it couldn't be high; he had been only one of 
a dozen or so people who had passed through it while he was there.
Instead of heading for the portal, Harry waved him in another direction. Joel 
noted that he had a slight limp.
"I've set up your transportation," the aide said, leading him to a small office. 
It had, apparently, once been a bedroom. There were now three desks in the room, 
along with boxes of paperwork. There were no external windows so it smelled dank 
and musty.
Harry pulled out a sheaf of papers and a small bag that clinked when he set it 
down.
"Gold has, again, become the international currency," Harry said with a 
sarcastic smile. "Make sure you're not set upon by ruffians."
"I'll try," Joel replied, smiling amiably. He opened up the pouch and dumped it 
out. "I take it I sign for this?"
"And we'll need expense records," Harry replied. "Did you know Sheida before the 
Fall?"
"Yes, we were acquaintances," Joel said, piling up the square chunks of gold. 
"I'd studied the history of management and business before the Fall. She wants 
me to look at logistics at Washan and other facilities along the East Coast."
"Mind you don't step on Edmund's toes," Harry replied. He slapped his thigh and 
grimaced. "He gave me this."
"The limp?" Joel asked. He pulled over the receipt and signed it, apparently 
without reading it. In fact he'd read it upside down while the aide was holding 
it and while the total was close it wasn't exactly the same. He'd just signed 
for a chunk of gold, the equivalent of two months wages for a field hand, that 
wasn't there.
"Happened right after the Fall," Harry said. "Drove a sword through my mail and 
tore a hole right into my thigh. He always said that the only way to fight was 
to intend to kill the other person; I never thought he was serious until then."
"Didn't he know what would happen?" Joel asked, widening his eyes in horror. 
"And haven't you gotten it fixed? I mean, power is short, but . . ."
"Well . . . we didn't know the fields were down," Harry admitted. "And, yes, 
Sheida fixed it. But it's still not quite right."
Nannites either fixed something or they didn't, at least when it came to gross 
tissue damage. They didn't just stitch things back together but reformed them to 
the cellular level. Which meant that any remnant injury was psychosomatic.
"I'll try not to get my legs chopped out from under me," the inspector said. 
"How am I getting back?"
"Sheida wants you to fly on a wyvern that's headed that way," Harry said, 
looking at him oddly. "Apparently she's really worried about this logistics 
problem."
"Just a good use of resources." Joel shrugged. "How do I find this wyvern?"
"Not worried about riding on one?" Harry asked, frowning slightly.
"Looking forward to it, actually," Joel smiled. "Better than the coaches."
"Well . . . take the portal then ask around for Robert Scott, he's the travel 
coordinator. He'll know where you're supposed to go." Harry stood up and offered 
his hand. "Good luck."
"Same to you," Joel replied. "I'm sure we'll be meeting again."
"Oh?"
"Sure, the logistical issues around here are just amazing."
* * *
"There are several issues that I'd prefer to set aside," Chansa said, looking 
over at his new assistant. "They're taking up my time and energy; time and 
energy I need to devote to the invasion plans."
"Understood," Conner said. He had a very old-fashioned writing stylus and pad of 
paper and nodded as he took notes.
"The two aspects that are taking up most of my time at the moment, though, are 
trying to establish a political climate for our eventual invasion and a mission 
by Edmund Talbot to gain an alliance with the mer."
"We have pods of orca that are allied with us," Conner said. "Surely they can 
deal with the mer."
"The mer and the delphinos have a long-term friendship," Chansa said. "The 
delphinos, in turn, are well thought of by those few idiots that have turned 
themselves into true whales. And the latter travel throughout the oceans. 
Between those groups they will know, to a minute, where our ships are. It's 
important that they are neutralized. And I mean totally neutralized; either on 
our side or unable to affect us. The invasion fleet is going to be on the ragged 
edge of possibility as it is. The mer have to be taken out of the equation."
"I see," the agent said, apparently doodling. "Where are the mer at this time 
and what assets do we have in place? For that matter, I'll need access to power 
for communications and a budget, not to mention updated intelligence."
"I can give you everything except the power," Chansa said. "Since that idiot 
McCanoc got himself killed, that's been in short supply; even we council members 
are limited."
"Well, it will be quite impossible to perform my job without power, my lord," 
the agent said, closing the pad. "And there are other things. To get to the mer 
will require ships. I'll need soldiers as well as contacts with the orca. And 
the way that I work, my lord, is that you tell me what needs to be done and I do 
it. My own way."
"That's pretty damned impertinent," Chansa said, flexing his jaw.
"I'm sorry if you feel that way, my lord," the agent said. "But that's the way 
that I work."
"Why don't you get your power from the Demon?" Chansa temporized.
"I don't work for Milord Demon, sir," the agent said with a sincere smile. "I 
work for you. Asking him for power would be impertinence. And he can be so 
direct about such things."
Chansa chuckled and nodded.
"I'll get you a list of what's available. Find yourself an office; there's all 
sorts in this warren. Give me a list, a reasonable list, from that. And besides 
the orcas, I've talked to Celine and we have some special assistants for you. 
After that you're on your own. You'd better be worth it."
"I'm sure that I'll be worthy of the trust you place in me, my lord," Conner 
said.
"I'm not," Chansa replied. "Now get."
* * *
The one problem with the portal was that you couldn't see who was on the far 
side; it was simply a shimmering wall of opalescent light. As Joel approached it 
he wondered who all the people going in and out of the house were and, for that 
matter, how they were cleared for entry. As far as he could see, anyone who 
reached the town could use the portal to penetrate Sheida's innermost sanctum. 
He was sure there was security on the passage, but what and how had not been 
discussed.
There was a short line waiting to pass through and he joined it, nodding at the 
woman in front of him.
"You're new," the slightly built woman said. She was barely up to Joel's chest 
in height.
"Just passing through," Joel replied. "I had a meeting with Harry about 
improving the logistics."
"Not much to be done with just the one entry," the woman sniffed. "Getting fresh 
food in and out is real bother."
"You're a cook?" he asked, automatically fishing for information.
"For Herself," the woman replied with a note of pride. "I'm on my way out to 
have a word with the butcher. The last load of meat was simply dreadful. Not 
that Herself eats much, she eats like a bird to tell truth, it's really 
terrible. I try to get her to eat more but even my best pastries she barely 
nibbles. It's a real shame."
"Do you cook for the rest of the complex?" Joel asked as the line moved forward.
"I'm one of the cooks, but I'm mainly to supply Herself," the woman said. 
"Sometimes when she has a big meeting I'll take charge of that. There's a head 
'chef' but he's such a pain, a real prima donna if you know what I mean."
"Uh-huh."
"But when they do have a big party it's a real pain. First getting everything 
through on portal and then getting all the guests in and out. You have no idea 
how much food it takes for a big party, oh, but I guess you do if you handle 
logistics?"
"Rather large parties, yes," Joel said with an amiable grin. "But I just do 
paperwork, you know. I don't have to do the cooking."
"Well, you have no idea. I mean, at least we have a decent kitchen but it's 
still too small and the stoves could use a good upgrade. Fortunately I'd made a 
study of real cooking before the Fall. None of this three sprigs of over-spiced 
carrot and a piece of chicken the size of your thumb, no sirree . . ."
After they passed through the portal into the receiving room Joel managed to 
extract himself from the woman and mentally groaned. He wasn't sure who was in 
charge of Sheida's counterintelligence but it left a great deal to be desired. 
These people simply didn't think in terms of security. That her senior cook 
wandered in and out talking to any stranger was bad enough. But if there wasn't 
a good filter on the portal anyone could go in and out. Or anything. Slipping a 
toxin into the food would be no problem. A time-release binary would take down 
everyone in the complex.
He was half tempted to turn around and go see Sheida about it but after a 
moment's thought he decided to continue the mission. He'd be reporting at some 
point and he could ask her, or one of her avatars, about it later.
He looked up the "transportation coordinator" and found out that his dragon 
wouldn't be leaving until late morning the next day. With that information, and 
where to meet the dragon, he set off into the town.
Like most of the post-Fall towns, new construction was evident. Most of it was 
packed earth, what was called adobe in other areas. Chian was at the base of the 
western mountain ranges where they met the plains, drawing from both areas. The 
town was filled with herdsmen from the plains, most of them wearing rough bison 
coats against the early fall cold, and people that he designated "townies." 
After casting around for a bit he found a money changer. The building was one of 
the few made of stone and obviously old, not only pre-Fall but probably from the 
semimythical "settlement" period. There were guards armed with short swords and 
they frowned at him as he stepped through the open door.
The interior was dim, lit only by small windows set high on the walls. He waited 
for his eyes to adjust, then walked over to the barred counter at the end.
"I'd like to change some gold for credit chits and some chunk silver," he said 
to the woman behind the counter.
"Let's see it," the woman replied, pulling out a scale and jeweler's loupe.
He slid over one of the chunks of gold, wondering if they'd ID him as from 
Sheida.
"Federal mint," the woman frowned after a glance at the imprint on the bar. "We 
haven't seen many of these."
"Neither have I," Joel replied with his patented vapid smile. "I did some 
contract work for the Federals and that's what they paid me with."
"I still need to assay it." The woman sniffed. She rubbed the metal on an emery 
block, then dropped a solvent on it. There was a brief hiss and she compared the 
color to a chart. She gave another sniff and put the gold on a scale, frowning 
all the while. Finally she looked up with a reduced frown.
"There's a fixed value on these," she said, rummaging in a drawer until she 
pulled out a sheet of paper. She compared the date, then shrugged. "Four hundred 
twenty-three credits."
"Close enough for government work," Joel replied. "I need it in as small a 
package as possible."
The woman opened her cash drawer and extracted a handful of bills, stamped 
bronze coins and some loose silver in irregular chunks. She put the silver on 
the scale and added a tad more then slid the whole under the bars.
"Three hundred credits in cash," she said, counting out the bills. "Five 
twenty-cred pieces and twenty-three in silver."
"I've never seen these," Joel admitted, picking up one of the bills. It was 
printed on one side with the eagle of the UFS and on the other with an image of 
some person he didn't recognize. It said "Fifty Credits" on it. He rubbed at the 
printing and the ink stayed in place.
"It's the new scrip currency they're distributing," the woman explained. "It can 
be exchanged for fifty chit credits anywhere in the UFS. If you go to one of the 
unincorporated towns, most of them are willing to accept it, too."
"Seems a bad trade for gold," Joel temporized.
"Well, if you walk back in with that we give you the exact same amount, less a 
two percent transaction fee," the woman replied, clearly used to explaining the 
facts of life to utter newbies. "Or, if you have an account with us we waive the 
transaction fee."
"So you act as a bank as well?"
"Yes, we're Federally licensed and act under charter of Idoma," the woman said. 
"It's a bit different than before we chartered, but not much. And we're insured 
against loss, which is a nice feeling. Too many moneylenders and changers have 
been robbed since the Fall. Now it's a Federal offense and the inspectors will 
chase anyone who robs a Federal bank to the ends of the earth."
"Or one of Paul's regions," Joel noted. "Okay, I'll take it. Can you direct me 
to someplace to sleep? I'm leaving tomorrow."
"The Hotel Brixon is nice," the lady said, pointing out and to the left. "And 
they have a good dining room."
"Thank you for all your help," Joel replied, picking up the cash and slipping it 
in his pouch. "I'm sorry I can't open an account."
"Well, perhaps if you spend more time here," the woman replied. "Chian is really 
growing, almost like a second capital city. There's always work to be had."
"I'll consider it," he said. "Have a nice day."
"What is it that you do, again?" the woman asked.
"Contract work," Joel replied, as he turned away. "I like to think of it as . . 
. salvage."
* * *
The man currently using the name Martin St. John sipped at surprisingly good 
wine and looked around the crowded tavern. He wasn't casing his fellow diners. 
The Brethon merchant who had had the misfortune to meet the seemingly friendly 
young man on the road from Setran was returning from a good sales trip. It was 
the merchant's nuggets of silver, each the size of a knucklebone—the preferred 
currency in Ropasa over the inflationary paper scrip of New Destiny—that had 
paid for the bad stew and good wine to follow.
The wine was the reason the inn even existed. The building had been at the 
crossroads for literally millennia, first as an inn dating back to the time of 
the Hundred Years' War, then as a private residence that was maintained across 
the millennia. The last owner had used his wine cellar, and the broadsword that 
hung over the fireplace, to reestablish it as an inn in the years after the 
Fall. Until he ran afoul of New Destiny's Changed legions and the ownership had 
passed to cronies of New Destiny.
The food had been better before the coming of the new owners. But they had held 
onto the wine cellar. In time, they might even learn how to make a decent stew.
But for now, it was good enough. He was out of the rain that was pissing down 
outside, he had a full belly, and the mature claret was putting him into a 
nearly expansive mood.
That was until the door opened and a tall, spare figure walked in out of the 
rain.
The man took off his broad-brimmed hat and shook it, looking around the room 
with eyes that were almost entirely white. The denizens of the inn looked at the 
stance and, most especially the eyes, and turned away, the conversation dying 
for a moment then picking up to an almost unnatural chatter.
Martin hoped that the man was looking for someone, or something, else. But the 
newcomer caught his eyes and smiled in an entirely friendly way and then made 
his way across the crowded room.
"Brother Martin," Conner said. "What a pleasant surprise."
"Surprise, hell," Martin replied, bitterly. "What the hell do you want, Brother 
Conner?"
The Brotherhood of the Rose had existed before the Fall. In the pre-Fall world, 
there was very little need, or reason, for criminality. It required both 
incredible cunning and a deep desire to do harm; when literally anything could 
be had at a whim, crime took on a truly bizarre form.
For the Brotherhood it was a game, a way to while away the time between birth 
and death in a world surfeited with luxuries. To steal a woman's virginity and 
betray her trust, to find the one thing that a person cherished and relieve them 
of it, to kill, in a world where everyone was protected by energy fields, 
nannites overcame toxins and healing was virtually instantaneous, took cunning 
and skill, especially since the few remaining police of the Council had access 
to investigation technology that was nothing short of magical. And it was a 
matter of points among the "Brothers" to do such things with style.
In the Brotherhood, Conner had racked up a truly amazing point total.
Since the Fall, the skills that Martin had developed had kept him warm, fed and 
as comfortable as it was possible to be in the Fallen world. He realized that 
all of those things might be coming to an end. Or not.
"How have you been?" Conner said, sitting down across from him and crossing his 
legs at the ankles. He waved to the server, a young man who looked harried by 
all the customers, and looked back at Martin. "How's tricks?"
"Oh, you know," Martin said, leaning back also. "I get along. This and that."
"Yes," Conner said, smiling. "I'm sure. I passed a bit of a gaggle on the road. 
It seemed that some local merchant had been set upon by vagabonds. Such a 
terrible thing. Paul's doing all that he can to reduce crime in the areas under 
his control. I'm sure that the ne'er-do-well will be caught in time."
Martin tried not to gulp as he took a sip of wine that suddenly tasted of 
vinegar. Before the Fall, getting caught generally led to close supervision. In 
extreme cases, and he knew he fell into the latter category, a brain-wipe might 
have been ordered, with a nice, docile personality imposed upon the criminal.
Since the Fall, crime was generally a local thing. If a thief was caught, the 
locals tended to be direct and final. Rope was cheap and, after all, could be 
reused.
With the coming of Paul's legions, though, things had changed. Paul had much 
better uses for criminals than making corpses. His legions were always looking 
for new bodies, bodies that gave up their own energy to be Changed into the 
brutal, bestial beings that served as the bulk of his army.
It included a brain-wipe, of course, but instead of a nice docile personality 
and a life of ease, if not interest, the former thief became just one more orc 
to be sent into the camps.
"I'm sure," he said. "How are you?"
"Well, I have to admit that I've found an employer," Conner said, taking the cup 
of wine that the harried serving boy had fetched for him ahead of a dozen other 
customers. "I hate to think that I'm going legit."
"Legit, yeah," Martin snorted. "I can just see you pulling down a pay-chit."
"Well, I have to admit that regular food, the money to buy clothes . . ." he 
said, eyeing Martin's weather-beaten ensemble, "has a certain pleasure to it. 
Especially since the jobs so far have been . . . right up my alley."
"I hate to think of the body count," Martin said.
"Well, as it happens, I've currently got too many projects to handle on my own. 
So I've convinced my employer that I could find suitable . . . subordinates. 
Such as yourself."
Martin eyed him for a moment, then shook his head.
"No. I don't know what racket you've gotten yourself into, but I know I can't 
trust you as far as I can throw this inn. I think I'll just keep going my own 
way, thanks."
"I'll add," Conner said, more or less ignoring him, "that the offer would 
include a pardon for any little offenses that you might have, accidentally I'm 
sure, committed against the caring government of New Destiny." Conner smiled in 
an open and friendly manner. "Such as a certain merchant on the Setran road."
"Who in the hell are you working for?" Martin asked, his eyes narrowing.
"Why, New Destiny of course," Conner smiled. "Such a fresh and forward looking 
name, don't you think. Do say yes, Martin, it would mean the world to you."
Martin flexed his jaw and took another sip of wine, then nodded.
"Okay, what's the job?"
"It seems that those rascals from the United Free States are getting concerned 
about a certain fleet that is building on the coast," Conner said.
Martin just nodded; the movement of the Changed legions, and all the provisions 
to support them as well as the building of a fleet of ships, was impossible to 
miss anywhere within a hundred klicks of the ocean.
"They seem to think that the mer will do them some good," Conner continued. 
"I've been tasked, among other things, with ensuring that the mer, one 
particular group of mer to be clear, don't ally with the UFS. One way or 
another."
"Where are they?"
"Well, that's the nice part," Brother Conner said. "It seems they're located in 
the Isles off Flora. So you can look forward to a relaxing sea voyage and then a 
pleasant tropical vacation."
"I'm not going to be able to do much about this by myself." Martin frowned, but 
given the cold autumn rains outside, a tropical vacation sounded just about 
right.
"Of course not," Conner snapped. "You'll be . . . managing a group of orcas and 
a new breed of Change called ixchitl. You'll be the control. I've a fleet of six 
ships that will take you to meet them and then carry you to the Isles. They're 
some of the first completed and you'll have Changed marines as well as their 
leaders under your command. Stop the alliance with the mer, wipe them out if you 
have to, and destroy the UFS group, and their ships, at the same time. Our 
information is that they're sending a new type of ship, a 'dragon-carrier.' The 
dragons, wyverns actually, aren't going to be a problem; they don't have a way 
to attack the ships. Is all of this clear enough for you or do I have to write 
it down in words of one syllable?"
"No, that's clear enough," Martin said, looking at the shutter-covered windows 
beaten by rain. "When do I leave?"


CHAPTER FIVE
Jason coasted to a stop parallel and slightly above Bruce the Black who was 
observing a group of mer, men and women, repairing one of the fishing nets. The 
material available for the nets was horrible, a type of long seaweed, a green 
algae in reality, whose "stems" were soft and pliable. Braided it was marginally 
effective as a net unless someone tried to capture, as in this example, a school 
of dorado, which were some of the fastest fish in the sea.
But between the nets, and scavenging for crayfish and the sea plums, and the 
occasional large fish that hunters like Jason speared with bone-tipped harpoons, 
hunger was kept at bay. That was about all that could be said about the happy 
life of the mer-folk. Oh, and the Work went on.
"Representatives Freedom come," Jason pulsed. The mer, unlike dolphins or other 
marine mammals, used gills and had no air available to create sonar. Instead 
they had a small bone, equivalent in basic design to those of the inner ear, 
located in the nasal passages in their forehead. They could send commands to the 
bone that pulsed their words and turned them into high frequency sonar. It was 
also adequate, barely, to maneuvering in zero visibility, be that in the dark or 
in a cave or even in light silt. And they could receive and process, to an 
extent, the sonar images created by the delphinoids, who had a much more 
advanced system. But for conversation, the mer relied on verbal shorthand.
"Destiny, too," Bruce answered. The name "the Black" referred to a joke that had 
circulated early in his years as a mer. He had said that his real purpose was to 
find the treasure of an ancient pirate named Blackbeard and spent a fair amount 
of time in the search. He was anything but black. His skin was a nearly perfect 
white, his hair was blond and his tail-section was covered in golden scales. But 
someone had called him "Blackbeard" and it had stuck, even after he became one 
of the leaders of the Work, the apparently eternal project of putting the coral 
reefs back into a "prehuman" condition.
The Fall had set back the Work, beyond question. Even Bruce the Black had been 
forced to recognize that hunting and gathering on the reefs was a necessity, not 
a barbarous hobby. And sea plum, a human-generated weed for all intents and 
purposes, which had been ruthlessly pruned, was now tended with nearly the same 
care as mer-children. But the Work went on.
Bruce the Black had been one of the most notable members of the mer community 
and he had been an outspoken proponent of continuing the Work to the best of 
their ability. It had been taken up as an article of faith among the mer, that 
the Work was more important than any temporary squabble among the 
Powers-That-Be.
Sometimes Jason wondered if there might not be more to life than the Work. Such 
as, for example, trying not to get trampled by the oncoming war.
"Fight will," Jason said.
"Fight/lose," Bruce replied. "Always fight/lose. Neutral are. Neutral stay."
"Freedom . . ." Jason replied.
"Destiny! Freedom! Fight/lose! Neutral stay!" The last was said with a blat of 
sound borrowed from the dolphins. In tonal shorthand it said "I'm the leader and 
you're not and you will obey!"
Jason, however, recognized the undertone, that of a porpoise mother chastising 
her infant, and was less than happy about it. There was, however, not much that 
he could say in return.
"Freedom representative Talbot. Going am."
"Where?" Bruce asked, finally turning to look at the younger mer.
"Hunt will," he said with a contemptuous gesture at the nets. "Food need. 
Neutral stay." With that he turned and gave a powerful flick of his tail, enough 
motion that the water assuredly washed over the older mer.
If Bruce took it as an insult, that wouldn't bother Jason one bit. He was half 
tempted to pee in his wake.
* * *
Herzer turned down an offer to have dinner with Edmund and gravitated to the 
officers' mess instead. For one credit chit he was served overcooked and 
oversalted roast beef, lumpy mashed potatoes with slightly burned gravy and 
greens cooked to mush. However, he consoled himself that it was better than 
monkey on a stick. He didn't recognize any of the people in the mess, except 
occasionally by sight. He'd checked around and there were none of his class 
currently present, not that there had been many survivors. After dinner he 
drifted back to his room, uncertain about where to go or what to do. He could 
get all spiffied up and go to the O-club bar and get shit-faced, but that had 
little appeal. There were always some women hanging around and if he flashed his 
medals he'd probably get laid. But he liked to think that he was beyond that. He 
lay down on his bed and tucked his hand behind his head, and tapped his 
prosthetic in thought. He should have gone to dinner at Edmund's. He'd barely 
said hello to Rachel and Daneh, who were two of his favorite people on earth. He 
should go to the bar; at least with a few belts in him he could probably sleep. 
The bottom line was that he had gotten so used to having something to do, 
constantly, that he didn't know how to relax anymore.
Finally he stripped off his tunic and opened up his wall locker. It took him two 
checks to determine that he had, precisely, zero civilian clothes.
"Herzer, you're getting way too into this shit," he muttered. Finally he pulled 
out an undress tunic and a field cloak and stomped out of the quarters.
He headed downtown in the general direction of Tarmac's tavern, then took a left 
and, on an impulse, headed for the public baths. When he got near them he 
stopped and whistled. What had once been a rather small set of three wooden 
buildings was now a complex of at least half a dozen. And from the traffic going 
in and out half the town was there.
He headed up the front entrance and passed through one of several doors. There 
was a small antechamber, heated against the growing cold of fall, and he 
stripped off his cloak before passing through the second set.
The far room, which smelled of chlorine and was, frankly, overheated, had tables 
down either side with at least six people at each of them. He didn't recognize 
any of them and he hoped that it was mutual. He stepped to the right where a 
teenage girl wearing a bathing suit nodded at him.
"Lord, you're a big one," she said with a smile. "I haven't seen you before."
"I haven't been here in . . ." He had to stop and think for a moment. "Oh, at 
least two years. So I think you'll have to walk me through the procedures."
"Well, I have to stay here or I'd be happy to." She grinned. "But it hasn't 
changed much." She dipped under the desk and came up with a bag marked with a 
complicated symbol and a wooden marker. "Take the bag, go through the doors. 
There are disrobing rooms in there and towels. Grab a towel, put all your stuff 
in the bag and give it to an attendant. They'll seal it and you keep the 
marker."
"What are all the buildings?"
"Well, there's a shower room, please pee and take a shower before you climb in 
the baths," she said with her first frown. "There's one building for women-only 
baths, another for men; they're marked. Then there's the pool room, which is 
unisex. You can eat in there as well. And the fitness center."
"Fitness center?" Herzer asked. "I'm getting a sinking feeling. Do people wear 
bathing suits in here?"
"Some do, some don't," the girl smiled. "And there are some for sale in the gift 
shop, which is right around the corner," she added, pointing.
"I think I'll stop there, first," Herzer said.
He followed her directions and found a fully appointed gift shop. Not only were 
there bathing suits, there was a complete line of toiletries, soaps, shampoos, 
towels with the Raven's Mill logo and even shirts and coffee mugs. He picked one 
of the latter up and grimaced. "Raven's Mill, Home of the Blood Lords" was baked 
into the ceramic.
"Can I help you?" a cold female voice asked from behind him.
"Morgen!" he said, when he turned around. "I thought you'd run off to another 
town!"
Morgen Kirby was about a hundred and seventy centimeters of slim redhead. They 
had had a very brief relationship just after the Fall, before he had joined the 
Blood Lords. Very brief. Basically a half a day at the end of which they had a 
flaming argument. He couldn't, off-hand, recall about what.
"I did," she said, sighing. "I went to Resan."
"Oh, shit," was all Herzer could say. The town of Resan had been one of the 
first that Dionys McCanoc's forces had hit and because the town elders had a 
policy of "strict nonviolence" his forces had gone through it like a hot knife 
through butter. And that reminded him what the argument had been about. "I'm 
sorry. I didn't know. How . . ." He paused, unsure how to go on.
"McCanoc attacked just before dawn. I was working for one of the established 
people in the town and had gone out to one of the farms for milk; Mistress 
Tabitha had to have fresh milk for breakfast every morning."
"So you got out," Herzer sighed.
"Not . . . entirely unscathed." She frowned. "After that I went to Washan but 
after you and Edmund stopped McCanoc I decided the one place I wanted to be was 
back in Raven's Mill. Even if I didn't have my head screwed on straight, I could 
at least be somewhere where others did." She paused and shrugged. "You were 
right. Shilan and Cruz and all the rest were right; this world can't afford 
peaceful innocence. There are too many bad people in it. I always sort of 
expected you to turn up and gloat. But after a while I figured out you weren't 
the gloating type."
"No, I'm not," Herzer said. "I'm the worrying type. I actually thought of you 
earlier today; I saw Crystal. She's Edmund's secretary."
"You were right about that, too," she snorted. "She was being snippy because I 
was with you. When I got back here I was a bit loopy and she tried to 'comfort' 
me. Big mistake. She found out how over 'nonviolence' I am."
"Um . . ." Herzer scratched his chin and frowned. "I . . . well we get briefings 
about combat aftermath. You know, you really need to talk to a counselor . . ."
"I have been," she smiled. "For damned near a year I've been going to the 
post-rape trauma groups. I'm actually bucking for a junior counseling spot and 
Mistress Daneh thinks I can make it." She suddenly frowned again and looked at 
his prosthetic. "What the hell happened to you? Where's your hand?"
"McCanoc," Herzer said with a shrug, raising the prosthetic. "It's okay, it's 
got a little latch for holding my shield, takes all the trouble out of it. 
Better than a hand in some ways."
"I didn't know." She frowned again, looking at the clamp and hook of glittering 
metal.
"And you work here?" Herzer said, changing the subject.
"And I work here." She shrugged, still looking at the prosthetic with a troubled 
expression. "Three nights a week. And the sawmill during the day. So, were you 
looking for me, or . . . ?"
"Actually, I was looking for a suit," he admitted. "I haven't been to the 
bathhouse in a year or two and it's really changed."
"Not as much as you might think." She smiled. "Some people use them by the 
pools, but most don't. And, frankly, I don't think we have anything that will 
fit you."
"Story of my life," he grumbled.
"Well, you never were an off-the-rack kind of guy," she said with a grin.
"I guess I'll go brave the baths then," he said. "I've been in Harzburg for a 
year and they're . . . pretty uptight about body modesty. I guess some of it 
rubbed off."
"Oh, I'm sure you'll get back into the evil ways of Raven's Mill." She grinned 
again.
"Well . . . see you later?"
"Maybe," she said with a shrug. "I'm . . . not sure it would be a good thing to 
just pick up where we left off. I'm . . . over it but not that far."
"Believe me, I understand," Herzer said, frowning. "I've never had that 
particular experience, but I've seen the aftermath enough times. Take care of 
yourself, and . . . I'm here. Shoulder, bed, sword, okay?"
"Okay," she said, dimples appearing on her cheeks. "Go have fun."
"Fun, right," he said, throwing the bag over his shoulder.
The changing room had altered as well. There were closed stalls for changing; 
before it had been totally open. And there were two attendants waiting for his 
clothes and gear. From prior experience he knew he could trust them to not 
pilfer anything out of the bags so he added his money pouch after a moment's 
thought. That done, he tucked a towel around his waist firmly and headed through 
the door marked "Showers."
More changes. The showers were individual stalls; before they had simply lined 
one side of the room. There were males and females in the room and when one of 
the latter, a tall, lithe blonde, came out of a shower stall stark naked he 
actually started to feel more at home. He still put the towel back on before 
leaving his own stall.
Beyond the room was cross corridor with several doors. One was marked "Baths, 
Male" another "Baths, Female" and a third "Pools." He pushed open the male 
bathing room and saw a line of large wooden tubs, much like he remembered. There 
were a few guys in the far tub but the room was otherwise empty. He didn't 
recognize any of them so he headed for the room marked "Pools."
He wasn't sure what to expect but it wasn't what he got. The room was long, 
apparently one large building, the walls made of paneled wood and lined with oil 
lamps. More oil lamps were hung throughout the room and in several spots there 
were round fireplaces with metal covers and chimneys to let the smoke out 
through the roof. The floor was tiled and the "pools" were just that, nine pools 
of varying sizes scattered around the room. There were benches and low tables as 
well and most of the people who had been coming in and out apparently gravitated 
here. The conversation was loud and echoed across the room.
He stepped through the door and looked around trying to decide what the standard 
mode of dress was but there didn't seem to be any. Some of the people had on 
light bathing suits but the majority were naked and there didn't seem to be any 
discrimination. A blonde in a suit so sheer she might as well have been naked 
was talking to a male who was. Two guys in bikini bathing suits were talking to 
the woman who had walked out of the shower starkers. He finally recognized one 
of the instructors at the Academy and had started across the room when he heard 
his name screamed and the next moment found his arms filled with naked female.
He was having such a hard time trying to figure out where to put his hand, and 
hook, that it took him a moment to recognize her.
"Shilan!" he yelled. "Damn, it's good to see a familiar face." Hsu Shilan had 
been part of his apprenticeship class, a lovely trim brunette with whom he'd had 
an "off-again" relationship until he joined the Blood Lords and basically lost 
track. Last he'd heard she was a textile designer at one of the mills. She'd put 
on a bit of weight since then, but since she had been skinny to the point of 
anorexia it looked good on her. Too good. Herzer found himself stroking her back 
and wished he had more clothes on.
"Well, if you'd stay in town for a while," she said, sternly. If she noticed the 
stroking it was only to lean into it a bit.
"My master's voice," he replied, carefully removing his hands lest he get a 
little too enthusiastic. "I go where they tell me. This time it was Harzburg for 
a year and a half."
"You haven't met my husband, David," she said, dragging him to one of the pools.
"Husband?" he squeaked.
One of the bathers had risen out of a nearby pool and held out his hand.
"So you're Herzer Herrick," the man said. Herzer noted as he took the hand that 
it was soft and that he out-massed Shilan's husband by at least twice. So if it 
came to cases, he could probably punch David through the nearest wall. He still 
intended to be extremely correct and punctilious. Damnit. The mission in 
Harzburg meant that he was trying to uphold the reputation of the Federal 
forces. And although an ancient general had said "A soldier who won't fisk, 
won't fight," the Harzians were such stuck-up pricks that he'd had to play 
saintly soldier boy the entire year. It had been a looong year.
"Shilan has told me an awful lot about you," David continued.
"It's all lies and damned lies," Herzer said, squatting down as modestly as he 
could with a towel on. Shilan had slid back into the pool but her breasts, which 
were noticeably rounder and fuller than the last time Herzer met her, were fully 
exposed.
"Come on," Shilan said, waving at the pool. "Jump in. The water's fine."
"Um . . ." One hundred twenty-eight times three is . . . three times eight, 
carry the two . . . By the time he was barely a quarter of the way into the 
equation he'd gotten to the point he wouldn't embarrass himself and he pulled 
off the towel.
"See, told you he was hung like an ox," Shilan said with a chuckle.
So much for not being embarrassed.
"Yep, the reason we never had a relationship was she saw me in the showers and 
fainted," Herzer replied with a growl.
"With excitement, maybe," David laughed. "I see some of us got 'enhanced' before 
the Fall."
"Natural genetics," Herzer replied, tightly. "I had the muscles built on, but 
that was because I had a degenerative condition. I'd worked for them, they just 
wouldn't stay. When I got cured, I had a bod-mod, but it was only for the 
muscles. Then I maintained them. The rest is genetics. The size overall and . . 
. in places."
"Big hands," Shilan chuckled. "That's what you meant."
"Hand," Herzer noted, holding up his prosthetic.
"Sorry," Shilan said, suddenly contrite.
"Not a problem, it's great for opening beers," Herzer replied with a shrug.
"You're Herzer Herrick?" The woman from the showers slid into the pool, looking 
at him with a quizzical frown. She looked to be in her twenties but her 
movements were so smooth and precise she had to be nearing her first century. "I 
was expecting someone . . . older."
"At your service, Mistress . . . ?"
"Miss," the woman said with a smile. "Stephanie Vega." She held out her hand, 
reaching across the pool to do so.
She was blond, a natural apparently or at least with either transformed genetics 
or very ready in her use of dye, long and slender in the hipless, bustless look 
that was fashionable pre-Fall. A face that was a little too perfect to be 
natural. Herzer wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers. Well, maybe if 
she was really messy about it.
"And, yes, I'm Herzer Herrick," Herzer said, giving her his patented 
big-dumb-goofy grin. To most women big seemed to equal dumb and if dumb was what 
they wanted, he was their man.
"The Blood Lord?" she continued, her eyes widening, as if she still didn't quite 
believe it. Her pupils were dilated so far it was hard to tell she had green 
eyes.
"You might say the Blood Lord's Blood Lord," Shilan said somewhat cattily. "When 
they recruit they ask 'Do you think you can be as good as this?' "
"I wasn't disbelieving you," Stephanie said, smiling disarmingly as she leaned 
back against the wall of the pool. "But the stories that you hear . . ."
"We only eat babies if they're particularly tender," Herzer said. The woman was 
oozing charm, which suddenly set off alarm bells.
"Fight until you die and drop and all that," Stephanie said. "You've been out of 
town?"
"Harzburg," Herzer said. "Great place to visit, wouldn't want to live there."
"What were you doing?" Shilan asked.
"Tarson had declared for New Destiny," Herzer shrugged. "They were raiding 
Harzburg. Harzburg screamed for help. They got me."
"One war, one Blood Lord?" Stephanie asked.
"One minor little campaign," Herzer said with a frown. "They had some issues 
with their 'support.' They got over it in time."
"How?" Stephanie asked, leaning forward again and putting her hand on his knee, 
under the water.
It had been a long year so he recited some more multiplication tables.
"Tarson had been sending parties to raid the outlying farms," Herzer said. 
"Look, do you really want to hear this?"
"I want all of it," Stephanie said, throatily.
"I want to hear it, too," David replied when Herzer just looked at her, his face 
blank and hard.
He looked up at the ceiling when he realized other people, including the Blood 
Lord instructor he had seen across the room, had gathered around. He thought 
about the blood, the hacked remnants of what had been human beings scattered 
across a farmer's field. He realized what his face must look like so he, with 
difficulty, slid a friendlier mask onto his face.
"Tarson had been sending raiding parties out," he repeated, turning to look at 
Shilan. "They'd burned a couple of the farms in the area that wouldn't, or 
couldn't, pay their 'taxes.' I took to riding around . . ." He paused and 
shrugged.
"Blood Lord training is designed for formation; fighting as an individual is 
entirely different. But we cross-train." He looked over at the instructor from 
the Academy who nodded at him. "I'd . . . done more cross training than normal, 
for that matter. Anyway, I was out at one of the farms, just visiting. I'd been 
riding around to them, helping out sometimes, meeting people. And there was a 
scream from outside and Diablo was whinnying." He closed his eyes and tried to 
smile but it just wouldn't come.
"The farmers had a daughter, just about eleven. When I got outside some of the 
Tarson had her on the ground. Others were headed for the house, torches in their 
hands. I . . . well, it gets pretty blank in that kind of combat. My shield was 
on Diablo but I was in armor. They weren't." He stopped talking.
"That's it?" Stephanie said after a long pause. "What's the rest of the story?"
"The rest of the story is in the after-action report," the instructor said. 
"Fifteen raiders, motley weapons. Axes, swords, spears. One Blood Lord. You did 
us proud that day, Lieutenant."
"Thank you, sir," Herzer said, modestly, trying very hard not to remember. "I 
don't really remember most of it," he lied.
"What happened to the girl?" Shilan asked.
"She's never going to look at slaughtering the same for the rest of her life," 
the instructor said, grimly.
"She was fine," Herzer said. "Shaken up, but fine. They hadn't had time to get 
their pants down much less get stuck in. I talked to her a few times afterwards; 
she needed to talk it out and she didn't feel like she could with anybody else. 
She's fine."
"You're not much of a storyteller are you?" Stephanie asked.
"It's hard to talk about some things with people who haven't been there," Herzer 
admitted with a shrug. "The . . . feel of your sword crunching through a rib 
cage is difficult to describe. What it feels like to have your sword stuck in a 
corpse's spine while someone is hammering on you with an axe. What a field looks 
like after you've chopped a dozen human beings into their constituent parts. 
Having to decide whether to try to save someone's life or just give them mercy."
"I take it back," Stephanie said, leaning back. "You can feel free to leave out 
the little details."
"I didn't care about the ones headed for the house," Herzer said, suddenly 
loquacious. "If I raised enough of a ruckus they would either run to help or run 
off. I do remember bowling a couple of them over as I went through, and . . ." 
He looked up and his right hand made a motion like a butterfly drawn in air. 
"And a bit more to a couple of others. I made a mistake with the girl, though. I 
was so angry. The guy who was trying to rape her . . . his teeth chattered on my 
sword blade like a toy. Chit-chit-chit-chit-chit. That was when it got stuck, in 
the back of his brain really." There were grimaces in the audience but he didn't 
notice, being somewhere else.
"I'd kicked one of the guys holding her down on his face but another one was 
hitting me on the back with an axe. It was just bouncing off my armor so I 
turned around and punched him and took his axe away. I chopped a space around me 
and got my sword freed up." He shook his head and shuddered.
"What?" Shilan asked.
He shrugged and made a stomping motion as his gripped hands moved back and forth 
as if he was trying to free something. More grimaces, including from Shilan who 
clearly wished she hadn't asked the question, and a few of the audience wandered 
off, hurriedly.
"Diablo had turned up by that time and I made sure he didn't step on the girl. 
The ones who had been planning on burning the house were headed back by then and 
some of them threw spears. I remember one of them bouncing off the armor and 
another stuck. That just gave me another weapon. I hit them with that for a 
while, until it broke, then went back to the sword. When there weren't any more 
people bothering me, or the girl, or my horse, I went over to the spring and 
cleaned up."
"Tired?" the instructor asked, professionally.
"Not really," Herzer said. "A bit of a case of the shakes, but it hadn't taken 
five minutes, all total." He stopped and shrugged. "It was more like a not 
particularly intense drill. They weren't very good."
" 'Nah, fifteen of 'em,' " Stephanie mimicked. " 'Wasn't really what you'd call 
a fight.' Lord! Brag for God's sake!"
"Why?" the instructor said, lightly. "I'll admit that it was a tough fight. 
There are few among the Blood Lords who would have done as well. I doubt that I 
would have. But for Herzer, yes, it was child's play. He is the Blood Lord's 
Blood Lord, the icon that we hold up to the students, just as this young lady 
said. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name," he added.
"Shilan," Shilan said. "I hadn't realized that you heard."
"I'd moved over. The point is that the Blood Lords train to do one of three, or 
all of three, things to their opponents. Outmaneuver them, chop them to ribbons 
and if all else fails outlast them. We do that partially by being able to rotate 
units, but the individual Blood Lord is trained to fight, literally, for at 
least an hour without being significantly fatigued. A five-minute fight—he 
shouldn't have broken a sweat."
Stephanie leaned sideways in the pool and supported herself on one elbow, 
arching her back slightly towards the instructor.
"In pretty good . . . shape then, eh?" she asked, tossing her head so her hair 
swung back and forth.
The instructor just looked at her for a moment, then nodded sharply.
"Pretty good, yeah."
Stephanie languorously slid back to her place and took a deep breath as she 
smiled up at him.
"I'm so glad to have such big strong men guarding us!"
Herzer gripped the bridge of his nose to keep from laughing, hiding his face 
behind his hand. He looked sideways and saw that Shilan was just staring at the 
woman, her mouth open. She closed it after a moment with a clop.
"Whatever were we talking about?" Stephanie asked.
"I dunno," Herzer said with a laugh. "Economics comes to mind for some reason."
"Why economics?" Stephanie asked, clearly puzzled.
"Because it's the most boring subject I can imagine," Herzer answered, laughing.
"Oh, I dunno," Stephanie replied, pushing her hair back with both hands behind 
her ears and then posing with them out to the side as she thrust her chest 
forward. "Derivatives can be fascinating."
Herzer laughed again and shook his head at her incredible forwardness.
"So, I kill people and break things," he said, looking for any subject that 
wouldn't get another rise out of her. "What do you do?"
"I work at the bank," she said, flatly, frowning. "Let's not talk about work."
"Bank?" Herzer said. "What bank?"
"Raven Federal," Stephanie replied.
"Used to be Tom Sloan's Loan Shark and Credit Destroyer," Shilan said with a 
grin. "They've come up in the world."
"Huh," Herzer said. "Tom handles all my accounts. I've got to see him tomorrow."
"Accounts?" Stephanie said, raising an eyebrow. "Plural."
"Plural," Herzer said flatly. "What are you doing Shilan?"
"I'm still a textile designer," Shilan said. "That's where I met David. He's in 
sales at the plant."
"Which is a losing cause," David said unhappily. "We used to be the only mill in 
the area. But these days Hotrum's Ferry has three, and transportation costs are 
making us unprofitable out of the immediate region."
"Well, this is just fascinating but I've got a date with a bottle of wine," 
Stephanie said, standing up. "Herzer, pleasure to meet you," she added, holding 
out her hand.
"Same here," he replied, shaking it. She turned immediately and climbed out of 
the pool.
"Okay, what just happened?" he asked.
"Social butterfly," the instructor said, sliding into the pool. "She got exactly 
what she wanted out of the conversation, then went off to find one where she 
could get more."
"Whatever," Herzer replied. "I'm sorry, I cannot for the life of me recall your 
name."
"Mike Fraser," the instructor replied, holding out his hand. "I'm in second 
phase at the Academy."
"I was supposed to be coming back for an instructor's gig at the O course," 
Herzer said, shrugging.
"What are you doing instead?" Shilan asked.
"I just got told," Herzer admitted. "But I'm not sure I should talk about it."
"Open secret," Fraser said. "You're going to the Southern Isles with Duke 
Edmund."
"So much for military security," Herzer grumbled.
"Like I said, open secret," Fraser shrugged. "You can't organize something like 
that without it getting out. And there are no secrets in the baths."
"None at all," Shilan said. "Worst gossip spot in the town. Even including the 
'ladies get-togethers' that resulted from counseling classes. Although those are 
more catty. I knew that Edmund was going to the Isles, but not that you were 
going."
"Daneh and Rachel took it as a surprise," Herzer said.
"They don't come in here much," Shilan shrugged. "Rachel rarely and I've never 
seen Daneh in here."
"I can imagine why," Herzer said.
"It's not that," Shilan replied. "I think she's about as over her rape as it's 
possible to be. If not she certainly controls it well. I think she's just very 
body-modest. Rachel, too, to a lesser extent. And, of course, they have their 
own baths at the house. Daneh probably would have picked it up at one of the 
meetings but she's been missing those the last couple of weeks. I only heard 
about it . . . two nights ago."
"I don't care how hard it is to keep a secret in the baths," Herzer said. "This 
is still a problem."
"Yup, sure is," Fraser nodded. "I'm not sure what can be done about it, though."
"Education comes to mind," Herzer replied. "I don't know what the security 
classification is on this mission, but I don't really care. It shouldn't be 
talked about in public, period. That's basic OPSEC, sir."
"No rank in the baths, either," Fraser noted. "But I get your meaning. You're 
probably right about the education aspect, but we're all still feeling our way. 
A couple of years ago, none of us were soldiers."
"Not my problem," Herzer shrugged. "It just bugs me."
"Speaking of feeling our way . . " Shilan said, then blushed. "That didn't come 
out right."
"It's okay," Herzer chuckled. "It would take a very dirty mind to find anything 
wrong with that comment. Admittedly, I have a dirty mind . . ."
"Speaking of trying to figure out stuff about this life," Shilan said, clearing 
her throat. "Why is he a captain and you're a lieutenant?"
"A very good question." Fraser nodded. "The answer is that I came to the Academy 
as a lieutenant and have gotten promoted since. I think you were enlisted, 
Herzer?"
"Yeah," Herzer said. "I just got my commission before going to Harzburg. That 
was another one of their gripes. I basically got the commission for the mission 
and that was pretty obvious."
"But you got them to see the error of their ways?" Fraser asked.
"It took a while," Herzer admitted. "The town is run by guilds and they took to 
their prerogatives, post-Fall, really damned quick. It was more feudal than it 
sounds. They didn't want some no-class low-life newly promoted lieutenant 
telling them how they were supposed to run their militia. For one thing, the 
militia was only open to those they thought 'acceptable.' Which meant those they 
could trust with a weapon at their back."
"Under the constitution all voters are supposed to be armed," David interjected. 
"I mean required."
"Yeah, and that has holes you can run an elephant through," Herzer said. "They 
were using the 'bondage labor' provisions to exclude most of the people in the 
town, not just the refugees but others they didn't like and had squeezed out of 
power. You had to be a full guild member to be a member of the militia."
"About a fifth their available bodies at a guess," Fraser mused.
"About that," Herzer said. "And all too busy to bother actually training. I 
mean, most of them were honestly busy, you know how it is. They had real jobs, 
hard ones. And the labor pool guys, who were mostly sitting around hoping for 
work, were restricted from training. I'd been railing about it, quietly, for 
quite a while. There was also a real split between the farms, who were the ones 
getting hit, and the town, where they thought nobody would attack. Well, shortly 
after my little encounter at the farm Tarson did hit the town. Things were 
pretty screwed up but we managed to stop them after they'd burned the 
tanneries."
"We?" Fraser interjected.
"I'd . . . been training some of the bond labor on the side," Herzer admitted. 
"And that was item one in the meeting after the attack. But it was me and a few 
of them that drove the attackers off."
"Blood Lord tactics?" Fraser asked.
"Modified," Herzer admitted. "More of a phalanx approach. Really, I just had 
them make long spears and learn to march in formation with them. And, yeah, that 
was tough to arrange. But we got our tools together and drove the Tarsons off. 
Then the shit hit the fan. There was a pretty . . . intense meeting. But they 
had a few unpalatable choices. They could throw me out and try to get something 
else from the Federals. Pretty damned unlikely. Or they could actually train 
their 'organized' militia. Equally unlikely. Or they could trust the scum with 
weapons."
"The scum?" Shilan said, angrily.
"That's how they felt about the labor pool guys," Herzer said. "And some of them 
were scum; Harzburg had a hell of a crime problem for that matter. They started 
off the meeting wanting to kill me. 'Violation of local ordinances' was the 
crime I was accused of. I more or less told them 'You and what army?' By the end 
of the meeting they'd given me approval to recruit among the laborers. And I 
made a tiddly little company out of them if I do say so myself." He looked up at 
the rafters again and shrugged. "Maybe I'll have a command again, someday."
"Count on it," Fraser sighed.
"So when the Tarsons attacked again we routed them and drove them back to their 
town. Took the town, burned the ringleaders in their 'stronghold' and I put a 
few of the better of the laborers in charge in Tarson. The people of the town 
were mostly glad as hell to be liberated. The guild guys tried to make like it 
was their town but we told them where to stuff it. I worked out a charter for 
Tarson, got their application in to the UFS, waited until the election—which was 
as cold and stacked as I could make it—was over and just afterwards got the word 
to head home. Mission accomplished."
"In spades," Fraser said. "What are you getting for this one?"
"Another mission," Herzer laughed.
"Excuse me, Mr. Herrick," a soft voice said from over his shoulder.
He looked around and was faced by a tiny tuft of pubic hair. Looking farther up 
he was stunned by the vision. If the girl standing over him wasn't absolutely 
perfect in every way she could see it on a clear day. Brunette, about a meter 
and a half, perfectly rounded breasts, high and incredibly firm, flat belly, 
rounded mons. He realized he was staring.
"Yes?" he asked, his voice ending in a squeak.
The girl slid into the water to his left and smiled at him.
"My name's Sheena. I don't think you know me."
"I don't think so either," Herzer replied, all charm out the window. Three 
hundred fifty-seven times four . . . down boy! 
"Back before the attack on the town, you went out with a cavalry patrol," she 
said in a soft little-girl voice that practically drove arithmetic out of his 
brain.
"Yes?" Carry the two . . .  
"My brother was one of the guys on the patrol," she said, leaning forward and 
kissing him on the cheek. "I want to talk to you, but I'll be right back."
"Okay," he croaked, then turned back to the group in the bath, all of whom were 
smiling and trying not to laugh.
"How old do you think she is?" Fraser asked, trying not to be smug.
"Seventeen?" Herzer said.
"Try twelve," David replied.
"No fisking way!"
"Way," Shilan replied. "Way, way, way."
"What the hell is she doing naked in the public baths!" Accosting perfect 
strangers and ruining their whole day. 
"They're public baths," Shilan replied with a shrug. "I guess her parents 
decided she was old enough."
"They need to have their heads examined!"
Sheena suddenly slid back into the water next to him and laid her hand on his 
arm.
"I'm really glad to finally meet you," she said, huskily.
Down, down, down, down, DOWN! Twelve! TWELVE! 
"Me, too," Herzer replied. "So are you going to school now?"
"Oh, yeah." Sheena frowned. "I didn't have much before the Fall, you know? So 
I'm in the little kid classes . . ."
Okay, I'm clearly not going to get laid tonight, thank God . . .  


CHAPTER SIX
Herzer fell out the next morning at first call in PT gear. It felt good to have 
nothing in front of him but some simple physical training. He ran the Hill once, 
then picked up a pack and rucked it four more times, each at increasing speed. 
He was out of shape and knew it, but he did a credible imitation of Blood Lord 
speeds on the Hill. After that he moved over to the salle area for the permanent 
party. None of his class was present but he found someone who was a close match 
and got in a solid two hours of sword and shield work. He might be light on wind 
but he hadn't lost his touch with sword and shield and his opponent damned well 
knew he had been kissed, even through the padded armor.
"Very nice, Herzer. I never figured you for beating up on the babies."
He turned around and slapped Bue Pedersen on the arm.
"Bue! Damn, where the hell have you been?"
"We're forming a legion in Washan," Bue said. "I've been 'assisting' in that 
endeavor."
"Wish I had been," Herzer said. "Spar?"
"If you think you're up to it." Bue grinned. They had both been in the first 
Blood Lord class, and at the defense of Raven's Mill. But their careers had 
seldom crossed paths since. Bue was a triari sergeant while Herzer had been 
"promoted" to lieutenant. The Blood Lord had few formed units; they tended to be 
the cadre for other forces and the first class had found itself scattered up and 
down the eastern seaboard. Herzer had picked up that some were even as far away 
as the central plains.
Bue donned padded armor and found a practice sword to his liking. The Blood Lord 
technique was not precisely suited to one-on-one dueling, but both of them were 
trained in individual fighting as well.
The rules of the game were that they could not move to either side, but had to 
act as if they were in a unit, moving forward or backwards only slightly. Herzer 
centered himself and started the battle with an attempted shield bash which Bue 
turned to the side deftly and then they began hammering.
With no ability to move around it was just that, the swords licking out to jab 
and chop relentlessly. The shields stayed in front of the body and could be 
moved up and down, or, slightly, to either side. And they did move, fast, the 
two fighters wielding the heavy shields as if they were made of balsa wood 
instead of oak and iron. Blows slipped past repeatedly, though, slamming into 
shoulders and arms, but none of them would have been disabling so the fighters 
drove on, each attempting to either get in a crippling blow or force the other 
to give up from sheer fatigue.
Herzer noticed that most of the other fighting had died down as the two 
continued to hammer at each other. He had already had a good solid two hours of 
mock combat and his wind was not what it had been before the Harzburg mission. 
Bue, on the other hand, seemed to be made of iron. No matter what he tried he 
couldn't get in a crippling blow nor did the NCO seem to be tiring.
"You're getting soft, Herzer." Bue grinned.
"All that easy living up in Harzburg," Herzer admitted, gritting his teeth. He 
knew one blow that might work, but it was chancy and right on the edge of 
illegal in competition. When he realized he was about to die or drop he hooked 
Bue's shield with his and lifted both of them, an almost impossible maneuver. 
Then he dropped to one knee and drove his practice sword upward into the NCO's 
unprotected stomach, doubling him over retching.
"I'm still . . . better than . . . you . . ." Herzer gasped, bending over and 
panting.
"Cristo, I'm unmanned," Bue said, clutching at his stomach.
"And now you see why we keep Class One as far apart as possible," Gunny said to 
a background of applause.
Herzer didn't know how long the NCO had been watching but he managed to struggle 
to his feet.
"And I thought it was because we were the best of the best," Herzer said, 
grinning despite his fatigue.
"You're pretty good," Gunny admitted grudgingly. "But you want to try that 
maneuver on me?"
"Not in a long lifetime," Herzer admitted. He walked over to the armor rack and 
hung up his shield, helmet and sword, then stripped out of the sweat-soaked 
armor. "You okay, Bue?"
"I'll be okay," the NCO admitted, walking over to rack his own gear. "Where in 
hell did you learn that little trick?"
"Tarson," Herzer said. "Desperation is the best teacher."
* * *
After showering off, he had breakfast with Bue and Gunny. The mess hall was 
neutral ground and Blood Lords did not maintain strict separation between 
enlisted and officers so several other officers were having breakfast with the 
"troops." They caught up on what had been happening and talked about the "old 
times," just a couple of years before, when the Blood Lords were being formed.
After breakfast Gunny and Bue went off to their duties and Herzer headed 
downtown. He thought, again, that while Gunny was still sharp as a tack, he 
seemed to be losing the edge just a hair. He'd picked up that Gunny no longer 
ran the basic entry test for the Blood Lord trainees; the first ruck run up the 
Hill. He just couldn't make the time anymore. It had only been two years, but 
two years of running class after class had clearly taken it out of the old NCO.
Retiring him was out; he'd either be one of those guys who just hung around all 
the time or he'd die or commit suicide. All he had known before Fall was living 
what he had researched as the life of a senior noncommissioned officer. 
Something was going to have to be done, but offhand Herzer couldn't think what.
Herzer wondered, not for the first time but the first time clearly, what Gunny 
had been like when he was a youngster. Or Duke Edmund, for that matter. He had 
looked at both of them, when he first started out, as the near order of gods. 
And now there were people who looked at him the same way. Had they been 
screw-ups? What was the force that drove them to be who they were? You had to 
have something seriously odd in your background to live the lives that they had 
lived before the Fall, not to mention what they had done after it.
Who were they really? People looked at him as if he was something special. Even 
as he walked downtown, people would come up to him and nod and whisper as he 
passed. Herzer, the victor of the Line. Herzer the Undefeatable. He knew he 
wasn't any of those things. But he wore the mask, wore it so well sometimes it 
felt as if he was becoming their belief. But he knew, inside, that he was the 
same screwed-up kid who had run away from Daneh's rape. Who had needed to be 
hammered on the anvil of the Blood Lords, and of life, to attain any sort of 
competence. Who still screwed up from time to time.
Who were they, really?
Those thoughts carried him as far as the bank and he wandered in abstractedly, 
scarcely noticing when he reached the newly installed desks.
"Can I help you?" the woman at the desk asked.
"Stephanie?"
Gone was the flippant social butterfly. The woman had her hair up in a bun and a 
severe expression of less than friendly competence on her face.
"Lieutenant Herrick, I believe?" Stephanie replied.
"I'm looking for Tom," Herzer said.
"Do you have an appointment?"
"Nooo," Herzer replied with a slight grin. "But I thought I'd drop by for old 
time's sake."
"Mr. Sloan is quite busy, but I'll see if he has a moment." She got up and went 
through a side door as Herzer took his first real look around.
Tom Sloan had started small. Prior to the Fall there was no such thing as 
"currency." There were energy credits but they were traded, to the extent that 
any trading occurred, through the Net. Everyone had a relative sufficiency. Even 
Herzer, who as a young man had been "released" by his parents, had enough to not 
only pay for advanced medical treatment but also to maintain elaborate "enhanced 
reality" simulations. It took real energy to use up all your energy credits.
After the Fall, currency had at first been based on food. Food was distributed 
based on "credit chits." One chit, one meal. Or rough food, slightly more than 
one meal, if you knew how to cook it. Over time the chits had transformed into 
the standard currency and as the society got more complex they had become the 
standard monetary form. You still could buy a meal or food from the government 
with chit in hand. But most of them were traded through what was becoming more 
and more of an economy. And even the term "chit" was falling out of the lexicon, 
replaced by "credit."
Tom had gotten into the trading of chits early. He had accumulated stores of 
them, based on loans from the government and deposits by people who had a 
surplus. And he'd put the money to use, loaning it out in turn at often usurious 
rates. But he was scrupulously fair and honest, which went a long way to people 
letting his interest rates slide; too many of his early competitors had played 
fast and loose with people's money. He had also handled investments and 
contracts for people like Herzer, people who had a small surplus and wanted to 
put it to work.
He'd clearly come up in the world. The small office he used to have had been 
expanded into a large building. There was a counter with some women behind it 
and a few offices off of the main lobby which apparently had Stephanie to guard 
it. There were also two inconspicuous real guards, hulking men nearly Herzer's 
size. One of them he recognized from the town militia. He'd tried out for the 
Blood Lords but hadn't been able to make the full training. He still looked more 
than capable of ripping any troublemaker in the bank limb from limb. Herzer 
nodded at him and the guard nodded back, not warily but fully aware that the 
Blood Lord would be difficult to rip if push came to shove.
"Herzer!"
Tom Sloan was a tall, good-looking guy anywhere between thirty and a hundred and 
fifty years in age, wearing a fine linen tunic and a pair of light-blue cosilk 
pants that just matched his eyes. He had sandy hair, a ready smile and a firm 
grip. Herzer was sure that he practiced the smile and handshake in the mirror 
every morning.
"Hey, Tom, got a minute?" Herzer asked.
"Always," Sloan replied with a toothy smile. "Miss Vega, could you pull the 
lieutenant's files and bring them to my office?"
"Certainly, sir," Stephanie simpered, then scurried away. Herzer had been sure 
that the woman could never scurry, but she did it well.
"Come on," Tom said, laying his hand on Herzer's arm and leading him through the 
door. There was a corridor with more offices to either side. Most of them had 
their doors open and in each there were people, mostly women, poring over piles 
of paper.
"If one more thing changes in this town I'll scream," Herzer said.
"You've got no idea." Tom sighed. He opened a door with "Sloan, President" on a 
brass plaque and led Herzer inside.
The room was comfortably but not flashily appointed. There were a couch and 
table, a couple of chairs and a medium sized desk. An étagère behind the desk 
had a few personal effects in it, including a small oil painting of Tom and a 
woman. Herzer vaguely recognized her but couldn't place the face.
"You're married?" he asked, taking one of the chairs. He fit in it poorly, which 
was normal, but he realized his legs were shoved up higher than usual. Then he 
realized that if he was "normal" sized he would have been looking up at the bank 
president.
"Last year," Tom said. "I had an invitation for you . . ."
"But I was out of town?" Herzer grinned.
"Somewhat."
"So what's with the banker look?" Herzer asked.
"Changes." Sloan grimaced. "Practically the first thing the new Congress did was 
pass banking laws and set up an independent federal bank board. I had to get 
investors, set up a charter, and do all the paperwork. Stuff that I could keep 
up myself blossomed into a full-time job to manage the reports that the feds 
require. I had to shift most of the investments that I was managing to another 
firm. I sent you a letter about that."
"Got it," Herzer admitted. "But they're still filtering the returns through 
you?"
"Yes, but I can't advise on any of it or manage it," Sloan admitted. "But I can 
bring you up to date on what we're keeping in-house. Your deposits, fixed 
securities, things like that."
"Okay, what is a fixed security?" Herzer said.
"Well," Tom grinned. "You remember when I used to say: 'Look, Herzer, leave it 
with me and I'll give you five percent a year, guaranteed'?"
"Yeah."
"Fixed security," Tom said as the door opened up. "Ah, thank you, Miss Vega."
"You're welcome, sir," Stephanie replied, laying a thick file on his desk and 
walking out without a backwards glance.
"Put your eyes back in your head, Herzer," Tom chuckled.
"Actually, I got a pretty good look last night in the baths," Herzer admitted.
"I've been keeping up with your accounts," Tom said, ignoring the comment. "But 
they're managed by Posteal, Ohashi and Deshort . . ."
"Deshort?" Herzer asked. "Isn't he the economy guy that Edmund was, is for that 
matter, always muttering about?"
"I don't know," Tom said, frowning. "His background is in preindustrial economic 
modeling. He's on the board. But I didn't know that he and the duke had 
problems."
"Not problems, really," Herzer said with a grin. "More like a mutual 
disadmiration society."
"He's on the board of the bank, as well . . ."
"In that case, I think I need another bank." Herzer chuckled. "If Brad Deshort 
is involved in managing my money, I'd rather play the ponies."
"Are you seriously disturbed about this?" Tom asked.
"I don't know; how much have I lost?" Herzer said, still chuckling.
"You haven't lost anything, Herzer," Tom replied, seriously. "I've been very 
careful about your investments and so has PO and D."
"I'm joking, Tom," the lieutenant said, shaking his head. "Never joke with a 
banker about money."
"If it really bothers you . . ."
"It doesn't," Herzer said, definitely. "Let's look at the books, okay?"
It took nearly an hour to go over all the investments that Herzer had 
accumulated. He was surprised at that; he had no idea he'd gotten his finger in 
so many pies. But the eventual total was pleasant.
"Anyway, it's a well distributed portfolio," Tom finished. "There have been some 
losses; the sand-gravel business folded completely in fact. You came out of that 
with only a few pence on the credit, but everything else is going well. 
Fortunately most of your investments still fall into tax credited areas. We'll 
see what the idiots in the legislature come up with next year."
"And then there's Mike Boehlke's farm," Herzer added.
"Yes, we don't manage that, but Mr. Boehlke has made it into quite a business. A 
solid, if long-term, investment."
"And another subtle joke," Herzer pointed out.
"Excuse me?"
"One of the expressions we use in the military for getting killed is 'buying the 
farm,' " Herzer said, his face distant. "Soldiers talk about finally getting out 
and buying a farm to settle down on. So when one gets killed, we say he 'bought 
the farm.' " His face suddenly cleared and he grinned. "Either I'm already dead 
or I'm never going to get kilt."
"I see," Tom said, shaking his head. "So are you ever going to settle down on 
the farm you already have 'bought'?"
"I dunno, Tom," Herzer replied with a shrug. "I guess we'll both have to live 
long enough to see."
* * *
The worst problem for Joel about the dragon ride had been landing at the base at 
Washan. It was one of the growing army bases along the coast, though, and he 
quickly faded into the background. He'd ridden wyvern a few times before the 
Fall and the only new iteration was the length of the trip. Since wyvern could 
only make a couple of hundred klicks per day it had been a multiday trip across 
the country. But wyverns were still faster, and marginally more comfortable, 
than coaches.
When he landed at the base he made himself scarce, then started looking for 
transportation. The base was not actually at Washan but across the Poma River 
and there was a small town that had grown up outside the base, mostly to support 
the needs of the sailors and soldiers that roamed the area.
He walked down a street lined with pawnshops, bars and barbershops, watching the 
small groups that moved on it. There were a remarkable number of barbershops and 
they seemed to do a brisk business. As he passed one he noticed that the 
"barber" was a scantily clad young woman and had to make a rapid reassessment of 
the situation.
It was the middle of the day, though, and there weren't many crowds. He 
considered stopping in one of the bars, or one of the barbershops for that 
matter, and seeing what he could pick up. But that wasn't part of his mission so 
he continued down the road to where a small complex of buildings was set off to 
the side of the town. There was a corral with about a dozen horses, most of them 
in decent condition, a small barn and an even smaller building with a porch out 
front. He walked to the latter and slipped inside.
The interior was dim; there were only two unglazed windows in the front area and 
the afternoon was overcast. So he was startled to hear a female voice from the 
rear of the room.
"Help you?" she said.
The woman wasn't young, wasn't old, probably somewhere in her first century. She 
was seated behind a counter looking at him over the top of a piece of paper.
"I need to catch the stage down towards Newfell," he said, stepping up to the 
counter.
"Next stage isn't for three hours," the woman replied, setting down the paper. 
"Stage goes all the way to Newfell Base."
Reaching the base on the stagecoach was not part of his plans. He glanced at the 
wall, where a map was mounted, and then down. "Well, I'm only going to Tenerie, 
not Newfell. I'm actually headed for the coast; I just found out I've got 
friends over there who made it through the Fall."
"Tenerie's thirty credits," the woman said, pulling out a ledger book. "Can you 
afford it?"
"I think so," Joel said, pulling out the silver he had gotten in Chian and one 
of the bronze coins. "I've got a twenty piece and some silver."
The woman sighed at the latter but pulled out a scale and measured out the 
silver to make thirty credits. "You need to get this changed, you know. Hardly 
anybody out here uses chunk metal anymore and I can't give you what you'd get at 
an assayer's office for it."
"Okay," Joel said. "I'm from up the road towards Raven's Mill. Plenty of people 
still use it up there."
"Yeah, well, welcome to the big city," the woman grinned. "Nobody around Washan, 
or Newfell for that matter, uses that stuff anymore. You might over on the 
coast, I don't know about those hicks."
She wrote him out a chit for the stage and picked up the paper in apparent 
dismissal.
"Thanks so much for your help," Joel said, turning and going back out into the 
street.
Three hours. Assuming it was on time. That might mean two hours. Or four. Or 
nine for that matter.
Beyond the corral was an inn, clearly for the use of overnight customers from 
the stage. Across the street from it was a bar with two barbershops closely 
adjacent. But on the other side of the barbershops was a building with a large, 
freshly painted, sign that said "Sundries."
Joel wasn't sure what "Sundries" meant in this case; it might be a larger and 
more complicated version of one of the "barbershops." But he suspected it might 
mean such lost luxuries as, oh, a razor, soap, maybe even new clothes.
He walked over to the shop and was pleasantly surprised. It was well stocked 
with shelves of clothing, toiletry items and even premade shoes.
"Can I help you?" the clerk said, coming from around the counter at the rear.
"I need a new set of clothes," Joel said, fingering a folded pair of pants made 
of some heavy material. "And some toiletry items. And a bag to carry it in."
"Of course," the clerk replied. "We sell a lot of such things to soldiers and 
sailors who are being moved other places. That's a material called 'denim.' It's 
just starting to come off the lines, quite the new fad. Heavy, double-woven 
cosilk with double stitching. A pair of those will last you for years and years, 
just getting more comfortable with each wearing."
"I need a pair of those, a shirt, some underthings, not made out of that . . ."
"Of course, sir," the clerk smiled. "Might as well be leather, like the 
dwarves."
"Or hair shirts like the Blood Lords," Joel said.
They found clothes in his size and Joel picked up a selection of toiletries. He 
had never had his beard growth permanently stopped before the Fall. It made more 
sense to intermittently stop it; growing a beard always looked more natural than 
even the best implant. But that meant he had to either grow one permanently or 
shave, and of the two he preferred a clean chin.
He bought everything that he needed, including some travel food and a water 
bottle for the trip, and still had plenty of time before the coach was supposed 
to arrive. On his trip across the country he had discovered the unreliability of 
the service. Some people had discussed building railroads. But the explosive 
protocols prohibited all but low-power steam. And a low-power steam engine could 
only pull a couple of loaded cars, making the plan economically unviable. Canals 
were being built but they could only reach certain areas.
He had a plate of not particularly good food and a cup of worse ale and 
sincerely considered visiting one of the "barbershops." He had not been celibate 
since the Fall. Before the Fall he and Dedra had maintained an open relationship 
and he was sure she would not begrudge him the release under the conditions. But 
for some reason, despite the fact that most of his relationships post-Fall had 
been . . . economic, he chose against it. Finally, he walked back to the stage 
office and took a seat on the porch, closing his eyes and thinking.
Sheida had as much as said that she suspected a high leak in the Council. His 
immediate suspicion was her aide, Harry. But just because he was peculating, 
that didn't make him a traitor. Still worth checking out. Frankly, if he ever 
was put in a position where he could effect a change, counterintelligence would 
be a very high priority. That led him to wonder why so many of the agents in 
Ropasa had been rolled up. Some of that might have been from leaks, but he 
suspected that if the counterintelligence people on Sheida's side were as 
oblivious to trade-craft as they seemed, the intel people were probably as bad.
Face it, he did not like this minor mission that he had been assigned. If he had 
his way, just about every ship and unit would have at least one covert agent in 
it. But that would mean a host of agents. Which meant a training program. Well, 
you'd need one of those for actual intel gathering, might as well combine the 
two to an extent.
Working out the details of the proposed plan carried the sun down and it was 
just before sunset when the stage pulled to a stop. There were only two 
passengers, both of whom got out to stretch their legs as the horses were 
changed.
He gave the driver his receipt and put his new bag on the back of the coach, 
climbing in and settling himself while the other passengers were still outside. 
He'd taken the front, less comfortable, seat in deference to the two people who 
had preceded him on the trip. When they got in he nodded his head. One was a 
young man in a Navy officer's uniform and the other was older dressed in 
nondescript civilian clothing.
"Ensign Jonah Weilis," the officer said, offering his hand.
"Joel Annibale," Joel said, shaking the officer's hand. He hoped like hell the 
ensign wasn't assigned to Newfell Base and that, if he was, they wouldn't run 
into each other.
"Rupert Popadiuk," the other man said, nodding his head.
"Going to Newfell?" Jonah asked. It was clear that the two continuing passengers 
had used up any small talk they might have had. "I'm being assigned to 
headquarters there. I was at the base in Balmoran."
"I'm on my way to live with some friends on the coast," Joel shrugged. "Getting 
off at Tenerie and hiking overland. They've got a fishing boat over there; I've 
got some experience at fishing boats."
"You ought to join the Navy, then," the officer said, smiling. "It's a hard life 
but a good one and very important. If you're really experienced with small 
boats, you could probably buck for almost instant petty officer rank. Where were 
you before?"
"Flora last," Joel said, lying glibly. "I sailed with a packet up to Washan. I 
looked at the base here, but . . . Anyway, I've got these friends. It's not much 
of a life, but I get by. What do you do in the Navy, Ensign?"
"I'm in counterintelligence," Jonah said as the coach started into motion.
"That's interesting," Joel said. "But what's it mean?"


CHAPTER SEVEN
"Celine," Chansa's avatar said with a nod.
Most of the business of the council members was managed through avatars. The 
fully sentient projections had been prohibited pre-Fall, since they tended to 
have some bad side effects. But the council members, with myriad duties and no 
experience of delegation, used them to keep an eye on the various activities of 
their regions.
Chansa had gotten a request from Celine to attend a "demonstration" and, with 
reluctance, he had agreed. He admitted that the New Destiny faction had 
benefited by her "creations" but he often found them personally uncomfortable. 
The basic Changed that made up the bulk of his legions were bad enough. He had 
given what he thought were understandable modifications, but in Celine's hands 
what had been delivered were monsters. He had considered simply overriding her; 
the Changed of the legions were his responsibility after all. But Celine could 
be particularly nasty when balked. So he tolerated hordes of half-wild beasts. 
He had to admit that very few groups had been able to stand up to them and, in 
general, simply the threat of having the hordes sent against them tended to make 
most resistance falter.
But some of her "specials" were simply ungodly. Abominations that turned his 
stomach. And while most of them required too much power, or time, to have truly 
become common, she had been promising a "new breakthrough" soon.
He had therefore met one of her avatars at a refugee camp in the southern Briton 
isles. The south had been relatively easy to overrun, but the north still held 
out stubbornly, holding onto small glens and highlands that were monstrously 
difficult to maneuver in. The ancient fortresses that dotted the landscape, many 
of which had been rebuilt by reenactors prior to the Fall, were an additional 
challenge. Then there was the stubborn nature of the defenders. They seemed to 
positively relish fighting all the forces he had sent against them. If he was to 
use Celine's "specials" anywhere, it was to be against the damnable Gael.
The refugee camp was standard, a long curtain palisade with a collection of 
wooden huts. The refugees were fed and sorted out, most of the men and some of 
the women ending up going through the Change process. The basic process was 
designed to produce beings that were more suited to the post-Fall world. They 
were sturdier and stronger than standard humans with some innate skills. That, 
at least, had been the basic specifications. He had added, to his continued 
dismay, a suggestion for "aggression" so they would make better soldiers.
The humans in the line to be Changed had to be bound and guarded by soldiers. As 
he watched, a woman darted forward and tried to drag a man out of the line, only 
to be clubbed to the ground by the guards. One of them picked her up by her hair 
and dragged her down the line to a farther hut, part of the barracks complex for 
the guards. The man she had tried to grab slumped to his knees but was clubbed 
and then dragged forward by more guards.
"Chansa," Celine answered, also watching the byplay. She turned to him, her 
black eyes bright and smiled. "You look so glum, Chansa. It's not as if they're 
being eaten or something."
"Where did they take the girl?" Chansa asked, knowing in his heart the answer.
"How should I know?" Celine smiled. "I don't keep up with every little 
operational detail."
"You had something to show me?" Chansa ground out.
"Over this way," the avatar waved, leading him back behind the Change rooms from 
which roars of pain could be heard. In most of the huts the humans were being 
Changed into the forms that were the basic sword-fodder of the legions. But 
Celine had thoroughly let herself go and there were other huts for 
"specialties." Armies needed soldiers. But they also needed construction 
workers, servants, medical personnel and other specialties. In the secondary 
huts each of the base humans was transformed to a more "suitable" shape. At the 
same time their original memories were removed, so that they wouldn't be 
depressed by the conditions of this Fallen time, and replaced with simple 
operational instructions, training on how to live in this new world.
There were paddocks behind the huts where the newly made Changed stumbled into 
the world. They were thin and scrawny and often had to be kept from killing each 
other, but he knew that with a diet heavy in protein—and he often wondered where 
some of that protein came from—they would flesh out into tough, if 
undisciplined, fighters. Two of the new Changed charged each other as he watched 
and more mature ones that had been posted as guards closed on them, clubbing 
them with fists and tearing at them with their talons until the two half-dead 
fighters were separated.
Back behind the area was a section designated for women and children who had not 
been subject to the Change. Children were simply too fragile, with insufficient 
internal reserve of energy, to be Changed and at least some women had to be left 
to manage them.
He saw more guards wandering in the area, some of them going in and out of the 
huts and as he passed behind one he heard a whimpering shriek from the interior. 
The "refugee" camps were managed by Celine and if he had his way he'd change 
that. But since it was beyond his power to correct, he tried not to think about 
it. This extended walk was making that hard. He closed his ears to the sound of 
cries, some of them from children, as Celine led him to a much larger hut.
"As you know, we've been unable to find a home for most of the female refugees," 
Celine said. "They are of limited utility in this world. And the children are 
nothing but a resource drain. But I think I've finally found a solution."
Inside the hut there was a ring of guards around a small group of people. One 
male, a female who might or might not have been his wife, and three children 
ranging in age from a skinny, feverish-looking toddler to a girl just under 
puberty. One of Celine's acolytes was in the room as well and as soon as the two 
avatars appeared he began to mouth nonsense syllables.
A globe formed around the group and the air around them filled with light, 
presumably from nannite interaction. Suddenly the air was split by screams of 
pain which dwindled and changed into pure rage. When the globe cleared, standing 
in the center was a thing. As large as Chansa and if anything broader. The beast 
was heavy bellied with a piglike face and long, curved tusks. His arms dangled 
nearly to its bowed knees and his fingers and toes were tipped by razor sharp 
talons. He was definitely, even disgustingly, male, with an enormous penis and a 
large scrotal sack. He looked around the room and lunged at the doorway but was 
stopped by an energy field. The beast struck at the invisible shield repeatedly 
with fist and shoulder, bellowing in fury, until the acolyte spoke again and the 
monster settled into a quiescent state that, nonetheless, radiated rage.
"Where . . ." Chansa said and then cleared his throat. He didn't want to ask the 
question, knowing in his heart the answer, but he found himself unable to stop. 
"What happened to the people?"
"The male was used as the nucleus for my newest creation," Celine said with a 
beatific smile, stepping forward to stroke her hands over the monster; her 
avatar passed through the field since it had been keyed for flesh and blood 
alone. "His internal energy was also used. As was that of the other resources. 
And their material was added to his. Perfect. Flawless," she said, stroking the 
creature on its arm. "The penis is fully functional, and he can reproduce with 
human females, assuming they survive the experience. The offspring . . . well, 
my models have several potential outcomes. I'm looking forward to empirical 
data."
"Celine, even for you . . ." Chansa said, then pulled himself up. "This is 
madness."
"Paul said that he wanted horror," Celine replied, turning to look at him as she 
stroked the creature's arm. Her eyes were bright and mad. "I can do horror."
"Yes," Chansa replied. "That you can." He tried to consider the situation 
objectively but could not. And, strangely enough, it was not the image of the 
family disappearing that kept coming back to him, but the woman being dragged 
away by her hair.
He wished that he could delude himself, as Paul did, that what they were doing 
was good, was just, was right. But he could not. He had long ago concluded that 
it was an evil beyond redemption, a force of ill more powerful than the world 
had ever known. He knew that he had dug himself into a hellish pit that it might 
never be possible to dig out of. And he knew what had brought him here: delight 
in power.
Each taste of it had been like a drug to him so he had clawed his way up until, 
with Paul's help, he was a council member. But with each step on the ladder, as 
an inspector, as a special inspector, as an associate council member, a web of 
responsibility, checking that power, had woven around him, taking some of the 
heady drug away. When Paul presented him with the ability to throw off those 
webs, as if they were truly gossamer, he had taken it, knowing full well with 
whom he had allied.
And it had led to this.
If they won the war, if Paul managed to survive, if they could . . . weed 
certain members of the Council, Celine with her monsters, Reyes with his girls 
and his whips and his knives and, most especially, the Demon, if they could 
choose the right people to take the Keys of the Freedom Coalition, maybe they 
could dig out.
Which meant winning. And that meant using, yes, every weapon at their disposal. 
Even Celine. Even this . . . monstrosity.
"It's magnificent."
* * *
"They're magnificent," Rachel sighed.
Herzer shook his head as the dragons winged in to a landing on Raven's Hill.
"You're joking, right?" he asked. "I see what you meant about the surprise."
There were six of them, four with riders and two riderless. Five of them were 
wyverns, which, unlike the classic "dragon," had two powerful hind legs and a 
vast span of wings to support their flight. Wyverns were nonsentient and 
trainable, barely. They had something of the intelligence, and personality, of 
horses. If, of course, horses ate flesh instead of grass and needed to consume 
close to their own body weight in food every day. Their bodies were also the 
size of a large horse but their wings, even folded, took up more cubic meters 
than their bodies. When opened, the batlike wings spread some thirty meters to 
either side.
The one on the end, though, was a true dragon. Four legs, long neck, massive 
wings, large enough to overshadow the five wyverns. Dragons had been developed 
slightly before the elves and were sentient beings, with all the rights, and 
responsibilities, of humans. But further creation was halted shortly after the 
AI wars in reaction to the various horrors of that war. Afterwards there had 
been a brief population increase but over the succeeding two thousand years the 
race had dwindled away to almost nothing.
And here was one landing in Raven's Mill. Apparently with the purpose of flying 
them down to the sea. And then accompanying the expedition to the Isles.
"You have got to be joking," Daneh repeated for him. She was still puffing from 
the trip up the hill and now looked at their "rides" with total befuddlement. 
"Tell me we're not riding those down to Newfell."
"Okay, I won't," Edmund said, chuckling. "But you might want to start climbing 
on."
"Cool," Rachel said, then looked more closely at the True dragon. "Excuse me, 
Miss Dragon?"
"The name is Joanna," the dragon said, lowering her head down to Rachel's level. 
Despite a mouth full of very long teeth she had flexible lips and a mobile 
tongue that permitted quite clear speech. "Joanna Gramlich. Most humans have a 
hard time telling dragon sexes. How did you know?"
"We saw you at Marguerite's birthday party," Herzer interjected. "So you're now 
part of the Freedom Coalition? That is wonderful to hear."
"That is a long story," the dragon replied acerbically. She had a fairly 
high-pitched voice that still rumbled. It was a tough trick. "I prefer to use 
the term 'independent contractor.' Duke Edmund prefers the term 'mercenary.' "
"A mercenary dragon?" Rachel gasped. "Why?"
"Do you know how much food it takes to run this damned form?" the dragon said. 
"I was caught like this by the Fall. I got really tired of trying to catch my 
own food."
"Joanna works for room and board and a fairly high salary, which she takes in 
gold and gems," Edmund noted dryly.
"And don't forget combat bonuses," Joanna said.
"I won't. But this is a diplomatic mission."
"Sure. Like it's going to stay that way with you around. Are we going to sit 
here jawing all day or are you ready to go? I can take two. I'd prefer the 
females; they look lighter. One of the wyvern riders can double up with the 
duke. I hope the big boy can stay on wyvern-back."
"I don't know," Herzer temporized. "How do you control it?"
"Don't try," Joanna snapped. "It will follow me; it knows who the pack-momma is. 
Just strap in and hang on."
Herzer hefted his bag and walked over to the wyvern, looking up at it askance. 
The body wasn't much longer than a horse, but the giant legs bulked it to nearly 
twice the weight and three times the height. The "saddle" was a pad on the back, 
held in place by double straps running from the neck back to the legs; the wings 
attached all the way down the rest of the body. There were four reins that ran 
up to the beast's head but Herzer knew darn well that he had no idea what they 
were for.
The skin of the body was smooth with small, pebbly scales like a lizard, and it 
was clear that the wyverns derived most of their genes from lizards. The wing 
skin, on the other hand, was almost scaleless and what could be seen seemed more 
like a bat's. There wasn't much to be seen of it because the way the wings 
folded and refolded, most of the open skin was folded under the flight bones.
The wyvern turned its short neck to the side and glared at him out of one 
baleful, and very human-looking, eye. After a moment it made a sound, something 
like a very large dove, which sounded either questioning or querulous. Or, 
probably, both. Or so it seemed to Herzer.
"Hi," someone said, walking up behind him. It was one of the wyvern-riders, and 
Herzer started when he realized that it was a she. In their leather uniforms and 
helmet it was hard to distinguish sex at any sort of distance. "I'm Vickie. 
Let's get you strapped up."
"O-kay," Herzer said. "Where do I put this?" he asked, holding up his bag. He'd 
packed one spare uniform and some light clothes including a bathing suit someone 
had dredged up in his size.
"Don't ask Joanna, or you might not like the answer," Vickie said with a smile. 
She took the bag and stepped nimbly up the wyvern's legs to the top where she 
attached the bag just behind the saddle. The dragon made another questioning 
sound and shifted the leg she was standing on at which she slapped it on the 
side. "Shut up, Chance."
"The way this works is you lie down on his back. Don't try to sit up. It looks 
great in pictures and it works like shit in reality. See the slots on the side?"
"Yup," Herzer replied. He'd been giving the harness a good look. "How do I 
handle the reins?"
"Like Joanna said, don't," Vickie replied. "I'll hook them up, though. The top 
reins are for up, the bottom reins, which hook to your feet, are for down. Pull 
right with the top reins to go right, left reins to go left. Don't try to do a 
stoop, you won't like it."
"What's a stoop?"
"If you don't know what it is, you don't want to try it. Just hang on and don't 
mess with the reins. Chauncey will follow us just fine as long as you don't mess 
with anything."
She waited as he climbed up the wyvern, then attached straps across his thighs. 
There were clear grab straps on the front but the only thing actually holding 
him on were the thigh straps. She finished by hooking the bottom reins onto his 
boots and pushing the top reins, which were one continuous circuit of leather, 
under his body.
"The worst part about riding dragon-back is learning to keep your legs still. 
You go and stretch and this bad boy is going to head for the ground like a 
falcon. Got it?"
"Got it," Herzer said settling his body in the seat. He was glad he hadn't 
brought his armor; it would have been very uncomfortable. "Is it Chance or 
Chauncey?" he asked.
"It's Chauncey," Vickie admitted. "I call him Chance for short."
"What's taking so long, Vickie?" Joanna bellowed and Herzer realized everyone 
else was already mounted. "You're supposed to be mounting him up, not arranging 
a mounting!"
Vickie looked at him with a dyspeptic expression. "Gotta go."
"See ya." Herzer grinned, wriggling closer into the seat. "We'll arrange the 
other some other time."
Vickie chuckled and patted him on the butt as she climbed down.
"Thanks, but I don't go both ways," she said as she jumped nimbly to the ground.
"Pity," Herzer muttered as he watched her mount her wyvern. As soon as she was 
on, Joanna spread her wings and with a massive blast of wind, lifted off the 
hill and swept down over the river.
Chauncey was apparently well trained because with a bound that caused Herzer's 
neck to snap back he leapt forward and upward into the air, following the larger 
dragon. Immediately the air was filled with wings as the formation of dragons 
reached for the sky.
For a moment it was all that Herzer could do to control his vomit reaction. The 
combination of the height and the up and down motion of the wyvern as it got up 
air speed was sickening. But after that brief spasm he found himself caught up 
in the spectacular view. The dragons were making a curving climb to the right 
that carried them first out over the Shenan River, which glittered in the early 
morning light, then over the town of Raven's Mill itself. Looking around he 
realized that they were already higher than Massan Mountain. As he thought that 
he grabbed the straps because the wyvern suddenly stopped flapping. For a moment 
he thought something had gone wrong but it was just a glide period as the 
formation turned towards the mountain across the river.
As they passed back over Raven's Hill Herzer felt an upward motion that wasn't 
from the dragon and realized that they had passed over a thermal. Apparently to 
take advantage of it the dragons began their slow wing-beats again and they 
rapidly gained height until they lost the thermal and ceased flapping. They 
crossed the river at a gentle glide and Herzer had to wonder where they were 
going. The ocean was to the east but they were going west.
Just as he really started to get worried, it wasn't impossible that New Destiny 
might have co-opted this "mercenary" dragon to kidnap Duke Edmund and his 
family, they passed over Massan Mountain and hit another, much stronger thermal.
This was, apparently, what Joanna had been looking for because she began a climb 
at the end of the mountain, in the midst of the thermal, and the dragons seemed 
to rocket into the air under the power of their wings and the much greater 
energy of the rising air.


CHAPTER EIGHT
Daneh had ceded Rachel the front seat on Joanna's back and Rachel had initially 
been quite happy with that. She was looking forward to flying dragon-back. 
However, shortly after climbing on, as the dragon muttered various imprecations 
about sharp shoes, she rethought her position. For one thing, while she wouldn't 
have preferred to have the view to the front blocked by her mother's buttocks, 
it was now hers that were directly in view. What was worse, she badly needed to 
pass wind. The change in altitude, the frisson of fear on the lift-off, the 
whole experience was causing her internals to rearrange quite disastrously. And 
while she and her mother had had some tough times, gassing in her face was not 
going to be anything but killer embarrassing.
To take her mind off of it, she decided to brave the dragon's wrath.
"Joanna!" she yelled. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes," the dragon rumbled in reply, without turning her head. "But if you think 
I'm going to look you in the eye you need to stop reading fantasies. Flying is 
hard enough without having to look backwards!"
"That's fine," Rachel shouted back. "Can I ask you a personal question?"
"You can ask," the dragon said.
"Are you always this touchy or is there something in particular that has you 
pissed off?"
Rachel felt the seat under her shaking and clutched at the grab-straps, but 
after a moment she realized that it was just the dragon laughing.
"A little of both," Joanna admitted. "I've been called a bitch before, plenty of 
times. But this mission has me ticked in a major way."
"Why?" Rachel yelled. "Southern skies, warm seas, tropical sun . . ."
"Long damned flight," Joanna admitted. "We don't get to go on a pleasure cruise. 
The ship's supposedly set up to let us land from, but my guess is we're going to 
have to fly most of the way. That's like doing a five, six, ten day marathon. We 
can do it, but it's still a pain in the ass."
"Oh."
"And that's not all," Joanna said, warming to the subject. "What the hell are we 
going to eat? The ship we're meeting can't possibly carry enough fresh meat for 
us for the whole trip. So that means, what? Salt beef? Fish? Raw fish? I hate 
sushi!"
"Sorry!"
"Not your fault," Joanna said. "I hate this Fallen world. I want to be able to 
Change. Any time I want. I want to eat chocolate."
Rachel just nodded at that; she felt the same way.
For that matter, if she was in the pre-Fall days, even riding like this, she 
could have her gas bypassed rather than be impolite. Oh, well, at least 
geneticists had long ago fixed the smell problem.
"Damn thing," Joanna muttered.
"What?" Rachel shouted back. Due to the rush of the wind, Rachel had to shout 
but any statement from the dragon was fairly clear.
"Oh, nothing," the dragon replied. "Your boyfriend's mount is riding my 
slipstream. It's just an extra weight to pull."
Rachel looked from side to side and noticed that the other dragons had spread 
out in a v, with the exception of Herzer.
"He's not controlling his mount!" she pointed out.
"I know, it's just Chauncey being lazy. Doesn't mean I have to like it."
"Why are the other ones in a v?" Rachel yelled. "They look like they're going to 
run into each other."
"Slipstream again," Joanna answered. "There's a low-pressure area that passes 
out to either side. Ever see geese fly over?"
"Plenty of times."
"Same thing. That doesn't drag directly on me, though, like Chauncey is. Damn 
idiot wyvern."
They continued in a slow spiral upward, riding the thermal and the power of the 
slowly flapping wings for what seemed half the morning. But by the rise of the 
sun it couldn't have been more than a half an hour. Finally, Rachel felt a drop, 
more a feeling of lightness.
"Top of the thermal," Joanna said, banking to the east. "I got at least three 
thousand meters out of it, which is pretty good for a morning in October."
Rachel had been avidly looking at the view in the distance but at those words 
she looked down. And then screwed her eyes tight shut and grabbed at the straps.
"Don't look down," Joanna chuckled.
"Too late," Rachel replied.
"Oh, what the hell is that idiot doing?" Joanna growled.
* * *
Herzer had realized during the climb-out that Chauncey was riding the bigger 
dragon's slipstream. But he for sure wasn't going to try to mess with a 
spiraling climb. However, when the dragons lined out and glided into the sun, he 
decided that it was worth seeing if he could shift down the line. The worst that 
was going to happen was that he would release Chauncey and the wyvern would go 
back to his accustomed place.
There remained one problem. He was directly behind Joanna, no more than twenty 
meters. Her tail actually whipped back and forth past Chauncey's nose, close 
enough to nearly hit it. The tail end of the extended V formation of the wyverns 
was actually behind his present position. Which meant that he would have to slow 
down, then catch back up. He knew neither command.
Going on a hunch, he slowly pulled back on the climbing reins until the slack 
was out, then pulled back on those and the diving reins, very slightly. His 
clamp held the reins snugly but he was always careful not to flex too hard lest 
he cut the reins like snapping a twig.
Herzer wasn't even sure what Chauncey did, but they began to drift backwards 
from the larger dragon, while staying more or less at the same height. He was 
actually dropping slightly below her, but staying on an even keel, not in a 
"dive" or whatever.
Herzer let back out on the reins and then pulled, ever so slightly, on the left 
rein. Obediently, Chauncey entered a slight bank to the left, but they also 
began to lose height. Herzer loosened up on the rein, pulled a bit to the right, 
and shortly found himself just outside the left-most of the riders on more or 
less the same heading. Unfortunately, he was about sixty meters below the wyvern 
and nearly a hundred behind.
Oh, well.
The rider just happened to be Vickie and he could hear her shouting at him, but 
he wasn't sure what she could do about his experimentation.
The problem was simple. He had to get up to their level and get Chauncey to 
speed up so that he could enter the proper formation. They were now, steadily, 
pulling ahead of him and either gaining altitude or he was losing it in 
comparison. But Chauncey seemed content to obey orders and follow the present 
course. Despite the fact that it was the wrong one.
He pulled, gently, on both up reins. All that did was cause him to lose more 
ground, but they did gain some height, briefly. Then Chauncey pulled against the 
reins and reentered the glide. Herzer suddenly remembered a term "stall speed" 
and wondered, briefly, just how close he had come to making the dragon "crash." 
If such a thing was possible.
He suddenly had a very clear vision of a tree limb in his face. Shortly after 
the Fall he had been one of the people chosen, because he had some limited 
riding experience, to "help out" with a round-up of feral animals. While he had 
been trying to keep a boar from killing a female friend, Diablo had jumped over 
the spitted boar and Herzer's forehead had impacted a tree limb at nearly a full 
gallop.
The recovery had been slow and painful. But if he screwed up this ride, he was 
looking at a several-thousand-meter fall. That was not even vaguely survivable.
But he really needed to catch up to the formation.
"Up, Chauncey," he yelled. "Go! Forward! Hut! Hut!" There didn't seem to be any 
way to beat at him. He'd never really seen the riders make any motions except 
small rein movements.
But. His boot was actually over skin, not on the saddle. He doubted that was 
unintentional.
"Hi, Chauncey," he yelled, digging his boot into the side of the dragon as hard 
as he could.
The startled wyvern began flapping its wings, rapidly gaining speed. So rapidly 
that the formation was coming up much too quickly. And he was still slightly 
below it.
"Up!" he called, pulling back on the reins. At the last moment he checked his 
instinctive reaction to yank back and instead applied a gentle pressure, as if 
he was trying to get Diablo to go to a moderately slower gallop.
The control worked, Chauncey adjusted his angle of flight and went upward, 
losing some forward speed at the same time, but when they returned to level 
flight, by simply letting out on the reins, they were above and past the 
formation. Also slightly farther out to the left and he had no idea how that had 
happened.
"What the hell are you doing?" Joanna bellowed. "I told you to just go along for 
the ride!"
"He was in your slipstream!" Herzer yelled back. "I didn't think you should have 
to tow him!"
"If it had been a problem I would have told you!" Joanna raged back. "Now what 
are you going to do, hotshot?"
He had to go backwards, down and to the right. The "slot" he was trying to get 
to was about ten or twenty meters to his right and about the same back. About 
sixty meters down. He seemed to be in a slightly less efficient glide than the 
other dragons, probably because he wasn't coasting in the same vortexes.
Well, he'd tried the up reins, and the up and down. And turned left and right.
"I guess I'll try the down reins," he muttered and pushed back, lightly, on the 
right down rein.
* * *
Rachel had been watching Herzer's fumbling entry into flight with some amusement 
but she gasped in horror as the dragon turned over on its right wing and 
plummeted towards the ground.
"Oh, my God!" she shouted.
Joanna turned her head slightly to the side and tisked. "That's what we call a 
stoop."
"Is he going to be okay?"
"Well, the reason we call it a stoop is that it's fisking stoopid."
* * *
Herzer grabbed at the straps as the dragon seemed to turn, briefly, upside down. 
He had a very clear view of the underside of Vickie's dragon as he passed and he 
realized he was screaming, but there didn't seem to be anything else to do at 
the moment.
However, he was only briefly inverted, if he ever actually had been, and he 
quickly gained control of the beast, taking the climb straps and pulling back on 
them slightly less gently than he had been.
The dragon pulled out of its dive in a strong swoop upward and to the left, 
pushing upward with strong strokes of its wings and Herzer let out a bellow of 
joy at the incredible feeling of having that power at his control.
"Yes!" he shouted, as the dragon pulled up to the level of the formation. More 
confident now he let it rise to slightly above the formation then angled it into 
the slot at a downward glide. At the last Chauncey seemed to sense the vortex 
and entered the slot of his own accord.
"Oh, my God!" Herzer shouted over to Vickie, a smile plastered on his face.
"You're fisking crazy!" Vickie shouted back. "You could have killed yourself."
"That's what's so great!" Herzer yelled back, still grinning. "Normally it's 
human beings trying to kill me. This time it was just physics!"
"Give him a break, Vickie," the next rider over shouted. "The first time she 
stooped she pissed herself."
"Thank you so very much, Jerry!" Vickie shouted back. "You'd better check your 
straps well for that!"
"It was great!" Herzer yelled. "Let's do it again!"
"Not a chance," Jerry yelled. "The reason we're flying like this is it's a long 
flight today. You've already pushed him harder than was a good idea. Just let it 
be. Time for aerobatics on the trip."
"He's not a dragon-rider!" Vickie yelled back.
"Dragon. Rider. Dragon-rider!" Jerry pointed then laughed.
"How long are we flying today?" Herzer yelled.
"Long time, four or five hours," Vickie replied. "That's pretty close to the 
limit of a dragon's endurance."
"Oh," Herzer muttered. "I didn't know," he added in a yell.
"It should be fine," Vickie yelled. "It's not that they wear out, they just need 
to feed by then. And full dragons don't fly very well. We usually fly a couple 
of hours, then feed them, then fly again. This way we'll fly four or five hours, 
then they'll have to gorge. And once they gorge they won't be any good for 
hours."
"What if they don't get fed?" Herzer yelled.
"You don't want to be around a hungry dragon," Jerry replied. "You really 
don't."
* * *
The dragons hissed like giant tea kettles, swinging their heads angrily from 
side to side. But the chains they were attached to kept them far enough apart 
that even their tails couldn't strike at the ones to either side.
On the other hand, to get the large platters to them would require getting close 
enough to get bitten.
The destination of the group had been Newfell Naval Base, a growing facility 
near the mouth of the Gem River. It was at the very tip of a massive bay that 
marked the joining of the Gem and Poma rivers, the latter of which was fed by, 
among others, the Shenan that ran by Raven's Mill.
The base had been formed in response to the apparent intended invasion from 
Ropasa and it was a scene of remarkable industry.
There were twelve large piers, each of which was in use by a veritable fleet of 
small vessels. Most of the vessels seemed to be barges and lighters that were 
carrying material from the interior, but a few were larger sailing vessels that 
had probably reached the base by sailing up or down the coast. Herzer recalled 
that to the north were the growing cities of Balmoran and Manan, either of which 
might have sent the ships.
The material being unloaded from the ships made its way to a set of warehouses 
lining the waterways. From the warehouses some of it spread to support the rest 
of the base. There were foundries that provided the iron-work for the ships, saw 
mills that roughed the trees that were rapidly being turned into hulls and 
masts, rope manufactories that took the rough hemp from the interior and made it 
into strong manila lines, and sail-factories where heavy cosilk bolts were sewn 
into the vast sails needed for the growing ships.
But all of it paled to the efforts of the shipyards themselves.
The wyverns had been parked at the edge of the shipyards along the Gem River. On 
every side ship hulls lying on ways were in the process of being built, 
surrounded by scaffolding. From every direction came the sound of sawing and 
hammering, and besides the smell of tidal marshes there was an overpowering 
smell of curing wood and sawdust.
And all of it was contributing to the unease of the wyverns.
The platters were large, over a meter in diameter, with raised edges and metal 
handles. The smell from the steaming mess they contained mixed with the stench 
of the tidal marshes to create an aroma that Herzer found truly nauseating.
But what he really wanted at this moment, rather than a mask to cut the stench, 
was his armor. Those wyverns had big teeth.
"What's in this?" he asked, lifting one side of the platter as Jerry took the 
other. Herzer probably could have lifted one himself but it for most riders it 
was a two-person job.
"Offal, soybeans, vegetable oil and ketchup," Jerry said. "Now they know the 
smell of this stuff and they don't like it. So they're going to be inclined to 
get a bite of fresh meat. We stop just outside of lunge range and slide it to 
them. On three."
"Ketchup?" Herzer asked.
"They like ketchup. One, two . . ."
From behind them there was a roar and Joanna landed to the side in a blast of 
wind.
"Cut it out!" she bellowed, leaning over to peck the nearest wyvern on the back. 
The wyvern ducked its head to the ground and got as close as it could to 
scraping its belly, letting out a faint mewing sound.
"Now feed 'em," Joanna bellowed, pecking at another of the wyverns that had 
leaned towards the platters. "I need you guys alive."
Jerry and Herzer crabbed forward and dropped the platter under the wyvern's nose 
and then picked up another and dropped it in front of Chauncey. By that time the 
other three had been fed as well.
Like it or not the wyverns immediately buried their nose in the mess, sucking at 
it since it had little in the way of texture.
"Well, that's done," Jerry sighed. "Now we check them over."
The dragon's pebbly skin was fairly strong but it could be badly gouged by a 
misplaced strap. Jerry, with Vickie occasionally giving acerbic advice, showed 
Herzer how to check for gouges or scrapes. They then spent some time working on 
Chauncey, trimming his toenails. Jerry had a large set of bolt cutters for the 
job but Herzer gently lifted one of the talons and inserted the tip into his 
clamp.
"They're strong," Jerry said.
"Not a problem," Herzer said. "Probably." Herzer flexed his forearm and the tip 
of the nail flew off with a "snick" sound.
"Cool," Jerry said. "Very useful."
"Also opens bottles and makes julienne fries," Herzer said with a grimace. "I'd 
rather have a hand."
"How's it work?"
"If I grasp like I'm grabbing with forefinger and thumb it clamps," Herzer said. 
"If I grasp with middle and ring finger it engages the cutters. If I pull with 
the pinkie it engages a gear on the cutters and the clamps. Gives me about six 
times the grip or cutting strength."
"Did you use the clamp?"
"Nope, didn't need it," Herzer said, running his hand up Chauncey's leg as he 
cut the other nails. "That's done this one."
"Chauncey's one of our newer wyverns," Jerry explained as Herzer worked on the 
other talons. "He's just out of the rookery but since he's biddable and didn't 
have a designated rider and we were told we needed one spare we brought him 
along despite the fact that he's not full grown."
"Big enough," Herzer said. "How fast do they grow?"
"Ten years to get this big," Jerry said. "He'll add another sixty, maybe eighty 
kilos before he stops in another ten."
"Ten years?" Herzer said. "Then . . . he was born before the Fall?"
"Yeah," Jerry said with a smile. "Nobody's been able to do time travel yet. 
There was a wyvern racing league; we came from that."
"I'd thought that Sheida had had them bred," Herzer said then paused. "Why did 
you join up?"
"Well, we had to keep them fed somehow," Jerry replied with a shrug, giving 
Chauncey a last wipe with a rag. "And between Sheida and New Destiny there 
wasn't much choice, was there?"
"No, I don't think so," Herzer answered honestly. "I . . . I was involved with 
some folks that were allied with New Destiny at first. I didn't know they were 
until after I'd left. They weren't very good people even before that, though."
"Well, I joined up with Sheida almost immediately," Jerry said. "I had a rookery 
near her home in the Teron mountains. After the Fall I flew over and she saw the 
benefit immediately. So I and a couple of others flew around to the rookeries 
and recruited."
"Where did Joanna come from?" Herzer asked.
"I don't know. Sheida found her someplace."
"Do you mind her . . . sort of being in charge?"
"Not at all," Jerry replied with a shrug. "She's like a god to the wyverns, 
which helps as you might have noticed. And when she gets into a battle the other 
side doesn't have much of a chance. The wyverns really aren't very good at 
fighting; all they can do is bite or claw down, and when they do they lose 
airspeed. Joanna goes through the enemy like a mechanical reaper. She can really 
use that tail for some serious damage. I'm glad she's on our side."
Herzer and Jerry were gathering up the rags and cutters when Herzer spotted 
Rachel picking her way through the wyverns. The dragons had settled down after 
their feed but a few of them hissed at her as she passed.
Rachel ignored them, making a beeline for Herzer. When she got close she stood 
with her hands on her hips and shook her head.
"So this is where you've been hiding?" she asked. "I thought you were happy in 
the infantry?"
"I am," Herzer admitted. "But we're going to be working with the dragons a lot. 
I figured it was a good idea to get to know them as well as possible."
"Well, Father thinks it's a good idea if you two attend the mission briefing, 
whatever that means," Rachel said. "Which is why I'm here."
"Are we done?" Herzer asked.
"Done enough," Jerry answered. "Let's go."
CHAPTER NINE
Joel had permitted the enthusiastic ensign to recruit him; it seemed like the 
simplest way to manage the insertion given the complications. Ensign Weilis had 
even picked up the ticket from Tenerie to Newfell. So after arriving at Newfell 
Base, the ensign led him to the recruiting station and then took off to report 
for duty.
Joel shook his head at that, wondering at many levels about the ensign's 
naiveté. They had stopped overnight south of Washan, staying at one of the 
coaching inns; the price of the cramped room was included in the fare. So it had 
been midmorning by the time they arrived. Technically, the ensign did not have 
to report until just before midnight the day of his arrival. If he reported now, 
he'd either sit around in an office all day or be assigned busywork until 
somebody figured out what to do with him tomorrow.
The other level of concern about Weilis' naiveté was Joel's conviction that 
whoever was running counterintel couldn't find their ass with both hands. The 
ensign had gladly told him all of his duties in Balmoran and some of what he 
thought he would be doing in Newfell. In fact, the kid was such a chatterbox, 
Joel now knew half the story of his life. He either had his cover down pat, or 
he was an idiot. No, the kid wasn't an idiot, he'd been trained by idiots. And 
that was worse.
Joel shook his head again and opened up the door to the recruiting office. There 
was a desk in the room with two comfortable chairs placed in front of it. Behind 
the desk was a stern-faced older guy in a uniform just about covered in medals. 
His face broke into a friendly grin when Joel came through the door.
"Hello there, son," the NCO boomed, coming to his feet and walking around the 
desk. "Glad to see you, I'm Chief Rishell, but you can call me Chief."
"Hi, Chief," Joel said. When the chief limpingly cleared the desk it became 
apparent why he was behind it; his right leg was gone from the knee down. "Got 
bad news for you, I think this must be the recruiting office, right?"
"That's right, son," the chief said, pumping his hand. "It's a man's life in the 
Navy, but we only take the best. Good strong hands there—you working as a 
plow-hand before?"
"No, Chief," Joel said. "The point is, that nice young lieutenant directed me 
here. I'm looking for receiving."
"You already got recruited?" the chief replied, dropping Joel's hand.
"Yeah, I used to work fishing boats, before and after the Fall," Joel replied 
with a grin. "They said something about making me a petty officer."
The chief looked at him with a blank expression for a moment, then pointed to 
his left.
"Receiving's three buildings down."
"Gotcha, Chief," Joel said, trying not to grin.
"You on orders?" the chief asked, looking at his shabby traveling clothes.
"Verbal is what they told me," Joel replied with a shrug. "Basically they swore 
me in and put me on a stage coach for Newfell."
"Hmmm . . ." The chief peered at him for a second and then went back behind his 
desk. "Siddown, son."
Joel did so, cocking his head to the side.
"The thing is, you're not required to report until just before midnight," the 
chief said with a slight frown. "If you go over there this time of day, they 
won't have any way to use you. They might tell you to take off and take care of 
personal business. But they'll probably put you on some temporary detail nobody 
wants to do, like raking grass or shoveling shit. Now, everybody has to do those 
sometimes, anyway. But there's no damned reason to put yourself in the way of 
them, if you know what I mean."
"I appreciate that," Joel said. "But I don't know what there is to do."
"If you've got any cash, I'd suggest going over to the Post Exchange. They've 
got a snack bar and there's even books you can buy now in the PX. Maybe take a 
walk around the base, but if you're out of uniform people are going to ask you 
questions and if you run into some officious young prick he's gonna tell you to 
report in right away. Go get a book and some lunch and find an out-of-the way 
spot to hide. I'm only letting you in on this, you realize, 'cause you're a 
fellow sailor."
"Thanks, Chief," Joel said, rising. "Can I ask you what happened to the leg?"
The chief looked at him intensely for a moment, then shrugged.
"Got a line caught around it in a gale off Cape Far," the chief said. "Just 
remember, the sea, she's a mother."
"Been there, done that, Chief," the spy replied. "Take care."
"Sure," the chief replied as he walked out the door. "You too."
Joel found the PX and, sure enough, there were some books. He had no idea of 
authors or titles so he simply picked the one with the most lurid cover. It was 
as bad as he'd expected. It was the "true" story of Raven's Mill's defense 
against one of New Destiny's proxies in the first year after the Fall. It 
centered, to an almost mind-numbing degree, on the training of the Blood Lords. 
On the other hand, if there was any accuracy, he needed to talk to their 
trainers. They already had a functional nucleus of professional training going 
and if the spy school he had in mind ever got off the ground, some training 
along the same lines would be useful.
The book, however, was another story. No way was he letting the writer anywhere 
near anything that he did. The guy introduced characters for no particular 
reason and then killed them off, just when he was getting to like them. Sure, it 
was a real story and the people really died, but give it a rest. He also had 
clunky prose and a really strange sense of humor. This guy was never going to 
win any awards.
On the other hand, it was a page turner and the snack bar guy had to throw him 
out when they closed. He tucked the book away, unsure whether to burn it or 
finish it later, and headed over to receiving, still chuckling. He hoped that 
this idiot never got ahold of his life story. He'd probably kill him off, just 
when everybody was getting to like him.
* * *
Herzer and Jerry followed Rachel back towards the headquarters and Herzer took 
the opportunity to have a closer look at the shipbuilding. There were more than 
a dozen ships under construction, ranging from a small boat that probably was 
meant to be used in the bay all the way up to a massive vessel, fully sixty 
meters long. The latter only had its frames up, but it was clearly designed to 
be fast and powerful. He had no clue what it was going to look like when 
completed but it had the look of a warship.
Behind the warehouses there was another row of buildings on slightly higher 
ground. Most of the structures were extremely rough, obviously made in the first 
rush of building after the Fall. Some of them were already being torn down for 
materials; the large tree sections that had been used to construct the early 
cabins could be sawn into wood to make three buildings out of one. One of them, 
however, was having additional construction added on and it was to that one that 
Rachel led them.
"This is the base headquarters," Rachel told them as they approached through 
streams of workmen and sailors in blue trousers and off-white shirts. "It's also 
Fleet headquarters for the time being. They're a bit bunched up."
"I can imagine," Herzer said, chuckling. They were having much the same problem 
in Raven's Mill with the Academy and the Overjay local defense headquarters 
occupying the same suite of buildings. "What gets me is how many people there 
are here; it must be two or three times the number in Raven's Mill. And that's 
more than there were in Harzburg. Most of them are prime soldier material and 
we're dying for soldiers!"
"From what I picked up in the headquarters they've been filtering in from the 
north and south ever since the Fall," Rachel said as they approached the 
entrance. The two guards in blue uniforms saluted Herzer as they passed and he 
gave them a wave in return. "There's a lot of emphasis being put on getting a 
fleet built."
"Well, I'd rather fight Paul's forces at sea than on land," Herzer admitted. "So 
I won't begrudge it."
She led them through the building to an office in the rear that was part of a 
recent addition; the air was still thick with the smell of sawdust and the 
stud-covered walls were weeping sap.
The party from Raven's Mill was grouped around a desk, behind which sat a 
short-coupled man with a heavy tan and a shock of iron gray hair that had been 
cut short on top and to stubble on the sides. He had cold blue eyes that 
searched the newcomers unhappily.
"Lieutenant Herzer Herrick, Jerry Riadou, this is Skipper Shar Chang. His rank 
is colonel in the Free States forces. He's the skipper of the Bonhomme Richard, 
which is going to be conveying us to the islands. Skipper, Jerry is the senior 
dragon-rider and Herzer is one of my officers who is acting as my aide in this 
mission."
"Sir," Herzer said, snapping to attention and rendering a salute.
"General Talbot outranks me, Lieutenant," the colonel said, dryly. "One of the 
many wonderful aspects of this mission."
"You're in charge of the ship, Skipper," Talbot said, calmly. "We're just along 
for the ride."
"The dragons aren't," Chang replied. "Let me explain to you all the problems 
we've got to deal with. The Richard is a brand-new ship, a dragon-carrier and 
the first one to be launched. It's specifically designed to support dragons. The 
first problem is that we've had to design it in theory, since these are the 
first wyvern we've had on the base. She's designed to carry thirty-six wyvern 
and their riders or four great dragons and a support team at sea for one hundred 
days. The five wyverns and one great dragon are going to rattle around in her 
like peas in a pod but that's the good news. We've just completed builder's 
trials. There are problems left to fix. She hasn't had a shakedown cruise. Her 
rigging needs adjustment. Dragon support is going to need adjustment. And in the 
midst of all of this we're tasked with this high-priority mission. You begin to 
see why I'm so enthusiastic."
"I can understand that, sir," Jerry interjected. "We were informed that the 
mission had both aspects in mind, working out doctrine and supporting the 
diplomatic mission. We'll do it, sir. We have to."
"Agreed. What's your rank, son?" the skipper asked.
"Well . . ." Jerry temporized. "We don't actually have ranks as such. I'm just 
the most senior guy. In most cases, I defer to Joanna when she's around."
"Grand," Chang sighed. "So you're not officially members of the UFS forces?"
"We are, sir," Jerry replied, cautiously. "At least, that's how we get paid. But 
the subject of ranks has never been raised. We just go where Sheida tells us and 
do what we can. We've done combat missions, sir. It's not been a problem."
"And what happens if one of your riders decides they don't like the mission?" 
Chang asked.
"It's . . . never come up, sir," Jerry admitted.
"I'm going to send a long memo to Atlantis Command," Chang said. "That's for 
sure. Until further notice, Mr. Riadou, your new rank is warrant officer first 
class. I don't know what you've been being paid but that's also your pay-grade, 
starting now. If it's more than you've been being paid, you just got a raise. If 
it's less, we'll figure something out. Flight pay, maybe. Choose one of your 
riders as your senior noncommissioned officer. The rest will be given the rank 
of sergeant. Do you have any questions?"
"No, sir," Jerry replied.
"You should. You're now under military law and discipline. That's a far cry from 
being a civilian. I can have your riders flogged or hanged for failure to obey 
an order. So can General Talbot. For that matter, you'll have to obey orders 
from Lieutenant Herrick, here, since he's a commissioned officer and outranks 
you. I'll have a copy of the regulations sent to your barracks."
"What about Joanna?" Talbot asked.
"She'll get a rank of commander," Chang said after a moment. "She'll be equal in 
rank to my XO but outrank everyone else on the ship except you or me. In 
general, she'll have full control of the dragons and their riders. She'll also 
be responsible for their actions. Will that be a problem?"
"Unlikely," Edmund replied. "But she's got a very specific pay structure. It's 
in my orders."
"Understood," Chang said. "Now, to the mission. As Mr. Riadou noted, we've got a 
dual priority, getting the dragons trained in and handling the diplomatic 
mission. Comments?"
"Getting to the islands is the highest priority," Edmund replied. "Dragon 
training cannot interfere with that to any great extent."
Chang sighed and shook his head. "More or less the point that I'd come to. Well, 
we'll just have to handle it." There was a knock at the door and it opened 
almost immediately to reveal a brown-haired young man with a distant expression. 
He stopped, startled, at the group in the crowded room and looked at the 
commander behind the desk.
"Sorry, I'll come back," he muttered, starting to leave the room.
"You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago," Chang sighed. "Come in, 
Evan. Evan is . . ." He paused and looked Duke Talbot with a puzzled expression. 
"We're not sure exactly what to call Evan. Generally we just refer to him as a 
ship's designer, but he's more like an efficiency expert."
"I like to think of myself as a systems designer," Evan said with a smile that 
relieved his puzzled countenance. "About that, there's a change I want to make 
to the feeding system on the Richard . . ."
"Evan, we have to have the things in place long enough to write doctrine, you 
know," Chang replied. He had an amused expression on his face as if this were a 
long-running complaint.
"I know, Shar, but I think I can cut one crewmember . . ."
"Tell it to me later, Evan, there's something more important at the moment." 
Chang turned to Jerry with a gesture. "This is Warrant Officer Riadou. He's the 
senior dragon-rider of the first dragon-flight we've received. You should get 
him dialed in on the facilities on the Richard as soon as possible. Jerry 
Riadou, Evan Mayerle."
"Okay," Evan said, holding out his hand. "Does that mean we actually have 
wyverns to work with?"
"And a greater dragon," Chang said with a nod. "You hadn't heard?"
"Uh, no," Evan replied. "We'll have to break down the stalls on the hangar deck 
and—"
"Take it up with the XO," Chang said, cutting him off. "We're sailing on the 
morning tide. I'll be out in no more than an hour. Pass that on to the XO, will 
you Mr. Riadou?"
"Will do, sir," Jerry said. "Should I move my people out to the ship?"
"There's no way I can think of to get the dragons to the ship without them 
flying out, so the first thing we're going to have to do in the morning is fly 
them on. What do you think?"
"I'll go out to the ship, make sure that everything is arranged and that I'm 
familiar with the system and then come back on shore?"
"That's right," the skipper replied with a chuckle. "I want to see you this 
evening so stay on the ship until I arrive."
"Yes, sir," Jerry said.
"This is the Navy, Warrant Officer," the skipper replied with a smile. "When you 
get an order you say 'aye, aye, sir.' "
"Aye, aye, sir," Jerry replied. "Should I go now?"
"And the term is 'by your leave' or 'by your permission.' " Chang sighed. "Yes, 
go. You too, Evan. I'll see you both on board."
When the two had left Chang shook his head and looked at Duke Talbot.
"Is it just me, or is everyone having to make this up as they go along?"
"Everyone is." Talbot chuckled with the rest. "Daneh is having to half-train 
doctors, Herzer constantly has to make soldiers out of straw and mud. Everyone 
is."
"Do you have any idea how complex a large ship is?" Chang asked. "Just gathering 
the necessary materials for it to go to sea is mind-boggling. Enough food and 
water for a hundred days, for thirty-six dragons? Not to mention the two hundred 
and twenty-five crew members, twenty officers and warrant officers, 
dragon-riders, passengers. On that subject, water is at a premium on-board. 
There is a ration of one gallon a day per person and it is not adjustable. There 
are saltwater showers and you can have thirty seconds of secondary water for 
washing the salt off. Don't drink it; it's not potable. We have a low-power 
steam engine for powered support and it produces the shower water, but there's 
only so much. The cabins are small and tight; there's no room for much gear. And 
the food ranges in quality from poor to very bad."
"So much for a pleasure cruise to the islands," Rachel said with a laugh. "It's 
better than things were right after the Fall, Skipper."
"That it is," Chang said with a nod. "Speaking of gear, this was ported over. Or 
formed here, I'm not sure which."
He reached behind his desk and pulled out a gray plastic box, setting it on his 
desk. It was apparently seamless.
"I can't open it," he added in a less than amused tone. "I have no idea what it 
contains."
Talbot placed his hand on the top of the box and it opened down an invisible 
seam on the top. Inside were four transparent bags, some mixed items on the 
bottom and a sealed envelope. Talbot pulled out the envelope and broke the seal, 
then shrugged at the contents.
"More instructions from Sheida," he said, folding it and putting it back in the 
envelope. Chang was visibly annoyed that he was not made privy to the 
communication but Talbot ignored him. "Breath-masks for working underwater and 
suggested trade materials," he added, closing the box. "Could you have this sent 
out to the ship, Skipper?"
"Of course, General," the officer replied. "Will there be anything else?"
"No, I don't think so," Talbot said. "It would probably make sense for us to go 
out to the ship as soon as possible."
"I'll make arrangements," Chang replied, gesturing at the box. "That way your 
luggage can come with you."
"Thank you," Edmund said with a broad grin. "Now?"
"Horace!"


CHAPTER TEN
Herzer shook his head at the sight of the massive ship.
"They've only got a couple of hundred people to man it?" he asked.
The ship was nearly eighty meters long with three masts, the rearmost and 
highest of which stretched forty meters in the air. Sails were furled in every 
direction and Herzer had a hard time sorting them out. There were some that 
looked like they dropped down from crosspieces on the masts, but others were 
twisted around sloping ropes or something on the front.
The ship also looked awfully odd because where more masts should have been at 
the rear, there was a large platform. In fact, the wheel and deck that he'd 
expect to be at the rear was entirely missing. It might be under the platform, 
but if so it was well hidden. And a large, cantilevered platform angled out 
forward on the near side of the ship. And the whole ship was painted a dull 
gray, which Herzer found strange.
The group was being rowed out to the ship in one of the many small boats in the 
harbor. This one was rowed by two people, a man and a brawny female who seemed 
to be in charge. The boat was one of many headed to or from the ship and as they 
approached they could see a group of seamen lifting pallets onto the ship from 
one of the lighters alongside. Next to it was another lighter that had snaked 
four hoses over the side. It had a small steam engine going and was apparently 
pumping something aboard ship.
As they approached the ship a set of stairs with a floating platform was lowered 
over the side and the two oarsmen pulled the boat up to it.
Herzer had been surprised when Duke Edmund had had them board in reverse order 
of seniority but he understood now as the duke was the first to hop from the 
craft onto the platform and rapidly ascend the stairs. Herzer followed Daneh out 
of the boat and up the stairs. He was trailed, in order, by Vickie, Rachel and 
one of the other dragon-riders, the latter of which was carrying the featureless 
gray box. From the top of the stairs came an odd sound, like very high-pitched 
whistling. He got to the top of the stairs just in time to see the duke drop his 
salute and hear a leather-lunged petty officer bellow: "Overjay Command, 
Arriving!"
At the top of the stairs there was a double line of sailors and the 
blue-uniformed soldiers that he had seen at the Navy base. The sailors were in 
their day uniforms but the soldiers were turned out in armor, which was well 
polished, and boarding pikes, which were held vertically at attention.
Edmund had briefed them on the way out so Herzer first saluted the rear of the 
ship, where the UFS Navy flag, a diamondback rattler on an orange field, was 
flying, then the officer greeting them.
"Permission to come aboard, sir?"
"Permission granted," the Navy commander replied, returning the salute. He was 
wearing the same undress uniform as the sailors, blue trousers and off-white 
shirt, but wore a broad brimmed hat, turned up at one side, on which were fixed 
the two vertical silver bars of a commander. He was nearly as tall as Herzer but 
much thinner and he held out his hand with a friendly grin. "You're going to 
have as much trouble moving around this ship as I do."
He turned to the duke and waved towards the rear of the ship as the petty 
officer in charge of the greeting party ordered it to stand down and fall out.
"I'm Commander Owen Mbeki, executive officer," the commander said.
"I'm Edmund Talbot, obviously," the duke said with a smile. "My wife Doctor 
Daneh Ghorbani who is acting as my cultural attaché, Lieutenant Herzer Herrick 
my military attaché and aide, my daughter Rachel Ghorbani, Daneh's aide, Staff 
Sergeant Vickie Toweeoo, senior NCO of the dragon contingent."
"Charmed, I'm sure," the commander replied, shaking their hands. "I'll show you 
to your staterooms, General. Sergeant Toweeoo and the other dragon-riders are 
quartered by their beasts." He waved to the leather-lunged petty officer and 
gestured at the two riders. "Have someone relieve this poor man of the baggage, 
Chief Brooks, and show them the dragon facilities. Then round up Evan and that 
dragon warrant."
"Aye, aye, sir," the CPO said.
Once on the deck it was clear that the overhang, what was apparently a dragon 
landing platform, covered a good third of the ship. The commander led them 
towards a gangway that was actually under the shade of the platform and gestured 
above.
"That thing's going to be a bloody nuisance, General," the commander noted. "Not 
only does it mean losing a mast, perhaps two, with the concomitant loss of 
speed, but it's got a huge sail area. Maneuvering this tub is a stone bitch."
"What do you think about it?" Talbot asked. "Are the dragons worth it?"
"We'll have to see, won't we, sir?" the commander said with a tone of amusement. 
"From what I understand they don't have much of a means of attacking anything 
below them. At the moment I'd have to say no. On the other hand, preparing for 
them has given us this lovely huge ship to play with and if they don't work out 
we can simply add a couple of masts and have a real fighting ship at our 
fingers."
He led them down the short flight of stairs to the next deck. The top of the 
opening to the passageway was covered in padding and painted bright yellow and 
black.
"Watch your head," he said, ducking in example. "Especially you, Lieutenant. 
Turn to face the ladder, please; it's safer that way."
The corridor beyond was low and narrow. There were two crewmen, a male and a 
female, coming from the opposite direction and both of them flattened themselves 
against the wall as the party passed.
"Sorry about this," Daneh muttered.
"Not a problem, ma'am," the female crewman murmured while the male gave Rachel a 
raised eyebrow.
"Moving protocols," the commander said as he pushed aside a curtain and entered 
a room to the right of the corridor. "When you're moving in a corridor, the 
junior gives way to the senior. Since that means I only have to stand aside for 
the captain I think it's a lovely deal." He pointed to two bunks along the side 
of the tiny cabin. "I'm not sure about arrangements. We're a mixed crew but we 
have separate bunking for males and females. There's this cabin and the master 
cabin, which is designated for the use of Duke Talbot since it's large enough 
for meetings. Either the two ladies can bunk in here, or the lieutenant and 
Mistress Daneh's aide share, or, I suppose, the duke could give up his cabin to 
the ladies and bunk in here. There's also a large cabin in the dragon-rider's 
area but I'd prefer to set that aside for the riders if you don't mind. Or one 
of them could bunk with the riders."
Edmund looked at Rachel and raised an eyebrow to which the girl shrugged.
"I've been living, one way or another, with Herzer most of my life; I don't have 
an issue with rooming with him."
"I could bunk with the riders," Herzer said at almost the same time.
"No, I want you to work with them but I'll want you handy as well," Edmund said, 
rubbing his beard. "Bunk here. If there are issues, deal with them."
Herzer shrugged and went into the room, tossing his gear on the top bunk. It had 
a low wooden railing on the outside and the cushion was made of some relatively 
soft padding; he wasn't sure what. It wasn't straw or feathers, of that he was 
sure. There was just enough room for him to turn around, with his head bent, in 
the small cabin. Climbing into the bunk was going to be an interesting 
operation. His gear, not much of it, just one bag, went at the foot of the bunk, 
which gave him about a hundred ninety centimeters to work with. Given that he 
was two hundred ten centimeters in height, it was going to be cramped. He'd just 
have to prop his feet on the bag.
"And just down the corridor," Mbeki said, this time opening a door into a room, 
"we have Duke Edmund's cabin."
The room, while low, was relatively spacious. Besides a large bed it had a table 
large enough to handle six people, eight if they crowded. There was also a 
fairly large window made of thick glass, and a few meters of open floor space.
"You're on the port side of the ship here, just forward of the captain's cabin," 
the commander said. "My cabin is right across the corridor. Wardroom is just 
down from the aide's cabin on the port side. The rest of the officers' quarters 
are forward of the companionway."
"This will do well," Duke Edmund said. "Put that over there," he continued, 
gesturing to the seaman who had been following them.
"Duke Edmund," Herzer said. "I'd like to look up Jerry and get a look at the 
dragon quarters."
"Warrant Officer Riadou is supposed to be meeting with the captain soon . . ." 
Mbeki said.
"I'd like Herzer to attend that," Talbot interrupted. "Herzer's going to be my 
liaison with the dragon-riders. I'd like him in on discussions of their use."
"Very well," the commander said, nonplussed. "Seaman, show Lieutenant Herzer to 
the captain's dayroom."
Herzer followed the seaman though a bewildering series of corridors to a door 
guarded by a sentry.
"Lieutenant Herzer to see the captain, orders of the duke," the seaman said, 
stepping aside.
The guard looked the lieutenant over and raised an eyebrow. "Blood Lord?"
Herzer leaned forward until his nose was an inch from the sentry and nodded.
"Blood Lord. There is one captain. There are two lieutenants. I'm the other one. 
And if you give me a look like that again I'll wipe the floor with you. I don't 
take lip from privates. Especially ones with newly issued armor and who haven't 
seen shit to make them salty. Do I make my point?"
The sentry flexed a jaw muscle and nodded. "Yes, sir," he said, then knocked on 
the door.
"What?" Chang called from the interior.
"A Blood Lord lieutenant to see you, sir," the guard said.
"Let him in."
Herzer marched in and saluted the captain, who was bent over a table, head 
nearly touching Evan's, both of them poring over a schematic, presumably of the 
ship.
"Message from Duke Edmund?" the skipper asked.
"Actually, sir, he sent me to . . . look in on the meeting, sir. I'll just stay 
out of the way."
The skipper stared at him flatly for a moment, then shrugged. "No, if you have 
anything to contribute, feel free. We've only been working on this project for a 
year. I'm sure you have all sorts of useful suggestions."
"I'm much more likely to ask questions, sir," the lieutenant said. "But I intend 
to avoid even that."
"Questions are good," Evan said. "Doing something like this is all about 
questions. Like, what's going to happen to the handling of the ship when 
thirty-six wyverns are coming and going all the time?"
"Something we'll have to find out," the skipper said. "Right now, I'm wondering 
if we can even get them on and off."
"We can do the landing, sir," Jerry said doggedly. "The wyverns can land on a 
dime."
"This will be a moving dime, Warrant," the skipper growled. "Up and down, side 
to side, forward and back. I'll limit the movement to the extent that I can, but 
I can't stop it."
"We'll figure it out, sir," Jerry replied.
"Know anything about logistics, Lieutenant?" the skipper asked. "You've fed 
those wyverns. How much feed per day?"
"Depends upon the type, sir," Herzer answered. "From what I was told, two 
hundred kilos per day of the mess, less if it's good quality protein and fats."
"Access to the latter will be restricted at sea," the captain said. "You've 
helped feed them?"
"Sir," Herzer said, nodding his head.
"Think about doing that on a rolling ship in the middle of a gale," the captain 
said with a smile.
"Sir, have food bowls set into the stalls, sir," Herzer replied. "Have slots to 
feed the mess through the slots. Better yet, have some sort of a moving trolley 
that automatically feeds them; that prevents humans accidentally sliding into 
the stalls. Have the edge of the food bowls sufficiently high that the mess is 
unlikely to slop over. Feed in increments rather than lots at one time. More 
time intensive but if there's an automated feeder that's not a problem. Sir."
The captain raised one eyebrow. "Is that an official recommendation, 
Lieutenant?"
"But . . ." Evan said then shut up as the captain raised a hand.
"Sir, no, sir, it's just an idea," Herzer barked, standing at the position of 
parade rest. "I was specifically asked, sir."
The skipper leaned back in a chair and actually appeared to look at Herzer for 
the first time.
"Who trained you, Lieutenant Herrick?" the captain asked.
"Gunnery Sergeant Miles A. Rutherford was my advanced combat trainer, sir," 
Herzer replied. "He developed the Blood Lord training system. Along with Duke 
Edmund."
"Gunnery sergeant?" the skipper asked. "That's a Marine rank."
"If you have an issue with the use of that rank, sir, I respectfully suggest 
that you take it up with the Gunny, sir," Herzer said sardonically.
"Think you're salty, Lieutenant?" the skipper asked, tilting his head to the 
side.
"No, sir, never been to sea, sir," Herzer replied. "But . . ."
"Yes?" Chang said, with a raised eyebrow.
"I've been wounded with arrows, axe, spear and sword, had my hand cut off by a 
powered blade, fought my way through a cloud of nannites to try to dig my dagger 
into a man protected by a force field. I've been smashed off my horse, trampled 
and seen my best friends die on every side of me. I've flown dragons, fought 
cavalry battles and clashed shield to shield with ten times my number of 
Changed, all slavering for my blood. For two damned years I've been fighting 
this war on the front lines, sir. If you're trying to intimidate me, Colonel, 
you're going to find it a hard row to hoe."
The skipper stared at him for just a moment, then nodded his head.
"We're trying to figure out how to land and recover dragons on this ship and how 
to keep them alive, healthy in extreme conditions. We're also trying to figure 
out how to make them more of an offensive weapon. Warrant Officer Riadou has 
apparently fought with them before, but if the enemy isn't disheartened by their 
appearance there's not much that they can do except flap their wings and hiss. 
They're not even very good at using those impressive talons of theirs. Air to 
air, dragon y dragon, they might just be formidable. But we need to figure out 
how to make them a formidable force against ground and sea enemies. Now, they 
make decent scouts but I don't want a ship that's relegated to a scouting 
mission. I want an offensive weapon. Understand?"
"Sir," Herzer said with a nod of his head.
"Is there some way that you can help with that?"
"Not at this time, sir," Herzer admitted. "I wasn't planning on contributing, as 
noted. I'm here to be Duke Edmund's eyes and ears. But . . . sir?"
"Yes?"
"There's nobody that I know of who is better at wringing an offensive edge from 
a weapon than Duke Edmund."
"Perhaps he'll have some ideas, then." The skipper shrugged. "By the way, you 
came up with the same plan that Evan has for feeding the wyverns. Mr. Riadou has 
some issues with it."
"Wyverns are pack animals, sir," the rider said. "I'm afraid that if they spend 
much time battened down and completely separated they're going to be pretty 
unhappy. Depressed. A depressed dragon is a noneating dragon."
"We'll cross that problem when we come to it," Chang said. "And that's your 
problem unless there's something specific that I have to approve."
"Yes, sir," the rider said.
"I want you to be thinking along offensive lines," the skipper continued. "I 
want you to figure out ways that your dragons can sink ships. Capture them for 
that matter."
"Well, we can drop rocks," Jerry said. "But we have to toss them over the side 
and hope we both miss the wyvern's wing and hit the enemy. It's not very 
efficient."
"You and Evan talk it over," the skipper said. "I've spent enough time on this 
problem. Take Herzer with you. Figure something out."
"Will do, sir," the warrant officer replied. He straightened up and saluted, 
fist to chest. "By your leave, sir."
"In the Navy we salute to the brim of the cap," Chang said, tossing him a salute 
in return. "And not indoors. Gads, classes on basic military courtesy for 
riders. Add that to the list."
"Is he in the Army or the Navy?" Herzer asked. "Sir."
"He's damned well under my command on this ship, Lieutenant," the skipper 
replied tightly. "He can damned well follow Navy protocols."
Herzer nodded in reply and pushed open the door.
* * *
Joel had been assigned a bunk in the transient quarters and the next day 
hurriedly assigned uniforms and filled out a myriad of forms. The only one that 
gave him any trouble was the last will and testament. He had no one, at least no 
one he was in contact with, to leave his belongings to. On the other hand, "Joel 
Annibale" didn't exist, anyway. Finally, he left the form blank and when he 
turned it in the clerk in charge pointed to the empty line.
"You gotta leave it to someone or something," the clerk said.
"I don't have anyone," Joel said, his face hard.
"Most of us don't," the clerk replied. She was a young woman and she shook her 
head, sighing. "You can leave it to the Navy fund. This is my family, now. I 
guess it's yours, too."
Joel filled in the line and signed the form with a strange feeling. He knew he 
probably wasn't going to be with the Navy long, but for the time he had a home.
He was sent down to the docks with his ill-fitting uniforms, bulging seabag and 
new boots that slipped on his feet. He was assigned to a boat and got the first 
look at his new ship.
The damned thing was huge, a clipper ship if he recalled the design right. But 
the masts were all screwed up because of the big platform on the back.
There was a working party loading on the starboard side and before the new hands 
were even assigned quarters they were put to work hauling up the supplies. There 
were hogsheads of salt beef and pork, steel barrels of ration biscuit, bag after 
bag marked "Soya" and innumerable other items. Winches had been secured to the 
crosstrees and the material came over in large cargo nets. Then it had to be 
hand carried below and stuffed away in the holds. On his first trip down he was 
surprised to see that the material was only supplementary to what was already 
on-board; the ship was stuffed tighter than a tick.
As soon as the lighters had pulled away from the ship he was accosted by a 
female petty officer.
"I'm PO Su Singhisen," the petty officer said. "You're Seaman Annibale, right?"
"Right," Joel said. "Joel Annibale." The PO was a medium-height blonde with her 
hair pulled back in a tight bun.
"You looked like you knew what you were doing, there," she said, waving at him 
to follow her below.
"I've worked ships before," Joel said. "None this big, but it's pretty much the 
same."
"And they made you a steward?" Singhisen laughed.
"They did?" Joel replied. "Nobody told me what my duty station was going to be."
"Grand," the PO chuckled. "The navy finally finds somebody with experience on 
ships and they make them an officers' steward."
"Sounds like any bureaucracy to me," Joel chuckled.
"What did you do before the Fall?" Singhisen asked as she led him below. The 
companionway was short and while the PO didn't have to stoop, Joel did.
"I mostly sailed in the Asur Islands," Joel replied. "After the Fall I took up 
fishing for a living."
"How'd you get here?" she asked. She opened a door on an incredibly cramped room 
with four tiers of bunks spread across it in six rows. "Home sweet home."
"Grand," Joel replied as she led him down the narrow aisle between the bunks.
"You're the newbie," she said, pointing to the top bunk. "So you get the worst 
spot."
Joel had already seen that the seabags were set at the base of the bunks. He 
climbed up and lashed his in place.
"What next?"
"Galley and then I get somebody to show you the route to officers' country. Then 
we put you to work."


CHAPTER ELEVEN
Herzer followed the two far back into the bowels of the ship. The corridors were 
impossible to figure out, or so it seemed; most of the time he didn't know if he 
was facing the rear of the ship or the front. But finally they entered a high, 
wide corridor that was unmistakable.
"This is where the dragons walk?" he asked.
"We call it Broadway," Evan replied with a nod. "There's a ramp for them to walk 
down. The hatch is a major structural weakness, but we think we've shored around 
it sufficiently."
"Jerry, how much weight can one of the wyverns carry, over the weight of the 
rider?" Herzer asked.
"About two hundred kilos depending on the weight of the rider," Jerry replied.
"So why was I told to fly one alone?" Herzer mused. "I could have doubled up 
with, oh, Vickie. Or you, for that matter."
"We'd brought a spare," Jerry replied with a shrug. "Why overload them?"
"Hmmm . . ." Herzer followed them down to the stalls and checked out the 
arrangements. Sure enough, there was a method to slip food through to the 
permanently installed food troughs as well as spigots for water at each of the 
pens, feeding into a separate watering trough. The stalls had points to hook up 
chains in case the wyverns got out of hand as well as ways to close the stall 
down and press the wyvern up against the back if one got completely out of 
control.
"I think this will work," Jerry said, reluctantly. "Actually, it's better set up 
than our rookeries. I'll take some of these ideas back. Where's the mixing area 
for the mess?"
"Down the corridor," Evan said. "You'll love it. The material is brought up on 
lifts in premeasured quantities and then you just pour it in the mixer. That's 
powered as well, if we have take-off time. If not there's a four-man capstan for 
mixing and running the feeding chutes."
"I hope you remembered the ketchup," Herzer said jokingly. The mechanical 
feeding contrivance looked like a recipe for feeding body parts to the wyvern to 
him, but as an officer he hoped he'd be spared the job of using it.
"We've got two tons of ketchup powder," Evan said earnestly. "That should cover 
a hundred days even at the standard use of one kilo of ketchup per day per 
wyvern, which was what we were given as the measure. How do they like fish?" he 
asked.
"I have no idea," Jerry said. "We're from inland. Why?"
"I was wondering if it becomes necessary if they would be willing to substitute 
dried fish or fish sauce for meat or ketchup?"
"We'll find out," Jerry said with a laugh. "I'm sure we will find out."
"Evan, we met a 'Chief Brooks' earlier," Herzer said, rubbing his chin. "Who is 
he?"
"Brooks is the command master chief, the senior chief on board," Evan said. 
"Why?"
"Know where I'd find him?" Herzer asked.
"Just go up on deck and ask, somebody will know where he is."
"Jerry, I've got the funny feeling that I'm going to be ordered to get a, pardon 
the pun, crash course in dragon flying," Herzer said. "But I assume one of you 
will be bringing in Chauncey?"
"Absolutely," Jerry said with a frown. "I'm not even sure about . . ."
"Trust me on this," Herzer said. "I've learned to read part of the way into that 
opaque mind of my boss. We'll have to figure out how to get me trained on a 
ship."
"We'll try," Jerry sighed.
"Okay, I'm going to go find Chief Brooks," Herzer said. "Later."
"Later," Jerry replied as he walked away.
"I wouldn't want to be in his shoes," Evan said. "Chief Brooks doesn't like his 
time wasted. If he's not happy with a lieutenant it doesn't keep him from, with 
great respect, of course, eating the lieutenant a new asshole."
"I'm not sure I'd want to be the chief that tried to eat Herzer a new asshole," 
Jerry said musingly. "Now, human being quarters?"
* * *
"I think I can live here for a while," Daneh said, looking around the cabin 
after the others had left.
"It's more comfortable than I expected," Edmund admitted. "I was figuring we'd 
be in bunks."
"You're a duke now." Daneh smiled. "And a general. People want to pamper you."
"Like I need pampering," Talbot said. He reached down and opened up the box 
again, then dug into the bottom, pulling out a small gemlike device.
"A datacube?" Daneh said. "I can't believe she's expending so much power on 
this! I've had people die because I didn't have power."
"Daneh, if we get this wrong far more people are going to die than will ever go 
under your knife in a very bad lifetime," Edmund said. "And it's not just a 
datacube."
"What's it for, then?" she asked.
"Communications among other things," Edmund temporized. "And . . . in the event 
of a direct energy strike by Paul or any of his faction, they'll draw power from 
Sheida's protections. That's how important this is to her. But we're not to use 
it unless we really have to."
"This is more than just an invasion," Daneh said. "I mean, about more."
"There are so many balls being juggled I'm not even sure which are in the air," 
Edmund admitted. "But just concentrate on your mission and we'll be fine."
"I hate it when you get all inscrutable," Daneh said, sighing. "Speaking of 
which, I have an interest in Herzer's well-being. Why did you really bring him 
along?"
"When Jerry and his friends were racing wyvern, Herzer was fighting orcs in 
enhanced reality," Edmund said, frowning. "With the pain protocols turned up. 
He's a hard, cold, thinking bastard of a fighter. Harry tried to get those 
flyboys to pay attention to the mission, which is to force the enemy to admit 
defeat. He didn't manage it. I'm hoping that Herzer has better luck."
"And?"
"And . . ." Edmund smiled. "After the job he did in Harzburg he needed a nice 
vacation to the Southern Isles. A pleasant cruise, a beautiful roommate, who 
knows what might happen?"
"Edmund, are you matchmaking?" Daneh said, aghast.
"For Herzer? Always."
"Your own daughter?!"
"Why not? They're young, they're compatible . . ."
"And Rachel treats him like a brother," Daneh said, throwing up her hands. 
"Herzer is a stallion stud, Rachel, as far as I know, is still a virgin. And 
apparently uninterested in changing that fact. It's not going to work."
"It's worth a shot." Talbot shrugged. "Frankly, Rachel needs him more than vice 
versa. She just doesn't realize it."
"She's making a fine life for herself," Daneh answered. But even she knew it 
sounded defensive.
"Certainly," Edmund replied with a nod. "If she wants to live it alone."
"That's up to her," Daneh said. "I tried it."
"How was it?" Edmund asked. "It was hell from my end."
"Not that good," she admitted with a smile. "Speaking of which, how long until 
we need to make an appearance?"
"Long enough."
* * *
Joel's duties were simple enough, if rather time consuming. He had the middle 
watch, from midnight until eight in the morning. He was to support the cooks 
that fed the watch and run coffee to the deck officers or any officers who were 
in the wardroom. He was only the steward for the XO on down; the captain had a 
separate steward who stayed on his schedule. It meant though, in effect, that he 
had the run of the officers' quarters and wardroom and if there was a leak among 
the officers, he had a good chance of picking it up. In addition he had battle 
stations with the sickbay as a stretcher-bearer, was part of the capstan crew 
for raising anchor and had a position lowering the whaleboats in air-operations. 
He was pretty sure he wasn't going to be getting much rest.
After getting him familiarized in his duties PO Singhisen released him to go try 
to get some sleep; he had to be back on duty at midnight.
In the cramped quarters he tried to drown out the noise of a card game at the 
end of the compartment, not to mention the quiet conversations of other off-duty 
seamen around him. Finally, he rummaged in his seabag and pulled out the penny 
dreadful he'd picked up, opening it to the dog-eared page and finding a 
grammatical error in the first sentence. Jeeze, this guy was bad. But at least 
it passed the time.
* * *
"I think we've waited long enough," Shedol said.
"No, we haven't," Shanol answered, flicking him with his tail.
Shanol Etool had spent plenty of time wondering if he'd made a huge mistake 
taking a Change to orca form. Admittedly, after the Fall it was easier to 
survive as a Changed orca; knowing how to climb out of the water carefully and 
get back in just as carefully had yielded more than he could eat of seals.
On the other hand, an almost continuous diet of raw fish and marine mammals 
palled quickly. He might have starved in the Dying Time if he hadn't changed, 
but while hunting dolphins for sport was one thing, eating them raw was another. 
And they could be brutal if you got separated from the pod.
The alliance with New Destiny had meant no more hunting, having servants on land 
to prepare food and take care of the occasional parasite, a comfortable and 
guarded harbor to rest in. But he knew, even at the time, that the markers were 
going to be called in eventually.
The pod of Changed orcas were tired and hungry. They had gotten a bluntly worded 
order to move from their usual grounds near the Asur Islands and make their way 
to the deep water near Bamude. The problem was that the open ocean between the 
two areas was nearly devoid of life. They had happened upon one pod of natural 
dolphins but the damned beasts were hard to catch. Other than that they hadn't 
eaten since leaving their home waters. And the swim had been brutal.
But the ships they were meeting were supposed to be bringing supplies, as well 
as orders. Not to mention the fact that the tersely worded orders had still 
contained enough to make clear they were not a request. So they would wait.
"Do you hear that?" Sikursuit pulsed. "Sounds like a boat."
"Yeah," Shedol said. The second in command was nearly as large as Shanol, and 
both were outsized for normal orcas. They had both Changed at the same time as 
various forms of underwater hunting had gotten boring and they decided to try it 
"au naturale." It had been their combined energies that had gathered the pod 
together. They had separated out the female orcas and the females now languished 
in pens in the harbor, reserved for mating to Shedol or Shanol unless one of the 
other males in the pod was especially graced. "Waves slapping on the hull."
Sikursuit lifted himself up to the surface and looked in the direction of the 
sound but when he came down he shook his head from side to side.
"Still below the horizon," he said with raised pectoral fins. Like all the 
Changed he had stubby fingers on the end that were barely capable of holding 
implements.
"I'm tired of waiting," Shanol announced. "We'll go to them."
* * *
"You're late," Shanol squealed from his blowhole, rolling an eye up at the 
figure leaning over the side of the ship.
"The winds were terrible and this tub isn't exactly graceful," Martin replied. 
He slipped a membrane over his head and dove in the water.
"There, that's better," Martin replied. The membrane separated out oxygen from 
the water column around his head and transferred it as he breathed in a manner 
that made it seem like breathing air. And as he spoke the membranes converted 
his words into sonar pulses that were comprehensible to the orcas. "Unless I'm 
much mistaken, you're away from the rendezvous."
"We heard you coming and we were hungry," Shanol replied as the pod circled the 
unChanged human.
If Martin noticed the emphasis on "hungry" or the circling orcas he gave no 
sign.
"The point is that it was a general rendezvous," Martin pointed out. "Old 
friends and new as they say. I'm Martin St. John. You're Shanol Etool."
"I know who I am," Shanol pulsed, tightly. "Where's the food?"
"In time, in time," Martin replied. "Let's get things straight, I'm your control 
from here on out. We've got a complicated little problem to work out and you're 
going to do it my way."
"Or?" Shedol asked, clashing his teeth. "You're in the water with us little 
landsman; as far as we're concerned, you're just slower lunch."
"I understand your position," Martin said. "There are many in the sea that take 
it." He waved his arms, and up out of the depths rose a kraken, a human who had 
taken the extreme change into a giant squidlike creature. The kraken whipped out 
one thirty-meter tentacle and wrapped it around Sikursuit drawing him down into 
the depths as he squealed in pain and fear.
"I think we should be clear," Martin continued as the shrieks from the orca rose 
to a crescendo. "I'm in charge. Now, there are all sorts of theories about 
leadership and management. But, really, they all boil down to 'I tell you what 
to do and you do it.' You're not honorable, so I can't appeal to your honor. 
You're not patriotic, so I can't appeal to your patriotism. You're not moral, so 
I can't appeal to your morality. But fear and intimidation are universally 
acceptable methods of leadership. As you, Shanol, and you, Shedol, have proven," 
he added as the shrieks were cut off in abrupt finality.
He looked around at the orcas who were pulsing into the deeps. The kraken had 
faded from eyesight but it was apparently still in range of sonar.
"Oh, that's just Brother Rob," Martin said. "He was . . . a compatriot in some . 
. . businesses with me before the Fall. He made a couple of minor little errors 
in, shall we say 'sexual gamesmanship,' and decided that taking a very long 
vacation somewhere extremely unlikely was called for. And while Mother could 
find him in a deep-sea trench, the busybodies from the Council weren't able to. 
But he, too, has decided to aid us in our endeavors. Of his own free will, of 
course."
"Of course," Shanol pulsed. "But I'm now short an orca."
"Well, we can't have you short on personnel," Martin said, waving his hand 
again. From out of the gloom of the depths rose a school of what appeared at 
first to be manta rays. But as they approached, the vertically slit teeth made 
it clear what they were.
"What hell are those things?" Shedol said. "Jesus."
"No, far from it," Martin chuckled. "They are ixchitl, a recent little 
development of the Lady Celine. They will be supporting your endeavors. They, of 
course, don't have sonar or vocal apparatuses. But they do hear you quite 
clearly. You might not want to say anything that would get them angry."
"Not me," Shedol replied.
"What's the job?" Shanol ground out.
"The mer and the UFS are meeting. The UFS wants an alliance. The main group of 
mer is located in the Isles. We're going to make sure that the alliance doesn't 
come about. You're going to be our . . . ambassadors in this endeavor."
"And the ixchitl?" Shanol asked.
"They're for if diplomacy doesn't work."
* * *
"Chief," Herzer said.
After getting lost twice he had found the chief supervising some sailors working 
with a huge mound of rope in a forward compartment. They were coiling it, 
carefully, and Herzer could appreciate why. The rope was at least two decimeters 
in diameter and the Bull God only knew how long; it was taking ten of them just 
to move it and another five to get it coiled properly.
"Lieutenant Herrick," Chief Brooks replied. He was medium in every way. Medium 
height, brown hair, brown eyes and the medium-brown skin that was normal after 
millennia of genetic crossing. If he'd ever had a body mod of any form it was to 
make him more medium. But he still had a commanding presence that was 
unmistakable.
"Was wondering if you had a minute?" Herzer asked.
"Sure, Lieutenant, this is under control," the chief answered, walking away from 
the working party. "What's up?"
"Well, when I was but a young lad, my Gunny told me that if I had something I 
couldn't handle I should talk to the Gunny," Herzer said with a grin.
"There's not a gunny on board," Brooks replied.
"Yep, but you're the equivalent. I need some materials and some of them are 
going to be rare and some of them are going to be hazardous. And I'd bet you'd 
know where and how to get them before we weigh anchor."
"And they're not coming on this ship without the CO's permission," the chief 
answered. "Not if they're hazardous."
"I'll get the permission, if you can get the materials," Herzer said, handing 
the chief a list.
The chief glanced at it and swore. "What the hell do you need this for, sir?"
"A little experiment," Herzer answered. "But if you can get your hands on a lot, 
it might be a good idea. If the experiment works out, we're going to need it in 
quantity."
"I'll see what I can do, sir," the chief said. "But it's got to be cleared."
"Will do, Chief."
* * *
A sentry had been posted on the duke's door when Herzer got back but he ignored 
him as he started to knock on the door.
"Sir," the sentry said. "You might want to rethink that."
"Why?" Herzer asked, then he heard what could only be termed a moan through the 
thick oak doorway. "Oh." He paused for a moment, then shook his head. 
"Unfortunately, we don't have time." He knocked and waited.
There was muffled swearing from inside the cabin and then Duke Edmund said: 
"What?"
"Herzer, sir. Just say 'approved.' " There was what might have been a stifled 
giggle.
"What am I approving, Herzer?"
"Do you want the long version or do you just want to say 'approved' and have me 
go away?"
"Approved, Herzer."
"Thank you, sir."
"I'll see you at dinner. Not before."
"Yes, sir," Herzer said and nodded at the sentry. "Now, how do I find the 
skipper again?"
"Generally, he'll be in his day cabin, sir," the sentry said, nodding back up 
the companionway.
This time Herzer only got turned around once. He knocked on the door and entered 
at the command: "Come!"
"Sir, with the approval of Duke Edmund I'm planning on conducting some 
experiments," Herzer said without preamble. "I need your approval to bring 
onboard some hazardous materials. Chief Brooks will be seeing to their stowage."
"What materials?" the skipper asked.
Herzer told him.
"What in hell do you want those for, son?" Chang asked.
"You did say you wanted this ship to be an offensive weapon, sir."
The skipper regarded him for a long moment, then nodded. "Approved."


CHAPTER TWELVE
"Martin."
Martin had been taking a nap in his cabin when Conner's projection appeared. He 
had suffered from seasickness at the beginning of the voyage, not to mention 
getting bounced around in the unhandy vessel. But in time he'd gotten his sea 
legs and now was enjoying the rocking of the waves, wishing that he'd had the 
sense to bring a woman along to pass the time.
He opened his eyes and rolled up to sit on the edge of the cot, but didn't get 
up since he had an unfortunate tendency, still, to hit his head on the rafters 
of the low room.
Conner's projection, normal sized, was "standing" with his head just under the 
rafters and his feet stuck through the floor up to his thighs.
"I made contact with the orcas and ixchitl," Martin said. "Thanks for rounding 
up Rob. He was useful in establishing my credentials."
"So I heard," Conner said with a dry smile. "Shanol is not going to be happy."
"Shanol thinks he's the biggest fish in the sea," Martin replied with a shrug. 
"Disabusing him of that notion was useful. What's up?"
"We have a new source in the UFS ship," Conner said. "Obviously I won't say who; 
need-to-know and all that. But I can now tell you of their position and plans in 
something like real-time."
"Very useful."
"Indeed. They still don't have anything like offensive capability; they're not 
sure the dragons can get on and off the ship for that matter. There are only a 
couple of dozen marines on the ship and the crew is hardly trained in combat. 
You should be able to take the ship, or at least sink it, with only one of your 
own vessels, much less all six."
"Good to know," Martin mused. "That way I can spread them around. I've been 
talking to the captain and even with their position and plans known, finding one 
ship at sea is, apparently, not an easy task."
"I'm sure you'll be up to the task," Conner replied. "This is using energy I 
sorely need for the other tasks I've been set. If you need me, use the data 
crystal to contact me. Keep it with you, that way I'll know where to find you."
* * *
Herzer was up before dawn to the twitter of bosun pipes and the cry of "All 
hands weigh anchor."
He picked an out-of-the-way position, he thought, to watch the crew set sail. 
Most of it was a mystery, but he was fascinated by the way that the sails were 
raised.
Much of the crew was up in the rigging letting the sails out, which looked like 
lunacy from the deck, and another group was engaged in raising the anchor. Since 
the sails had to be tightened up, this left a relatively small group to do that. 
And he could tell that the sails were going to be pulling hard, really hard. No 
matter how many blocks and tackles were involved, and he quit counting at fifty, 
there was no way that the ten or so men could pull the sails tight.
But most of the ropes attached to the sails ran back to a position by the last 
mast. And there was the answer; a small, low-power steam engine. At the end of 
the engine was a metal pulley that was creating a constant turn. Each of the 
lines was taken, in turn, around the pulley and used for tensioning, sometimes 
two at once. In a relatively short time, and with very few hands, the sails were 
set, the anchor was up and the Bonhomme Richard was sailing out of the harbor. 
As the ship got under way he could see the first of the wyverns lifting off from 
the beach, accompanied by Joanna.
He walked back to the stern of the ship and climbed a ladder to a position at 
the rear. The skipper was up there bellowing orders at the crew to get the ship 
"into the wind" whatever that meant, and Herzer gave him, and the ship's wheel, 
a wide berth. But at the very rear of the deck there was another position with a 
pintle-mounted chair and board table. The XO, Commander Mbeki, was there, 
occupying the chair and sipping on a cup of sassafras tea, along with Duke 
Edmund and Evan Mayerle, all of them watching the approaching dragon.
"Welcome to primary flight operations, Lieutenant," the XO said as he walked up. 
"We're going to try to recover them in the bay; if they can't get onboard in 
this mill-pond there's no way they can land at sea."
Joanna had lined up to try first and the line of dragons half-hovering in the 
light wind was a sight to behold; he could only imagine what it would be like 
when the ship got a full wing. Herzer watched her come gliding in but he knew, 
instinctively, that she was too fast and too low. As she got to within a hundred 
meters of the craft she realized it as well and tried to correct but she was 
still too low and almost crashed into the water before flapping upward and 
spiraling off to their right.
Jerry tried it next and he was too high. He tried to correct at the last minute 
as well but fell out of the proper glide path and also nearly landed in the 
drink. Herzer thought he might be riding Chauncey, but the wyverns still looked 
the same to him.
"This isn't working," Mbeki growled.
"I don't think they can figure out what's right from where they are," Edmund 
muttered.
"No, sir," Herzer said. "Sir, it occurs to me that it's got to be something like 
catching a running prey and I don't think wyverns do that. We might be going too 
fast for the first time. If we could slow the ship down, maybe turn it towards 
the wind . . ."
"Skipper," the commander called. "Request you come into the wind, make minimum 
sail for steerage only."
"All hands! All hands!"
The sailors, once again, climbed the rope ladders and this time pulled in all 
the sails but one of the triangular ones on the front. The boat slowed 
noticeably and the wind now seemed to be coming from directly in front of the 
ship.
"We can't point directly to the wind, can we?" Edmund asked.
"No, but we're still making about four klicks," the commander noted. "There's 
not much wind today so it feels like it's from right in front of us. But the 
wyverns will be pushed to one side as they come in."
Herzer watched Jerry start to line up again and quietly backed away from the 
group. There was a ladder up to the platform at the rear of the deck and he 
rapidly ascended it. The ladder was on the outside of the platform and the deck 
so he found himself precariously dangling over the water three stories below.
When he reached the top of the platform he found it open with no recesses or 
obstructions of any sort. He moved to the rear of the platform and waved his 
hands over his head, looking up at the approaching wyvern. After a moment he saw 
Jerry's head come up and was sure that he was looking at him. When he was he 
lowered his arms until they were outstretched and then waved them upward; the 
wyvern was well below the "right" glide angle to make a landing. There was a 
moment's pause then Jerry coaxed the beast upward. The movement got him out of 
line and Herzer directed him left, then held his arms out straight. As the 
wyvern neared he, again, dropped low so Herzer ordered him upward. Jerry 
followed the command and as he swept in in a flurry of wings Herzer dropped to 
the platform and shielded his head. He was rewarded with a massive "thump" and 
the platform shook under his body.
Herzer rolled over and looked up at the wyvern, which was eyeing him like 
dinner.
"There is no way to tell the right way to land from up there," Jerry yelled. 
"None!"
"We figured that out," Herzer replied as the rest of the party from below made 
their way up the ladder.
"Great landing, Mr. Riadou," the commander said, smiling. "I thought we weren't 
going to be able to get you in."
"I wouldn't have made it if it weren't for Herzer," Jerry said. Handlers had 
come forward and were attaching traces to the wyvern. The center-rear of the 
platform suddenly slanted downward and the handlers walked the wyvern down the 
slope and into the broad hatch to take it below.
"What did Herzer do?" the commander asked, looking at the lieutenant.
"He waved me down," Jerry replied, artlessly then looked at the group who were 
all eyeing Herzer. "It worked, sir."
"Yes it did," the commander admitted. "Do you think you can do it again?"
"If the riders follow the commands, sir," Herzer temporized. "It might be better 
if Mr. Riadou did the ordering; they're more likely to follow him."
"But he hasn't seen it from the ship side," Commander Chang said. "Has he?"
"The next one up is Vickie," Jerry said. "Sergeant Toweeoo that is. I think that 
she'll follow Herzer's directions and I can follow through. One thing, though."
"Yes?"
"It was hard to see his arms; I was catching more glints from his hook than 
seeing his hands. Could we get some hand flags or something?"
"I'll have them brought up," the XO said after a moment's thought. He looked up 
at the circling wyverns and shook his head. "We need to set up a signaling 
system. Why didn't we think of any of this in advance?"
"We thought it would be easy," Evan said, his eyes glazing as he got caught in 
thought. "We're working on a flag signaling system for the fleet; the dragon 
signals can be worked into that."
"Work on that later," Chang said. "I'll get some hand flags up here and then you 
get those other dragons down."
The others descended while Herzer and Jerry waited on the top-deck. Herzer 
noticed that despite the fact that it was October and there was a faint breeze 
it was damned warm up here; controlling the landings in the summer would be 
unpleasant.
Finally they heard the ladder squeaking and Chief Brooks' head appeared at deck 
level; he had two flags grasped in his right hand.
"Here you go, sirs," the chief said, holding the flags out. "Have fun."
"Will do, Chief," Herzer said with a chuckle, taking the flags from the chief 
who, clearly, wasn't coming any closer to the landing deck than that. He took 
one flag in his right hand easily enough but found that the rounded handle of 
the flag was one of those surfaces his clamp had trouble with. Finally he slid 
it into the interior of the clamp and applied slight pressure of the cutting 
surfaces against it. It was awkward but it would work.
Finally he had it juggled in place and looked up at the group of circling 
dragons until he spotted the one that he thought was Vickie.
"Is that Vickie just turning out?" he asked Jerry.
"Yeah, I think so," the rider muttered. "Another thing to add to the list: 
binoculars."
Herzer took the flags and pointed them outward at Vickie, tracking her around 
the sky until he saw her wave, then pointed them down at the deck and spread 
them outward.
He saw immediately that she was lined up badly so he waved her off to the right. 
Then she was too far over that way so he waved her back to the left.
He continued to coax her down but she was all over the sky. Too low, too high. 
As she came in on final it was clear that she was far too low and he waved her 
off wildly but she still came in until the wyvern with a gobbled cry backwinged 
right at the stern of the ship, nearly hitting the pri-fly deck. It backwinged 
hard but didn't have enough airspeed to recover so, with a tremendous splash, it 
landed in the bay.
Jerry and Herzer ran to the rear, fearing the worst, but from the curses 
emanating from below Vickie was fine. The wyvern, when they got there to look 
down, actually seemed to be having a good time paddling around in the water.
"What do I do now?" Vickie yelled. "This water is bloody cold! By the way, 
thanks for the steer, Herzer!"
"His steers were fine," Jerry replied, angrily. "You were all over the sky!"
"Whatever!" Vickie snarled back. "What now?"
"Away the longboat!" Colonel Chang yelled, then leaned over the transom to look 
at the rapidly receding dragon. "I was informed those beasts could swim!"
"They can," Jerry said. "Vickie, swim Yazov back to the ship!"
The ship was turned even closer to the wind so that it was practically standing 
still, but Herzer noticed that it was drifting off to one side. The wyvern was 
swimming powerfully, though, occasionally ducking completely under water and 
swimming that way so his wings could give him a fair semblance of flying. He 
made such good time underwater that the last burst was entirely submerged and 
when the dragon finally emerged next to the ship it gave a pleased burble as if 
it was having fun.
"Oh, yeah, sez you," Vickie choked; she had had to hold her breath for the 
entire swim. "Get me out of here! This water is freezing!"
Sculling his wings on the surface the dragon could easily keep up with the 
slowly drifting ship, and the longboat, which had launched immediately on the 
crash, was able to recover the rider easily. The dragon was another matter.
"Recovery team, over the side!"
With the longboat standing by, four seamen, three males and a female, wearing 
close-fitting full-coverage clothing, went over the side. They were followed by 
a large cargo net which, with difficulty, was slipped under the wyvern. Through 
it all Yazov was fairly placid, poking at the divers as if they were some sort 
of interesting sea life provided for his amusement. But when the sling pulled up 
on him he was anything but amused. The net, though, closed his wings into his 
body so all he could do was protest as he was raised up via a derrick and swung 
across and then down into the hold. Only an idiot would allow an angry wyvern 
loose on the surface of the ship.
"We definitely need to work on this plan," Jerry mused.
"Do you want to call the next one down?" Herzer asked, aghast at the effort 
necessary to recover a downed dragon.
"Nope, you're doing fine," Jerry said. "That was entirely on Vickie's hook."
"Says you," Vickie snarled as she reached the landing platform. "You were 
pointing me all over the sky!"
"That's because you were overcorrecting," Jerry snapped. "And when he waved you 
off you tried to land anyway. I was there, Vickie, don't try to snow me."
"Just because you got put in charge it's going to your head!" the female rider 
snarled. "I don't have to put up with this shit!"
"You can leave if you want," Jerry said, coldly. "I'll get you a boat back to 
shore. But Yazov stays and you're not going to be flying a wyvern ever again in 
your life."
"You can't do that," Vickie said, softly. "You know what that means to us!"
"And that, Vickie, is the point," Jerry replied, much more calmly. "We need you. 
I don't want you grounded. But you have to learn that there are things that 
you're going to have to do to retain what is now a privilege, namely dragon 
riding. And if you're going to be flying off of carriers, you're going to have 
to learn to take steers. Or I'll have you trucked back to Dragon Home and you 
can fly off of nice steady aeries that don't move around."
"Are we done?" Herzer asked. "Because we've only got so many hours of daylight 
left and I really don't want to be waving torches around."
"We're done," Jerry said. "Vickie stay up here and watch."
"Which one do you want?" Herzer asked.
"Take Koo, the one just turning this way," Jerry answered.
Herzer again pointed at the appropriate rider until he waved back then motioned 
him down. This rider, though, took the steers well. The ship had barely gotten 
back underway so the slower speed might have helped but the most important thing 
seemed to be that he reacted immediately to each of Herzer's waved commands. He 
came in on final and Herzer waved him down, then the three of them hit the deck.
"That was a blast!" Koo yelled happily.
"I see what you mean," Vickie said unhappily. "You can't trust your instincts, 
or your beast's, up there."
"No, you can't," Jerry said. "And that means you have to turn over control to 
the guy with the flags."
"That sucks," Vickie said. "I don't trust anybody that much."
"You'll have to," Herzer said.
"And I bet there's one that has even more trouble," Vickie suddenly said with a 
malicious note.
"I think we'll land Joanna last," Jerry said, dryly.
The last wyvern, Donal, ridden by Vida Treviano, had pretty much the same 
problems as Vickie but Vida took the wave-off better, probably because he'd seen 
what would happen if he didn't. He tried twice more but each time came in 
off-path and had to be waved off.
"Donal's getting tired," Vickie said. "I don't think they can do it. I don't 
know if I can do it."
"Herzer, try to tell him to head for the beach," Jerry said. "I have to get back 
there somehow and pick up Shep. I don't know if Donal will be up for another try 
at landing by then or not. Hell, we're going to have to ferry in and out, those 
of us that can manage landings, bringing out the verns."
Herzer pointed his flags at Donal and then waved in the direction of land. He 
had to do it twice before Treviano either understood or was willing to agree. 
Finally, Donal turned to the south and headed for the beach.
"What happens if we're out of sight of land?" Vickie mused.
"Water landing," Jerry said. "And, yeah, if the water had been colder that would 
have been a problem. We need a better method of recovery for the dragons. 
Herzer, time for Joanna."
"Okay," Herzer said, "but the two of you get below. If she actually manages to 
hit this thing I'm not sure there's going to be room for me much less you two."
Herzer pointed the flags at Joanna until she waved a talon at him and lined up 
for a landing. She had good correction for the drift of the ship but she had a 
hard time maintaining height; she kept sliding under the glide path. Herzer 
realized when she was halfway down that the ship was just going too slow for her 
to easily land. She either had to start by pointing forward of the ship and hit 
the landing point as it passed through her glide or the ship had to be going 
faster so she could increase the glide angle without going into a stall. There 
wasn't anything to do about it, now, but it bugged him that she had to keep 
flapping her wings to stay on the landing slope.
She had a good angle, though, on the final run. Herzer, looking up at the 
immense, and rapidly approaching, dragon realized that there was a very good 
chance that he was going to get squished like a bug. The platform wasn't much 
larger than the body of the dragon and if she deviated in the slightest at the 
last she would land right on him. He put the thought out of his mind, though, 
and gave her final corrections. As she started to flare out on final he waved 
her down and dove to the ground.
The air was filled with blasts of wind but they went on far longer than they 
should. He jumped to his feet just in time to see Joanna, flailing wildly off to 
the left, dip her wingtip into the water and pinwheel into the bay.
"Joanna!"
Herzer wasn't the only one bellowing but the dragon's head quickly popped up 
above the light chop and shook from side to side.
"Sorry about that, Herzer!" the dragon bellowed. "Frankly, I lost my nerve at 
the last second. I was going faster than the ship and I didn't think I'd be able 
to stop on that little platform. Oooh, this water's cold."
The dragon's body submerged but her head stayed above the surface as she swam to 
the boat. Instead of using her wings, as the wyverns had done, she sculled her 
body back and forth like a snake. When she reached the side of the boat she 
disdained the recovery team, instead extending one claw-tipped wing and grasping 
the side of the ship. Using this leverage she got her forward talons dug into 
the wood of the bulwark and hoisted herself upwards.
Herzer was nearly pitched off the landing deck as the ship heeled hard over to 
one side. The dragon quickly writhed over the side, leaving a trail of 
splintered wood behind her.
"Sorry about that, Skipper," Joanna said, sticking her head into the 
quarterdeck. "I think we need to work on the design of that area if we're going 
to be recovering me very often."
"I hope we won't have to, Commander," the skipper said, furiously. "That's 
several thousand credits of damage!"
"Make the rail removable," Joanna said, reasonably. "Reinforce the wood. Maybe 
give me some handholds. For that matter, maybe a lowerable ramp. If it's good 
enough we might be able to use it for crashed wyverns."
"We'll see," the skipper said.
"It's not my fault if your ship's a little fragile," the dragon said, then shook 
herself hugely, spreading out her wings so that a fine mist settled over half 
the ship. "Ah, that's better."
Herzer had climbed down from the landing deck and looked around at the group at 
pri-fly and on the quarterdeck.
"What now, sirs?" Herzer asked.
"I have to get back to the shore," Jerry said. "I need to see if Vida can land 
Donal. If not, we either go for a water landing or I'll leave him on the beach 
and bring Donal out myself. If I bring Donal out someone else will need to bring 
out Shep."
"I'll go in with you," Vickie said. "I need to figure out how to do this right."
"No," Jerry said after a moment. "You're more familiar with Yazov and you're not 
comfortable with landing yet. I'll take Koo. His landing was better than mine."
"But . . ." Vickie said, coloring up.
"Sergeant Toweeoo?" Edmund said.
"Yes, Duke Edmund?" Vickie replied, icily.
"You're beginning to grasp what it means to be under military discipline, and 
why it's sometimes necessary. We do not have all day to discuss this. Warrant 
Officer Riadou, accompanied by Sergeant Franken will go to the shore and fly out 
the two wyverns. You, in the meantime, will observe their landings and try to 
ascertain how to improve your performance. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," Vickie said.
"Koo, you can fly Shep," Jerry continued. "I'll bring out Donal. If I have to 
I'll put him in the drink. They don't seem to suffer for it, except the lifting 
out part."
"How are you getting back?" Edmund asked. "We need to get moving."
"They can take the longboat," the skipper said. "Or the cat. Both have sails. If 
we don't make full sail they can catch up. But it will be late today."
"No, I'll take them," Joanna said. "I want to find out if I can take off from 
that ramp you have set up. They don't add much weight."
That stopped everyone as the image of the dragon running out the lever stuck on 
the side of the ship struck them. Herzer dredged up the term "turning turtle" to 
what it might do to the ship.
"I'm . . . not sure that's a good idea," Commander Mbeki said.
"It . . . will be," the skipper said. "We'll turn so the wind is from the port 
quarter. That will give her more wind to work with and it will heel the ship to 
starboard. It'll be interesting, but we'll survive it."
"And then there's the catapult," Evan said happily.
"What catapult?" Joanna growled.


CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There was a wooden block on the top of the landing platform and a slot running 
down the middle.
"The steam generator can be used to pressurize air," Evan said. "There's a 
piston underneath. We'll rig a sliding platform, since you're so large. It will 
accelerate you off the platform and give you immediate airspeed."
"I can run off the platform and get that," Joanna temporized. "How much 
airspeed?"
"An estimated forty klicks," Evan burbled. "More than enough for you to start 
flying immediately. No need for a run-up or dropping off a cliff!"
"Accelerate to forty clicks in, what? Twenty meters?" Joanna snarled. "Blow 
that!"
"Really, you just hold on, lean forward and spring up about halfway through."
"Easy enough for you to say," Jerry interjected. "I'm not sure how to explain it 
to the wyverns."
"We were thinking maybe an automatic release harness or something," Evan 
replied. "But the wyverns should be able to take off, with one rider, without 
it. Greater dragons will have problems."
"Bloody right," Joanna said. "One of them being to get them to use this thing."
"I think it looks like fun," Herzer said. "But I'm not the one using it."
"Fun? I just crashed in the drink once, Herzer!"
"Think about it," Herzer said. "You lean forward and spring off almost 
immediately. And you're already going thirty, forty klicks. Sounds like fun to 
me. I'll be surprised if people don't start using it for kicks by the time the 
voyage is done."
"I suppose you want me to go 'yee-haw' or something," Joanna grumped.
"Well, only if you want to," Herzer replied. "Daylight is wasting."
"I need something to eat before I try this," Joanna said. "I can tell most of my 
grumpiness is low blood sugar."
"It's time for lunch anyway," Jerry replied.
Herzer was surprised to find that he was right; it was past noon. The day had 
passed in a blur since dawn.
Lunch was . . . interesting. So that Joanna wouldn't feel left out, the skipper 
had a table set up on the flight deck and Edmund's party joined her for lunch. 
There was still fresh meat and vegetables available but to give them an inkling 
of what the voyage would be like the skipper ordered "ship's food" to be served 
alongside.
The ship food wasn't nearly as bad as Herzer had expected. He'd read about early 
sailing vessels and the poor quality of the food, but the "ship biscuit" that 
were served, for example, were rather light and slightly sweet.
"This isn't hardtack," Herzer commented, nibbling one of the biscuits. "I've had 
hardtack."
"No," Skipper Chang said. "We know a bit more about food storage than the early 
ships. Those are what used to be called 'captain's biscuits.' They'd go bad in a 
month or so if you stored them in bags, but they're stored in vacuum-packed 
steel barrels. The dwarves are able to make them in quantity."
"We need access to some of this tech," Edmund said. "For field rations. Current 
field rations aren't very good."
"We're working up some food service regulations," Mbeki commented. "I'll make 
sure you get copies."
"Ships used to be hard pressed for water," Herzer commented.
"Again, the dwarves came through for us," the skipper replied with a smile. "The 
ship is supplied with two rather large water tanks, located in the bilges. 
Potable water is pumped in and out. They have to be cleaned from time to time, 
which is a chore and a half, but they carry more than enough water for the 
voyage and are easily refilled. We also chlorinate the water so that it doesn't 
go bad. We pack dried corn, beans, wheat and rice in steel barrels as well, all 
of them vacuum packed. Then there's canned beets, turnip greens, tomatoes, what 
have you. Dried fruit, also vacuum packed. Storing it all is, of course, 
difficult. But the worst part is meats. We're working on oversized canning 
processes for those, but for the time being we're stuck with salting."
Herzer had tried the salt beef and wasn't impressed.
"Better than monkey on a stick," he said.
"And that is?" Commander Mbeki inquired.
"Field rations," Edmund interjected. "A form of jerked and dried meat mixed with 
fruit. Together with parched corn it's the standard field rations on the march."
"You haven't lived, Colonel, until you've lived for a month on fried monkey on a 
stick." Herzer grinned.
"I'll take your word for it," the skipper replied. "Well, this has been a 
pleasant interlude, but I think we should get back to work. Commander Gramlich, 
have you concluded whether you're willing to risk the catapult? This is not 
something where I'm prepared to give you an order."
"I'll do it," Joanna said. She'd finished off half a cow's carcass while the 
others had been having their more limited meal and now looked in a far better 
mood. "Like Herzer said, it might be a blast."
"Very well," the skipper said. "Chief Brooks!"
"Sir," the NCO said, climbing up onto the landing platform.
"Have this knocked down and prepare the launching and recovery teams. Commander 
Gramlich is going to be giving the first demonstration of the launching 
catapult."
The table was knocked down, the riding harnesses were attached to the dragon, 
the longboat with the recovery team onboard was launched and the catapult was 
prepared. This mostly consisted of ensuring there was pressure, drawing back the 
launching platform and cocking it.
"All hands, make sail," Chang ordered, to be repeated by bellows all down the 
ship. "Helm, come to heading zero-one-three."
"Zero-one-three, aye."
"Prepare for launching."
The ship came around until the wind was blowing directly onto the launching 
platform with the ship sailing towards it to maximize the effect. As the sails 
were unfurled and tightened the lively ship picked up speed until she seemed to 
be flying over the light waves, even given the gentleness of the breeze.
"She's a tidy ship," Chang said, smiling for the first time in a long time. 
"Commander Mbeki, launch when ready!"
* * *
The catapult had been modified for the dragon. Now there were two separated 
perches for her feet. She gingerly got on them and gripped tightly.
"Commander," Chief Brooks said. "When the lead perch reaches the edge it's going 
to detach and fly away. We'd like you to have let go before then, but if you 
haven't, let go of both of them right after or you're going to be trying to lift 
them as well as the riders."
"Got it, Chief," the dragon replied. "Let's get this show on the road."
"Lieutenant Herrick?" the chief said, pointing to a large lever to one side of 
the platform. "If you'll do the honors."
"Everyone ready?" Herzer asked, putting his hand on the lever.
Jerry and Koo gave him a thumbs up and Joanna just growled.
"Okay, on three . . ."
"Wait!" Jerry said. "Does that mean . . . ?"
"That means when I say three I'm going to fire you," Herzer replied. "Now get 
ready. One, two, THREE."
Herzer pushed forward, hard, on the lever and was rewarded by a high-pitched 
whistling noise. Then the catapult engaged and the dragon flew forward with a 
bellowed "Oh, shüit!"
The catapult accelerated fast, but not excessively so, and Herzer could clearly 
see that Joanna had let go before the end of the launch. She pushed forward with 
her own strength as her wings flipped open and she soared upward, instantly in 
full flight.
"That was COOL!" she bellowed. "Let's do that AGAIN!"
"First get the men on shore," Mbeki yelled. "Then you have to land. Then you get 
to try out the catapult again."
Joanna waved an assent, then headed for the rapidly receding shore.
"Prepare to come about," the skipper said. "Might as well be in closer when we 
try to recover them."
* * *
In no more than thirty minutes, two wyverns and a dragon could be seen 
approaching. As they got closer it was clear that there were only two riders.
"Lieutenant Herzer," Commander Mbeki said. "Get aloft and prepare to land the 
dragons. Skipper, recommend we come into the wind and reduce speed."
"Sir," Herzer interjected. "The last time Joanna seemed to have more problems 
with us being really slow than not. Recommend . . . well I'm not sure what I 
recommend, but Joanna needed a higher speed."
"What about the wyverns?" the skipper asked, testily.
"Either we increase speed for Joanna, sir, or we see if they can land at a 
higher speed."
"Prepare to come about!"
The ship tacked back into the wind and left all its jib sails flying.
"Speed twelve klicks, sir," the officer of the deck said. The speed of the ship 
was measured by a small propeller at the rear that carried the information to a 
readout via a complicated set of cables and gears.
"We'll see how they do at this clip," Mbeki said. "We were barely doing six 
before. Up you go, Herzer."
Herzer climbed up on the landing platform, picked up his flags and pointed at 
Jerry. This time he maintained a good entry and there was barely a thump when 
the wyvern landed.
He climbed down and walked over to Herzer, shaking his head.
"When I saw how fast it was going I thought you were nuts," Riadou said. "But I 
think it's easier. More speed means we have more control on the way in."
"Makes sense," Herzer said, pointing at Koo. Koo's landing, too, was much 
easier. Finally there was only Joanna to land.
Joanna also had an easier time on the glide path but she had more of a tendency 
to drift to the side. The ship could not point directly into the wind and the 
wind across her was pushing the larger dragon sideways. As she got on final 
approach the disturbance in the air from the ship's sails threw her off path and 
it was clear she wasn't going to hit the platform so Herzer waved her off. She 
had enough airspeed to recover and flapped back up to altitude. On the second 
try she figured out how to correct for drift and came in straight as an arrow. 
At the last moment she backwinged and then dropped, heavily, onto the platform 
as the two humans hit the deck. The entire ship shuddered at the impact of the 
multiton dragon but the platform held.
"That was . . . interesting," Joanna said. "But I did it!" she added with a 
grin.
"Meeting in the wardroom," Duke Edmund said, from the stairs. "There's a 
skylight so Joanna can stick her nose into things."
* * *
Everyone had some point that they felt could be improved on the dragon landing 
and launching system. And they hadn't even tested the launching on the wyverns 
or seen if they were willing to land a second time.
"Tomorrow for that," Skipper Chang said. "General Talbot, with your permission 
I'd like to spend one more day in the bay doing work-ups. I know that puts you 
behind schedule but . . ."
"Better a functioning dragon-carrier when we get to the Isles." Edmund sighed. 
"Agreed. But just one more day."
"Most of the changes aren't crucial," Evan said, looking up from his notes. "The 
biggest one is some place for the flag guy to hide."
"We're going to need a better term than 'flag guy' as well," Commander Mbeki 
said.
"How about landing orders officer?" Jerry said.
" 'Keep your eye on the loo!' " Joanna chuckled. " 'Follow the loo!' No, just 
doesn't have that ring to it."
"Okay, landing signal officer then," Jerry said. "We've also got the problem of 
five dragons and three riders."
"Do you think you can work Herzer up on-board?" the duke asked.
"I don't know, sir," the warrant officer replied, seriously. "Training usually 
takes several hundred hours, not just a few hours in the air. And then there's 
landing. I'd rather he learned that on land, if possible."
"And keep in mind that once we get to sea it just gets harder," the XO pointed 
out. "This is a mill-pond. Out in the Atlantis it's solid rollers, even if we're 
not having a storm."
"We won't launch in foul weather," the skipper said. "But storms do come up 
suddenly. It's something to keep in mind. Think about a good foul weather 
recovery system."
"Other than going for a swim?" Herzer asked.
"In the North Atlantis, which is where we'll be engaging the invasion fleet, 
that's not going to be possible," the XO pointed out. "The water will kill a 
person before we can get them out. It will be on the deck or nothing."
"I think that's about it," the skipper said, rapping his knuckles on the table. 
"Unless you have something to add, General?"
"No, nothing," Edmund replied. "I think today went quite well."
"Better than I anticipated, frankly," Chang replied. "General, I'll see your 
party at dinner?"
"Of course, Skipper."
"Very well, people, good work today. Flight operations commence at dawn 
tomorrow."


CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"And what were you two doing today?" Edmund asked when he entered his cabin, 
Herzer trailing behind. Rachel and Daneh were sitting at the table, looking at 
papers spread over the surface.
"Mostly checking out the ship's medical facilities and general health issues," 
Daneh answered. "They've got an excellent infirmary and the two medics were 
smart but they're not very well trained. We also checked out the meal 
preparation area. The cooks are well versed in sanitation, which I was delighted 
to discover. All in all it's a well-designed ship and a well-trained crew."
"That's good to know," Edmund replied, tiredly. "Frankly, it's more important to 
the mission than that the dragons work. They might be helpful in the Isles. Then 
again, they might not be. I still don't see where they're an offensive weapon."
"I've got some ideas in that area, sir," Herzer said, diffidently. "But I want 
them to get more comfortable in carrier operations before I bring anything else 
up. It's going to mean the wyverns carrying a fair amount of weight if it works, 
which means they'll have to use the catapult."
"We watched one of the landings," Rachel said. "It was very cool."
"It was very hairy from where I was standing," Herzer said. He felt as drained 
as if he'd run the Hill a dozen times. "I think there's going to be a fair 
number of the riders that won't hack it. You have to be very confident in your 
flying and confident that the LSO is giving you good steers. When you land 
normally, the wyvern does most of the work. You just point in a general area and 
they land. This way . . . the rider has to really steer the beast to a landing. 
It's not easy."
"None of it's easy," Edmund replied. "The system that's been set up for moving 
them around, feeding them, launching them. The system that Evan has for moving 
them in and out of the weyr bays, all of it is even more complicated than I 
think you realize. Which is good."
"Good?" Daneh said. "Why?"
"So far, New Destiny has been very good at collecting, and even feeding, large 
masses of troops," Edmund said. "I'm surprised that they are, because they're 
not very good at using them. Paul's group tends to be very controlling; they 
don't think an idea is a good one unless one of them has it. They wouldn't have 
let someone like Evan have his head and just figure things out. They would have 
stopped Herzer when he went up and tried to control the wyverns on the way in. I 
think they would have even stopped him after it was clear it worked. Again, if 
they don't have the idea it is, by definition, bad."
"Your point?" Daneh asked.
"It's pretty clear; I don't think they are ever going to be able to match this 
sort of ability. They may have, probably do have, wyverns and even dragons. But 
I don't think they'll be able to come up with all the things necessary to use 
dragon-carriers. And even after we use them against them, if we do, they won't 
be able to match our quality. It's like the Blood Lords in a way. Having a 
capability that your enemy cannot match in war is a wonderful asset."
"If they can't match it, sir," Herzer said. "I don't really see that they won't 
be able to."
"Oh, they may figure out how to land them and take off," Edmund admitted. "But I 
don't think they'll be as good at it as we'll be. And we'll keep improving. 
Because we let people like you, and Jerry and Evan and even Commander Mbeki just 
figure out what to do. Rather than telling them what to do."
"You're talking about initiative," Rachel interjected.
"Absolutely. It's something that we support, stress even. It's something that 
New Destiny suppresses. In time, I hope to prove to them how wrong they are."
* * *
Herzer waved Koo down and ducked into his station as Nebka's wings brushed just 
past his head.
"That's a center shot for Koo," he called down to pri-fly from his station at 
the front of the platform. The cuplike station had been hung off the end of the 
landing platform by a team under Chief Brooks and it lifted his head and 
shoulders just over the platform itself.
"General," the skipper said. "I think these flyers have got the technique down. 
We've launched wyverns, landed wyverns and launched and landed Commander 
Gramlich. I say we head to sea."
"Concur," Duke Edmund said.
"Commander Mbeki, cease flight operations. Helm, come to heading 
zero-seven-five. Set full sail."
"Zero-seven-five, aye."
"Now you'll see what sailing is all about, General."
"Looking forward to it, Colonel."
* * *
Herzer was at pri-fly when the ship passed out of the bay and into the open 
ocean. As soon as it was beyond the protecting arms of the bay, they hit the 
full swells of the Atlantis and the ship, under full sail, started to corkscrew 
through the waves.
"Oh, my God," Jerry gasped, grabbing the handrail at the rear of pri-fly. "We're 
supposed to land in this?" From below the squawks and bellows of the wyverns 
filled the air.
"This isn't bad," Commander Mbeki protested. "The seas are only two and a half, 
maybe three meters."
As he said that one of the seas first lifted then dropped the stern of the ship 
and Herzer staggered across and slammed into Duke Edmund.
"Steady, Herzer," the duke said in a strange voice. Herzer glanced at him and 
for the first time in his memory saw Edmund Talbot looking strained.
"I'm going to head below," Talbot said. "I'll just . . . I'm going to head 
below."
"Very well, General," the commander replied. "Take care."
With a nod Edmund headed for the companionway.
"I'm going to check on the wyverns," Jerry said, staggering across the deck. He 
slid sideways as a rogue wave pitched the ship to the side and was caught by one 
of the relief quartermasters who was standing by to take over the wheel. He 
shook his head and plotted a course for the companionway and after a few false 
starts made it and started to head below.
By this time, Herzer was feeling the first hint of queasiness and looked 
appealingly at the commander.
"Gets everyone at first," Commander Mbeki said, in a kindly voice. "The center 
of the ship's where the motion's the least. And if you have to go, try to do it 
over the lee side. That's the side the wind's not blowing from. And keep it off 
the decks."
What had been a light breeze felt like a gale as Herzer staggered across the 
deck and headed down to the maindeck. He managed to make it halfway up the ship 
by holding onto the railing on what he'd come to learn was the "starboard" 
side—in landsmen's terms the right if you were looking forward in the ship. The 
wind that had been pleasantly warm seemed to have dropped twenty degrees and he 
was feeling decidedly chilly. But the motion was less here. His stomach was 
feeling better. On the other hand, he was starting to shiver and the wind seemed 
to be cutting to the bone. There was only one choice. He'd run below, get his 
coat, and head back up here. Maybe he'd just sleep here; he didn't seem to be in 
anyone's way.
Decision made, he crab-walked across the deck, occasionally scuttling from side 
to side, and made it to the stairs down. He'd taken to going forwards down the 
stairs but this time he carefully turned around and lowered himself with hands 
on both railings. Despite that, he slammed into the wall as the ship hit a rogue 
wave. He staggered down the corridor to his room, grabbed his jacket—noticing in 
passing that Rachel was in the bottom bunk moaning, with a bucket by the side of 
the bunk—and was just opposite the officer's head when he realized he had no 
more than three seconds before he was going to throw up.
He made it into the head, hung his head over the toilet and began to spew.
It was one of the most miserable times of his life. He seemed to be throwing up 
far more than he'd eaten. The captain's chef had cooked a very nice chicken, 
heavily spiced with thyme, for lunch and he'd eaten more than his share. And it 
was all coming back to him.
The toilet was operated by pressing down on a foot pedal and then pumping a 
lever. The lever opened a seal at the bottom of the bowl and the pedal let it 
pump up salt water to wash the bowl clean. As Herzer slumped down to his knees 
he made the remarkable discovery that the foot pedal could, in these 
circumstances, become a knee pedal and the lever was operable from that 
position.
Over the next few hours he made several other discoveries.
The door of the head was difficult to operate while slithering around on the 
floor.
The foot/knee pedal could also be operated by hand if you couldn't even get up 
the energy to get to your knees.
The underside of the sink was remarkably free of graffiti. He felt he ought to 
add a manual for future adventurers. Little truisms to hold dear in those 
special and private moments when you're looking at the underside of a sink.
Seasickness was one of the most unpleasant experiences in the world.
The man who invented the flush toilet was one of the most important persons ever 
to live on the face of the earth.
Knee and elbow pads: They're not just for sword work outs anymore.
No matter how many times you pull the lever, sevens are not going to come up.
After a while, it all tastes like fish anyway.
When all the food was gone, the thyme just kept coming and coming and coming.
It started with what he came to call "the three-second rule." You had the 
sudden, intense, knowledge that in three seconds you were going to be seeing the 
contents of your stomach. You had those three seconds to make a will, pray to 
the gods that if they got you out of this you were going to lead a straight life 
from now on, swim for shore or make it to the toilet.
When the three seconds were up the vomiting started. That would go on for what 
seemed like an eternity, whether you had anything in your stomach to vomit up or 
not.
When the vomiting was done there was a moment of blessed euphoria. You weren't 
vomiting anymore. In fact, you felt almost human. You could wipe your face, wipe 
up any spills, try to get the door open, and do all the usual things that humans 
do, like think about whether you were going to die or the ship was going to 
sink.
Then came the lethargy. Suddenly, it was as if none of your muscles would 
function. All that you could do was sit on the floor and wait for it to pass. It 
would, in time; sometimes it seemed like days, but it passed. A few times it was 
so strong he felt himself stop breathing and had to will each breath with all 
his remaining might. Then, there was a brief moment when you thought it might be 
over, a few seconds perhaps ten when you felt really human. And then . . . the 
three-second rule came into play.
Herzer wasn't sure how long this went on but it was hours at least. Finally, as 
he passed out of a lethargic stage, his stomach, while protesting, seemed to be 
under control and the "good" period extended beyond all normal ken. He dragged 
himself to his feet, using the basin and his good friend the toilet, figured out 
how to operate the insanely complex lock on the door and staggered down the 
corridor to his room.
The bucket had spilled at some point but Rachel had cleaned up most of the 
detritus. The room still smelled foul. After careful consideration he grabbed 
the coat the kindly Navy had issued him, which was made of heavy wool, and 
staggered back down the corridor, out onto the deck and down to the mainmast. 
When he got there he wrapped himself around it and fell dead asleep.
* * *
Joel had never been so glad to go on duty in his life. It was apparent that most 
of the crew was relatively inexperienced with life at sea and a good many of 
them had succumbed to seasickness as soon as the ship exited the bay. He'd been 
sleeping and hadn't really paid much attention to the change in motion until 
someone slammed into his tier of bunks. His eyes flew open and he started to 
roll off the bunk, expecting an attack, when he heard the retching.
"Get it out of the compartment for God's sake," he muttered, lying back down. 
But the smell was intense in the crowded compartment and others had begun to 
react from a combination of seasickness and sympathetic nausea. He could even 
feel himself starting to get queasy. Finally he rolled out of the bunk, grabbed 
his peacoat and headed up on deck.
The wind was fresh and clean, which was a pleasant change from below, but there 
were plenty of puking sailors up on the maindeck as well. He headed forward to 
the bowsprit and stood looking down at the ship's "foot," the wave that the ship 
pushed up in front of it. Sometimes dolphins would come up and ride in the foot 
but at the moment all there was was foamy white water, just visible in the 
gathering darkness. He had another few hours before he had to go on duty and 
what he'd like to be doing was sleeping. But given the conditions in the 
compartment, he'd have a better chance up here. So he curled up against the 
lines at the base of the bowsprit, pulled up the collar of his coat and nodded 
into a restless sleep.
The dinging of eight bells and the movement of the watch woke him up and he 
hurried to the small galley at the rear of the ship. It was mainly to keep hot 
cider going for the crew and officers on the quarterdeck. As he moved across the 
maindeck towards his duty station the companionway from the officer's quarters 
opened up and a large figure stumbled onto the deck. He was one of General 
Edmund's party, an aide or something, and obviously not enjoying the voyage.
Come to think of it, Edmund figured largely in that horrible "true-life tale" 
he'd been reading. If there was any truth to the book at all, this guy probably 
knew some of the people involved, maybe even the lousy writer. He'd have to pump 
him for information sometime. But not when he was so seasick he didn't even 
notice the steward in the darkness. The guy stumbled across the deck and more or 
less collapsed at the base of the mainmast. If that was a Blood Lord, the book 
had to be pure fiction.
* * *
Sometime during the night Herzer had made his way back to his cabin and when he 
awoke Rachel was already gone. She had cleaned up from the night before and the 
air held only a hint of foulness. He rolled out of the bunk, put on his last 
clean uniform and staggered down the corridor to the wardroom.
Besides Rachel, Duke Edmund and Commander Mbeki were seated at the table looking 
at cups of tea. Just . . . looking.
"Morning," Herzer muttered, slamming into the hard seat as a wave caught him.
"Morning, Lieutenant," the commander said. "Enjoying yourself?"
"It was great right up until we cleared the bay," Herzer said. "After that a 
combination of that bastard Newton and some stomach bug has made it less 
pleasant."
A steward stuck his head in the room and looked around.
"Food?" he asked.
"I'll take a rasher of bacon," the commander said. "And three eggs. Up. More tea 
and some for Herzer."
"I think I could handle a bowl of mush," Herzer muttered. "If you've got it."
"Coming right up. Duke? Miss?"
"Nothing for me," Rachel said.
"I'll take some mush, too," the duke replied. "I think I can keep it down. And 
if I can't it's at least soft coming up."
"Is your throat as sore as mine, sir?" Herzer asked, his voice hoarse.
"I suspect so," Edmund said. "I just realized that in my long and varied career, 
I had spent it all on land. I had no idea I was susceptible to seasickness."
"Just about everyone is," the commander interjected. "Most get over it after a 
couple of days at most. There are some, however, who never do. There are also 
those who say that keeping your stomach full helps. I think they're cracked, 
frankly. Oh, and if you had shipped out before the Fall, you'd never have known; 
your nannites would have easily corrected it before the first symptoms."
"I wish they would now," Rachel moaned. "I don't think I want to even be in the 
same room with food."
"Head to the center of the boat," Herzer said.
"Ship, Lieutenant," the commander corrected. "The Richard is a ship, not a 
boat."
"Sorry, head to the center of the ship," Herzer said. "The ride's smoother 
there."
"For now," Mbeki said. "And it will still be smoother than your cabin. But . . . 
have you looked outside?"
"No," Herzer said. "Why?"
"Bit of a blow coming I think. There's a hoary old adage that an Indian summer 
will be followed by the worst blow of the season. Didn't really hold true with 
Mother controlling the weather, but I think the conditions might have 
reestablished themselves. The sky is quite black to the west."
"Oh," Edmund said. "Great."
"Actually, it might be," the commander said. "We won't be working the wyverns, 
not that they're up to it from what I've been told. But it will give us a fair 
turn of speed south. Assuming we can keep this tub upright; the way the sails 
are rigged will make fighting our way through a storm . . . interesting."
"Is there any good news?" Herzer asked.
"Well, I hear that the ship's betting pool has it three to one that you won't 
dump your dragon the first time you try to land," the commander said with a 
grin.
"Joy."
* * *
The storm hit just after noon.


CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Herzer had heard the call of "All Hands! Shorten sail" and had made his way up 
to the deck to observe. The sailors were already aloft doing their high-wire act 
by the time he got on deck and he watched it again, in awe. To work with the 
sails required them to first climb to nearly the top of the mast and then work 
their way out on thin foot-ropes. All of this while he was having a hard time 
standing upright. He did notice, this time, that they were all wearing some sort 
of harness attached to a safety rope. If one of them slipped the harness would, 
presumably, keep them from falling to their deaths.
He'd noticed a lot of little touches like that on the ship. Danger areas marked 
off with yellow and black paint. Notices pasted up where hazardous materials 
were stored. Warnings about lifting heavy weights. The ship matched some of his 
expectations and violated others. He had read stories from the old sailing days 
and back then injuries and death were considered just the common lot of the 
sailor, like bad food, hammocks and no decent bathroom.
This ship had showers, even for the crew, functional toilets and sinks. The crew 
berthed in cots, albeit ones that were stacked four high. The food was well 
prepared and as varied as any that he had seen in the post-Fall period. They 
lived, come to think of it, better than Courtney and Mike. Better than Blood 
Lords on campaign.
But when he watched them shimmying on those ropes he had to admit that they 
deserved their improved conditions.
The first real blast of wind hit as the last of the crew were descending from 
the rigging, and despite the fact that most of the sails were "furled" the wind 
pushed the ship over on its side to the point that a wave washed up onto the 
deck. The ship, though, responded to it sluggishly. The wind was howling in the 
rigging but the ship was digging into the swells rather than running over them, 
water creaming over the bow on a regular basis. She was riding them out, but it 
didn't look good to Herzer.
When the rain hit he decided that he'd like a bit more cover and headed up to 
the quarterdeck. There were now two men on the wheel and it was clear that they 
were needed; it seemed to be kicking like a live thing in their hands.
"Following sea," the skipper yelled to him when he noticed the look. "The waves 
push into the rudder and try to push it aside."
"Won't happen with my hands on the wheel, sir," one of the sailors called. "She 
gripes, though, she surely does."
"The pressure of the wind is pushing her nose down," the skipper translated. 
"We'll have to move some stores aft to give her more weight back there." He 
turned and called below for a party and gave some rapid instructions including 
calling for Mbeki.
"It'll take a while, though," he added. "I'd appreciate it if you moved below, 
Lieutenant. This may look easy, but it's not."
"Yes, sir," Herzer said, heading for the companionway. It didn't look easy for 
that matter.
Instead of heading for his cabin, though, Herzer headed for the hatch to the 
wyvern area. The main hatch had been closed and "dogged down," meaning that 
catches had been firmly sealed from the inside. There was a personnel hatch, 
though, and he opened that and went below, carefully setting the dual-side 
catches in place before he climbed down the ladder.
The scene below was a veritable Inferno. The wyverns were not happy at the 
change of motion in the ship and they were making their disquiet abundantly 
clear. They also had decided that since they weren't going to be let out to go 
potty, it was time to do it indoors. Between the screeches and the smell he 
nearly climbed back out, but he stuck with what he considered his duty.
He saw Jerry slithering across the slimy floor and, grabbing a convenient rail, 
headed in his direction.
"Anything I can do?" he yelled over the squalling dragons.
"I dunno," Jerry yelled back. "Can you either get the ship to quit pitching or 
find me a wyvern sedative?"
"No," Herzer answered with a laugh. "Have they been fed?"
"Of course they've been fed," Jerry answered. "Then they puked it back up. And I 
couldn't believe it but it really did look worse coming back up. I'm starting to 
worry, they're not getting enough water."
"This gale isn't going to quit any time soon," Herzer said. He'd gotten close 
enough that they could carry on a conversation at normal tones. "What are we 
going to do?"
"Not sure," Jerry admitted. "Whatever we can. Hopefully they'll get their sea 
legs after a couple of days. I'm getting better; how 'bout you?"
"Yeah," Herzer admitted. "At least before I came down here. Is there some way to 
clean this out?"
"I haven't had time to find out," Jerry admitted.
"I will."
Herzer made his way back up the ladder and then paused when he reached the deck. 
The ship was still pitching and tossing and the wind was shrieking around him 
like a banshee. But from his experience of storms on land, the first part was 
usually worst. Once it passed over, if it passed over he temporized, it should 
get better.
He grabbed a passing seaman and was directed forward to where Chief Brooks was 
directing a party that was attending to the lashings on the longboat.
"Chief, you need to tell me who to bother when you don't want to be," Herzer 
yelled over the storm. The ship chose that moment to bury her nose in a wave and 
a flood of green poured over the side. Herzer instinctively shot a hand out and 
grabbed a rope, holding onto a young sailor that was passing by with his clamp. 
As soon as the flood had passed he pulled the sailor upright, noticing in 
passing that "it" was female, and tossed her back towards the longboat. "Back to 
work, seaman."
"Well, you're here," the chief yelled back, grinning at the interplay. "Not bad 
for a bloody landlubber. What'cha need, Lieutenant?"
"The wyvern area is fisking horrible."
"So I heard. But I don't have a party to help you."
"That's not the problem. We just need some idea what to do with all the . . . 
stuff."
"There's a washing system down there. Didn't anyone show the riders?"
"Apparently not."
"Fisk!" the chief snarled. "Bosun! You're in charge."
"Got it, Chief," a muscular woman yelled to him over the wind and rain.
"Let's go, sir," the chief said, working his way aft.
When they got through the hatch the chief said "Faugh" at the smell, then looked 
around for the riders.
"Warrant, weren't you briefed on the cleaning apparatus?" he yelled over the 
screeching wyverns.
"No, Chief, we weren't," Jerry called back. "What cleaning apparatus?"
As it turned out there was a saltwater pump and a draining system that the chief 
identified. Then he gave a short class on its use. The pump could be operated by 
two people, but four was better. The water drained to one of four points in the 
compartment where it was collected in a pipe that led to the exterior of the 
ship.
"There's a one-way valve at the end," the chief explained. "But in this sea 
you're going to have to pump it out as well." He showed them that pump. "With 
only the two enlisted riders there's no way you can clean all this up," he 
finally admitted.
"I can help," Herzer interjected.
"No, I'll get a working party," the chief said. "Could I speak to you two young 
gentlemen?"
He led them over to a corner of the compartment and put his hands on his hips.
"I appreciate as much as anyone when officers are willing to get their hands 
dirty," he said, looking them both in the eye. "We've had some young gentlemen 
come on this ship and think they're too good to do anything but walk around with 
their noses in the air. But you're officers, sirs, and your job really is to 
supervise. That's not another word for sitting on your ass, sirs; it means just 
what it means. And, frankly, this isn't even a job for officers to supervise, 
it's for a petty, one of your sergeants, to handle. Your job's to figure out 
what's going to happen next, sirs, while my job, your sergeant's job, is to 
handle what's happening now."
"Understood, Chief," Herzer said, grinning to finally feel back in the military. 
"Thanks for the kick in the ass."
"I understand too, Chief," Jerry said with a sigh. "I'm too used to being the 
doer."
"Well, you're a warrant, sir," the chief said with a frown. "Warrants, really, 
are doers, too. But not cleaning up shit and piss and puke. That's what enlisted 
men are for," he added with a chuckle. "Have these boys been fed?"
"They puked it all up," Jerry said. "And, yeah, that's got me worried."
"And they get angry when they're hungry," the chief said.
"They're too sick and nervous to be angry now," Jerry said.
"But when they're over being sick and nervous?" the chief prompted.
"I wouldn't put an arm though the bars," Jerry admitted.
"With all due respect, sir, I'd suggest feeding them. Even though they puke it 
up. As you can see, now, we can clean that up easy enough."
"Agreed, Chief," the warrant said, then grinned. "Ever thought of being a rider, 
Chief?"
"Not on your life, sir," the NCO replied. "I'll tell you the truth, I don't even 
like climbing the rat-lines. I'm so afraid of heights it's not funny. I'd rather 
eat dirt for the rest of my life. How's the commander?"
"You mean Joanna?" Jerry asked. "She's not sick, except at the smell. She'll be 
glad to get the area cleaned out."
The chief looked at the deck overhead for a moment then smiled.
"I wonder if she minds rain?"
They moved forward to where the dragon was curled up, looking at the bedlam with 
a beady eye.
"Commander Gramlich, we're going to get this area cleaned out," the chief said. 
"But it will be a bit and it will get messy. I was wondering if you might be 
okay with moving to the landing platform."
Joanna looked at him for a moment then rustled her wings.
"I weigh nearly two tons, Chief," she answered after a moment's thought. "I 
notice that the ship tends to . . . move when I do. That's why I'm placed damned 
near the center of the ship. Won't the skipper have something to say about 
that?"
"Well, ma'am, as it happens, we're in the process of moving some weight aft . . 
."
"And I'm a nice mobile weight?" she asked with a chuckling hiss.
"I'd not put it like that, ma'am," the chief said with a smile. "But we can 
lower the ramp easy enough, even in this sea. The toughest part will be opening 
and closing the hatch. But if you were to nip through quick-like . . ."
"Be sure to tell the skipper and then, yes, I'm game," Joanna said. "Anything to 
get out of this damned hold."
* * *
"Annibale, Bodman," PO Singhisen said. "Fall out for a working party."
It felt like Joel had just gotten his eyes closed. With the storm he'd been in 
the galley getting the fires put out and making sure everything was lashed down. 
So had Bodman, for that matter, who was one of the mid-watch cooks.
"I just put my head down, PO!" Bodman protested, trying to roll over and go back 
to sleep.
"Fall out," the PO said, sharply. "Now."
Joel rolled off his bunk and pulled on his clothes. The wind was still strong 
but the ship seemed to be riding better.
"What are we doing?" he asked.
"The damned dragons had as much trouble last night as the rest of the crew," 
Singhisen said, shaking her head. "We're going to go get their compartment 
cleaned out."
"Oh, fisking joy," Bodman whined. "Why can't the riders do it?"
"Because there's only two that ain't officers," the petty officer explained as 
if talking to a small child. "And officers don't clean up shit and piss. It 
ain't their job."
"Join the Navy," Bodman complained as they made their way forward. "Join the 
adventure."
Fortunately they didn't have to make their way on deck and the dragon deck was 
almost uncomfortably warm.
Singhisen had gotten more than just the two of them and there was a group of 
deck-apes waiting in the wyvern deck when they arrived.
"Okay, McKerlie. Take your team and man the hose pumps. Mbonu, your people are 
on the outfall pump; you know how to operate it?"
"Yes, PO," the lead seaman said, waving her group over to the pump that was at 
the forward end of the compartment.
"Annibale, Bodman, you handle the hoses," she continued, waving around the room. 
"We need to get these decks rinsed down. Then we'll swab everywhere but in the 
occupied cages. Then we rinse 'em down again."
"Thanks PO," one of the riders said, coming to the aft of the compartment. "I'm 
getting my riders up here; we'll try to keep the wyverns from taking anybody's 
arm off."
"Is that a real problem?" Singhisen asked.
"I dunno," the rider said, shaking his head. "They're not in the best of moods."
Joel unreeled the hose and set to work as the deck-apes pumped. The . . . 
material on the floor was unpleasantly solid and splashed when the salt water 
hit it, throwing chunks of material around the compartment. He had to get down 
to a low angle to get it moved and that tended to splash more onto him. He'd 
wondered why the two stewards were doing the, relatively, lighter job of using 
the hose but he decided quickly that it was the worse of the two evils. Score 
one for the deck-apes.
The material did move, though, sloshing back and forth and forming an ugly 
puddle at the forward end of the compartment as the team there pumped it out. 
The riders were sliding around in it, moving from cage to cage and trying to 
calm the hissing wyverns. One of the latter got a muzzle through and took a 
swipe at him as he was spraying under the edge of the cage, trying to get a 
lodged chunk of . . . something sort of greenish yellow, worked free. The female 
rider, who had sergeant stripes instead of a PO's chevrons, whapped it on the 
nose and it pulled back into its cage. He gave the sergeant a nod, washed the 
chunk of . . . whatever loose and kept spraying.
Finally, when he and Bodman had the compartment more or less clear the PO got 
the deck apes on the outflow pump working with mops. It didn't get long to get 
everything but the cages clean and by spraying under them they even got most of 
the crap out of those.
It was a nasty, disgusting, job and not one he wanted to repeat any time soon. 
In his professional opinion, dragons belonged on the land and not in a damned 
ship.
He was really gonna have to have a long talk with Sheida when this mission was 
over.
* * *
In no more than twenty minutes Joanna was ensconced on the landing platform. The 
chief had even rigged heavy ropes so that she could hold on; since the rear of 
the ship was still bucking up and down it was necessary. After a bit she thrust 
a couple of talons under the ropes, curled in a ball, closed her eyes and 
appeared to go to sleep.
"Dragons, wyverns for that matter, tend to sleep a lot," Jerry yelled as they 
headed back down to the quarterdeck. "They use high energy when they have to and 
try to sleep most of the rest of the time."
True to Herzer's mental prediction the wind seemed to be moderating and with it 
the seas. And with Joanna's weight to the rear of the ship, along with whatever 
stores had been moved, the bows were now sweeping over the waves instead of 
digging into them.
They headed down into the hold again where a team of sailors, with Vickie and a 
female PO directing, were cleaning out the wyvern stalls. With the materials 
available the sketchy cleaning didn't take long and Jerry directed the feeding 
afterwards as the hands, most of whom were probably from an off-duty watch, 
walked out of the compartment grumbling. Some of the wyverns barely poked at 
their food but most of them ate as if they were starving. Some of their distress 
must have been hunger because by the time they were done most of them had 
settled down. And, just as Jerry predicted, those that had fed almost 
immediately tucked their heads under their wings and, swaying with the ship, 
went to sleep.
"Good," Jerry said. "That's the first decent rest they've gotten in two days." 
He frowned at Chauncey and Yazov, both of whom had ignored their food. They were 
still mewling piteously although they'd quit the metal-bending shrieks.
"If we found something tastier for them they might eat," Herzer suggested.
"Yeah, and then the next time they didn't like their food they'd wait until we 
gave them something better," Jerry said. "No, they're just going to have to eat 
it or not."
Chauncey looked through the bars of his stall and mewed piteously at Herzer.
"I'm sure the cook has some scraps left over," Herzer said. "What if we just 
gave them a few? That might make them hungry enough they'd eat their slop."
"I dunno," Jerry said. "It goes against the grain."
"If I'd been puking," Herzer said, mentally adding which I have, his throat was 
still raw with it, "I wouldn't want something that looked like puke."
"You have a point."
Herzer, getting lost only one time, made his way to the main kitchen, which the 
sailors insisted be called a "galley," of the ship and caught the eye of one of 
the NCOs.
"A couple of the dragons are badly off their feed," he said. "We're hoping some 
scraps will get them eating again."
"All the edible garbage goes in those pails," the petty officer said, pointing 
to a line of buckets lashed to the wall. "Take whatever you want; we just pitch 
it over the side."
Herzer went over and checked them over. Most of the garbage consisted of ship's 
bread and vegetables, but one bucket had a fair amount of stew from the evening 
meal in it. He untied that one and started to carry it back to the dragons.
"Hang on, sir," the petty officer said. "Johnson, carry that for the lieutenant, 
then head back here when you're done. Bring the bucket."
Herzer wasn't sure if the petty officer just wanted his bucket back or if he was 
getting another class in "enlisted men do, officers supervise" but he followed 
the sailor, who didn't get lost, back to the dragon deck.
The scraps, when added to their slop, were a big hit with the two dragons. They 
got enough meat that they started sucking on their slop right afterwards.
"Sir, if you don't mind," Johnson said. "We can try to segregate the meat that 
gets thrown away. And there's bones and things that don't get used, too."
"As long as the PO says it's okay, that would be great," Herzer said. "Johnson, 
wasn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Thanks for your help," Jerry said. "If you ever want a ride, assuming we can 
get them back in the air . . ."
"That would be great, sir." The sailor grinned. "I'd better get back."
"Thanks again," Herzer said. When the sailor had left, Herzer grinned at the 
rider. "I think you've got a convert."
"Oh, we've had plenty of people ask us about rides," Jerry said. "Or even 
becoming riders. Especially since we're down two."
"One of them being me," Herzer said. "Sorry."
"Not a problem," Jerry replied. "Duke Edmund has been fairly clear on that. As 
soon as the weather calms down, and assuming as I said that we can take off and 
land in this mess, we'll see about getting you trained. But I warn you, landing 
on this thing is not easy."
"You need at least one more rider than you have dragons," Herzer said. "Or, at 
least, dragons in the air."
"Why?"
"For the LSO. I don't know that I'd have been able to do it if I hadn't had that 
one experience with riding. It gave me a grasp of what I was doing."
"Point," Jerry said. "Well, since we've got the wyverns settled and there's not 
much going on, I might as well start with giving you the ground school portion."
"Ground school?" Herzer said.
"You have no idea."


CHAPTER SIXTEEN
For the next two days, as the weather continued foul, Jerry and Vickie between 
them tried to cram all the theoretical aspects of dragon riding into Herzer's 
aching head. At night he went to bed with terms like "yaw" running through his 
head and every morning it started all over again.
He discovered what had been happening in his brief flight when he'd been trying 
to move the dragon around in the air. He learned about optimum glide paths, 
methods of spotting thermals, and the anatomy of the wyverns. The wings were 
not, as he'd thought, just flesh, blood, skin and bone, but were a complex web 
of far more advanced materials including biologically excreted carbon nanotubes.
"It's the only way the wing bones could support their weight and powered 
flight," Vickie explained. "There's no way that bone and skin alone could do it. 
The largest previous flyer was a fraction of their size. And there's some 
indication that overall air pressure was higher in the Jurassic."
"So Joanna's got this in her, too?" Herzer asked, looking at the sketch. 
"They've got to be some of the strongest 'natural' material on earth."
"They are," Vickie said, frowning. "We try not to make too much of a point of 
it."
"I can imagine why," Herzer said, frowning in his own turn. "There's a lot I can 
imagine to do with wyvern wings." The bones would make excellent weapons and the 
primary skins would make tremendous armor. Assuming you could figure out a way 
to cut it."
"As to Joanna, yes," Vickie said. "But more so. How do you think she keeps her 
head up in flight?"
"Bloody hell," Herzer said. "That's . . . a lot of nanotubes."
"It's one of the reasons they grow so slowly," Vickie said. "And they're 
continuous filament monomolecules. One of the strongest substances ever made."
"Cutting them would be a stone bitch," Herzer said. "Which means their wings 
aren't going to be subject to puncture in combat."
"Trust you to think of that." Vickie chuckled. "But they can be dislocated. It's 
one of their big weaknesses. But, no, they don't break wing bones or tear 
wings."
"If they were fighting on the ground the thing to do would be to wrap their 
wings around them," Herzer thought. "Nothing would get through it."
"They can be superficially scratched," Vickie said. "And that takes a long time 
to heal. But their wings are, for all practical purposes, invulnerable. On the 
other hand, they take a lot of care and feeding."
Which they did. On active days they required several feedings per day, totally 
nearly their own body weight. On inactive days they required far less, but every 
day it was excreted.
"Fortunately, they tend to let go in air," Jerry said, as he was covering that 
aspect. "But with them cooped up as they are . . ."
"It gets messy." Herzer grinned.
"That apparently was passed on, and Evan the Ever Efficient planned for it," 
Jerry said. "The ship really does have enough stores to support them for a 
hundred days, but that's at the cost of crew. This is a really skeleton crew for 
a ship this size."
"I'd noticed," Herzer said.
And the skeleton crew was kept busy. While Herzer was cramming his head with 
information about dragons the crew was busy fighting the storm. Again and again 
the sails had to be trimmed as the wind backed around, died down and then blew 
back up.
It was rough and nasty and apparently the life of the Navy. Herzer decided that 
they could keep it.
* * *
Working the night shift was not helping with Joel's mission. He'd picked up a 
rumor that the head cook was peculating, probably with the help of some of the 
victuallers that supplied the ship. But that didn't make him a spy, although 
Joel would include it in his report.
The problem with working the mid-watch was that he had minimal interaction with 
the officers. If there was a New Destiny agent on-board, the most damaging 
position would be among the officers. And although they rotated shifts so he'd 
been around each of them, if any of them were communicating with New Destiny, it 
wasn't clear.
As he came on watch he picked up another jug of herbal tea and some mugs and 
stuck his head in the wardroom on his way to the quarterdeck. Commander Mbeki 
was standing at the rear of the wardroom table, just turning away from, 
apparently, contemplating the forward bulkhead.
"Get you anything, sir?" Joel asked, holding up the jug and mugs. "Nice shot of 
herbal tea for a cold night?"
"Thank you, Joel, I'd like that," Mbeki said, his face wooden.
"You okay, sir?" the steward replied, frowning. "You look pretty down."
"I'm fine, seaman," the commander replied, taking the mug that was poured for 
him. "Just wish this storm would abate."
"Well, if wishes were fishes, sir," Joel replied with a patented young and 
stupid grin. "Storms don't listen to wishes is my experience. You just ride with 
'em or turn into 'em and ride 'em out."
"You've sailed before?" the commander asked, surprised.
"Sailed small fishing boats in Flora, sir," Joel said, taking a mug of tea for 
himself. "Then took a packet up the coast and joined the Navy. Seemed like the 
right thing to do."
"What did you do before?" the commander asked. He didn't have to say "before the 
Fall."
"Before" was always the same, before the world came apart.
"Mostly sailed," Joel said, shrugging his shoulders.
"Family?" the commander asked, sitting down.
Joel paused and then nodded. "Wife and daughter, sir. Miriam, I'd guess she was 
home in Briton. We had a place on the coast. My daughter . . . she was visiting 
friends in Ropasa. Near the Lore." He shrugged. "I try not to think about it. No 
more than, oh, a hundred times a day."
Mbeki nodded sadly. "Don't tell anyone that, if you take my advice."
"That I think about it?" Joel asked.
"Where they were," Mbeki said, his face hard. "You really don't want New Destiny 
finding out. Trust me on that."
"I will, sir," the steward said, mentally filing the datum. And the face. And 
the body posture. And the radiating anger. "I surely will."
* * *
Finally, on the fourth day after they had left the bay, Herzer emerged in the 
morning to a strong, cold north wind and beautiful clear skies. The seas were 
rough but he'd acquired some of the knack for moving on the pitching deck and he 
made his way down to the dragon deck gathering no more than two new bruises on 
the way.
"It's a good day to fly," Vickie said as he came down the ladder. She and Koo 
were engaged in feeding the wyverns and they, too, seemed to think it was a good 
day to fly since they kept looking up from their feed and cawing at the 
overhead.
"If you can get off the ship," Herzer said. "And back on. If you thought the 
water was cold before . . ."
"What's it like?" Jerry asked. "I still haven't been topside."
"Cold," Herzer said, opening his coat in the warmth of the stables. "Windy. 
Really windy."
"I'm willing to give it a try," Joanna rumbled, from forward. She had moved down 
after the first night when all the stores possible had been moved aft and the 
dragon deck cleaned up. Now she stretched to the limit possible and rustled her 
wings irritably. "And if I've got to hit the water, I can handle the cold."
"I'll go see Commander Mbeki," Jerry said, shrugging into a fur-lined jacket.
"See if you can at least get the hatch open," Joanna said. "I'm tired of being 
cooped up down here."
Herzer and Jerry made their way aft to the quarterdeck where Commander Mbeki was 
striding up and down, reveling in the breeze.
"Good morning, sir," Jerry said.
"Morning, Mr. Riadou," the commander replied. "I suppose you want to see about 
getting off the ship?"
"Commander Gramlich does, sir," the warrant officer replied. "She feels that 
even if she can't land, she can make a water landing and hoist herself aboard."
"And a joyful moment that will be," the XO said with a grin. "The skipper is 
taking a much needed nap; he was up through most of the storm. I have the con, 
but generally evolutions like air operations would mean his presence."
"I understand, sir," Jerry replied. "The commander requested that at least the 
main hatch be opened so she can get on deck and stretch her wings."
"That I can comply with," the commander said after a moment. "And I would 
suspect that by this afternoon the wind will have moderated somewhat and the 
skipper will be awake. We might be able to commence air operations then."
"Thank you, sir," the warrant officer replied. "I'll go see about getting the 
hatch removed."
* * *
The commander was as good as his word. By the time Herzer was finishing his 
lunch he heard the command "All hands, prepare to come about!" followed shortly 
by "Prepare for air operations!"
By the time he got on deck, Joanna was on the catapult. The ship had been turned 
with the wind off what he now knew to be her port bow. Jerry was on the launch 
lever and Evan was fussing with the new launching mechanism. The detachable balk 
of timber had been removed and a fixed device had replaced it. Joanna had shown 
that she could release in time and they were trying the less wasteful system for 
the first time.
"Are you ready, yet, Mr. Mayerle?" Commander Mbeki called impatiently. The 
primary flight operations had been moved to a new station on the rear-mast, high 
enough that it could see to the rear of the ship but low enough that it wasn't 
in the way of the sails. From that perch the commander could see both incoming 
dragons and the launching catapult.
"Ready, sir," Evan replied with a wave.
"Commence launching operation," the commander called.
Jerry looked at Joanna, then leaned into the lever. The combination of the cold 
air, which Herzer had learned was also denser, the strong wind and the rapid 
rate of movement of the ship caused the dragon to practically leap into the air.
Joanna ascended rapidly and Herzer hurried to his landing station. But when he 
got there, Vickie was already in the station.
"You're late," she said with a grin. She held up the flags and pointed them at 
the dragon as Joanna came around into the landing pattern.
It was clear that Joanna was having a hard time with the crosswind. She nearly 
made it on the first try but was blown off course by the effect of the sails at 
the last moment and banked off as Vickie gave her a wave off. Herzer could tell 
that it troubled the rider as well and he patted Vickie on the shoulder.
"You're doing fine," he said, realizing with a start that he had far more 
experience at this than she.
"Do you want to take over?" she asked, uncertainly. "This is pretty rough 
conditions." That landing the greater dragon was far harder than the wyverns she 
didn't have to add.
"No, you're doing fine," Herzer said. "She can either land or she can't. If she 
can't, she goes for a swim."
The second time the dragon almost made it but was too low on her approach. The 
wave off was late and frantic and the dragon almost caught a wingtip again but 
managed to recover and stagger into the sky.
"That time you were late," Herzer said, neutrally. "And it was clear that she 
wasn't going to be regaining the altitude she needed. Don't be afraid to wave 
off, even Joanna. Better a wave off than a crash into the ship. Remember, you're 
her eyes in this."
"I'll remember," Vickie said miserably and pointed at the dragon again.
The third time the dragon was high, but Vickie got her on glide path at the end. 
However, on final a wave lifted the rear of the ship and Joanna had to beat her 
wings frantically to clear the rear of the ship. She did, however, make it onto 
the platform, well forward, nearly pitching off the end.
"Well, that was pretty awful," she growled.
Jerry had reached the station by then and touched Vickie on the arm.
"Vick, let Herzer do landing control," Jerry said. "We all need to learn, but I 
don't think right now is the best time."
"Agreed," Vickie replied, massaging her shoulder. "Those flags really get to you 
after a while. How do you do it, Herzer?"
Herzer frowned at her, puzzled for a moment, then laughed.
"Vickie, once you've trained to hold a shield and sword up for four hours, 
straight, this is nothing," he said, flexing his shoulders slightly. It was 
apparent that they were corded with muscle.
"Time to start working out." Jerry chuckled. "Okay, I'm going to take Shep up. 
You stay here and watch the landing. When Koo takes off, go get Yazov and you 
follow Koo. As each of us lands we watch the next person's landing."
* * *
By evening the riders were covered in sweat and the dragons had started to lose 
their interest in the game. When Koo had to be waved off twice and Nebka nearly 
dumped on the second wave off Jerry called the training.
"Skipper," Jerry said climbing the ladder down to the quarterdeck, "we're going 
to pack it in for the day. I think we've gotten all the training the dragons are 
up for today."
"Agreed Warrant," Colonel Chang said. "Good job."
"Thank you, sir," Jerry replied with a tired grin. He had stripped off his 
helmet and his hair was dripping with sweat despite the cool wind from the 
north. "With your permission we'll launch a dragon for top cover tomorrow around 
dawn and start working out scouting mission methods. We also need to start 
working out a signaling system."
"There are various things to figure out," the skipper replied with a thoughtful 
frown. "I'd like to come up with a way to recover them at night, and we still 
need to work out a way for them to effectively attack ships, that sort of thing. 
I think we'll have a dinner meeting this evening. Before then, get yourself 
cleaned up and get some rest."
"Yes, sir," the warrant officer said, saluting. "Permission to leave the 
bridge?"
"Granted," the skipper replied.
* * *
"Dragon returning off the port beam," the lookout called.
"He's signaling," the communications midshipman added, looking through his 
binoculars. "Two figure eights on the dip." He consulted a table and nodded to 
himself. "That's 'group of delphinos.' "
"Bearing looks to be about one-seven-zero," Commander Mbeki amplified as the 
dragon flapped nearer. "Eight of them."
"Probably just dolphins," the skipper said. "But at least the signaling system 
works."
"Herzer's preparing to launch with Warrant Officer Riadou," Mbeki said. "I'm 
heading up to pri-fly."
"This should be interesting," the skipper said and smiled at the chuckles it 
elicited.
* * *
Herzer hadn't been on a dragon since the first flight but he found his position 
on Shep easily enough. The extended rein system was confusing at first but he 
soon found his holds. The reins had been extended so that Jerry had his own set 
behind Herzer and could take over if needed.
"Just let me handle the takeoff," Riadou said. "I tested this out with Vickie 
and we shouldn't have trouble. But stay away from motions until we're airborne 
and I tell you you can take over."
"Okay," Herzer said.
The wyvern hopped to the launch platform and grabbed the launching baulk 
automatically. The wyverns had come to enjoy the takeoffs, at least the first 
few of the day. It was a good game until it became tiring.
Herzer gripped the straps and looked at the launching officer. The position had 
been taken over by one of the ship's petty officers since there were 
insufficient riders to man it. The PO caught both their eyes and their thumbs 
up, then hit the release.
Herzer had pointed his face forward and gasped as the wyvern was hurtled forward 
and suddenly they were in the air.
"What a rush!" he yelled with a laugh.
"That it is," Jerry said. "Almost makes up for the landings."
Jerry got the wyvern up to about seven hundred meters and then turned the 
controls over to Herzer.
"Now just follow my commands," Jerry said. "I know you can sort of control the 
dragon, but the next time you're up by yourself you've got to get it back on the 
ship. And that takes a bit more control than your first time."
"Will do."
They worked through various flight contours. Level flight, slow spirals up, slow 
spirals down. Finally Jerry signaled for landing and waited until the ship 
turned into the wind.
"Try to line it up on the ship," Jerry said, signaling to the LSO and getting a 
wave in return.
"Got it," Herzer said, signaling in turn. He watched the motions of the LSO and 
grimaced. "I feel like I'm going to overshoot."
"Watch the LSO," Jerry said. "Don't think. Let the LSO do the thinking for you."
Herzer tried to control the dragon but he realized he was all over the sky. "I'm 
not up to this. Yet."
"True," Jerry replied. "My dragon."
Herzer let go of the reins and watched the landing. Jerry's handling of Shep was 
much smoother and in no time they thumped to the deck.
"I'm going to need a lot more time in the air," Herzer said as they dismounted 
and the grooms took Shep below. He realized he was sweating even though he had 
done practically nothing. The landing had been physically debilitating.
"Yep, you are," Jerry said. "And that's going to be hard to arrange what with 
everything going on. I hope by the time we get to the Isles you'll be 
qualified."
* * *
As they sailed south it had become warmer and today it was, arguably, hot. 
Herzer thought about that as he mounted Chauncey and looked over the side. The 
water was a deep, cerulean blue, like liquid oxygen. The good news was that if 
he had to dump, the water was at least going to be warm.
But he put that out of his mind as he gave a thumbs up to the launching officer 
and looked forward.
He had gotten used to launchings at this point and paid much more attention to 
the dragon than the launching. Chauncey took the air easily, though, and he 
directed him into a spiral up and to the right.
"Just get up and into landing position," Jerry had told him, so he spiraled the 
dragon upward until he had good altitude and directed it to the pattern.
Vickie was being recovered from a recon mission so he waited for her to land, 
Chauncey gliding at near stall speed on the light winds. He realized that the 
dragons were becoming more trained to the landings and was considering that 
aspect when he realized it was his turn to land. He turned on final and waved to 
the LSO, getting a wave in return. He checked the telltale on the masthead and 
prepared to correct for the wind being slightly off the starboard side. Joanna 
had gone for a swim and she was sculling along on her back, watching his 
approach. On the other hand, it looked like everyone in the ship had fallen out 
to watch the landing. The crew had gotten used to dragon-flights, but Herzer 
figured that the first time for a newbie was an event.
He put that out of his mind, too, and watched the directions from the LSO. 
Again, Chauncey seemed to anticipate some of his commands, as if he had gotten 
used to the orders as well. But, while this helped, it was still a bastard to 
make the landing.
He saw that cargo nets had been rigged to the rear and sides of the platform and 
that the recovery team was standing by. Although that was standard procedure as 
well, it made him chuckle faintly. If he overshot or dumped it, it was going to 
be heartily embarrassing.
He automatically corrected as he entered the dead air behind the sails and then 
he was on final. At what seemed well past the last moment, the LSO waved at the 
deck and Herzer pulled back simultaneously on all four reins, dropping Chauncey 
onto the deck like a rock.
He sat there, panting, and ignored the cheers, just quivering in reaction.
"Four line," Jerry said, patting him on the leg. "But not bad. Hop her over to 
the catapult."
"You mean I have to do that again?" Herzer gasped as the cargo nets were lifted 
up and out of the way.
"Welcome to maritime aviation," Jerry replied with a chuckle.


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Herzer did three more landings then switched from Chauncey to Donal. He stripped 
off the leather helmet the sailmaker had constructed as the wyvern was brought 
up from below and watched Koo coming in for a landing.
"Herzer," Jerry called as the wyvern was hopping down the ramp. "Vickie's on 
sweep. I want you to go up with her. You need to get some experience with 
unpowered flight."
Herzer forbore to mention that he'd already had some on the way because he knew 
what the warrant was talking about. Figuring out how to stress the dragons as 
little as possible was as important in its own way as learning to land on the 
ship.
Herzer approached his new mount cautiously and let it get to know him. Like 
horses the dragons tended to get used to one rider, but since Treviano had 
decided he wasn't up to landing on the carrier, Donal had been switched around 
extensively and it took the new rider phlegmatically.
Herzer mounted, hopped the wyvern onto the launch platform and again had the 
tremendous rush of the launching. He then pointed the dragon into a slow, upward 
spiral towards the distant dot of Yazov high above and forward.
It took nearly thirty minutes for him to reach her altitude and when he got 
there he discovered that Vickie had found a thermal and was coasting in a 
circle. Donal managed to insert himself into her vortex and followed the pattern 
of the other wyvern more or less automatically.
The dragon-riders had a complex set of hand signals that amounted to one-handed 
sign language and, rather than shout across the distance, Vickie made a querying 
sign.
Herzer thought long and hard and managed to dredge up the sign for "training" to 
which Vickie motioned an assent. She pointed down and to the east of the ship 
and off in the distance he could see a group of whales moving southward. Looking 
around he saw that the sea was patched with life. There was a large school of 
baitfish to the southwest that was being harried by birds and what looked to be 
much larger fish. He pointed to that and motioned at the wyvern with the sign 
for food but Vickie just shrugged. The ship had onboard facilities for catching 
fish, a large seine net that could be laid out by the ship's boats as well as 
harpoons for larger game, but she clearly thought it a waste of time.
Very far off to the left there was a smudge of land that was probably the coast. 
It occurred to Herzer, for the first time, that despite the fact that they were 
paralleling the coast, they weren't staying close in-shore and he didn't know 
why. He was sure Commander Mbeki could tell him when he landed, assuming he 
remembered to ask. In the same direction there was a band of water that was a 
subtly different color than that which the ship was in.
Finally he just paid attention to the flying. Donal was gliding well, 
maintaining altitude with only occasional flaps of his wings and breathing 
easily. Herzer had already noticed that when the dragons tired they tended to 
heat up and breathe much more heavily. Donal was still cool to the touch and 
exhibiting no signs of trouble.
The ship had passed under their constant circle and Vickie made a gesture to the 
south so they dropped out of the thermal and glided in the wake of the ship. She 
was looking from side to side and finally found what she was looking for in a 
group of vultures that were coasting upward. The thermal was off the path of the 
ship, southeast of its present position, but not far from where it would pass. 
They banked gently in the direction of the vultures and before they had lost 
more than five hundred meters they entered the new thermal and spiraled upward 
on easy flaps of the dragon's wings.
This pattern continued for, by Herzer's estimate, another three hours until a 
flag at the mainmast of the ship commanded both of them to return. The ship 
turned towards the wind, which was from the northwest, and they made an easy 
landing, Herzer going first.
"Well, that was interesting," Herzer said as he climbed off Donal and let him be 
led below. The sun was starting to set in the west and the deck of the ship was 
already shadowed, which was why they had called in the sweep riders.
"Anything to see?" Commander Mbeki asked.
"Not unless you count fish and whales," Vickie answered.
"Big school of fish in towards land," Herzer amplified. "Can I ask a question?"
"Go ahead," the commander replied.
"Why are we so far out?"
"There's a big current, called the Stream, that hooks around Flora and heads up 
the coast. It's like a river in the ocean. If we stayed in it, we'd take twice 
as long to go south; it was worth sailing out to the east to avoid it. When we 
reach the Isles we'll have to sail back into it since the mer's last reported 
position was on the western edge of the Isles where the Stream passes between 
Flora and the Isles."
"I think I saw it," Herzer said. "The water was different looking."
"Probably where the school was," the commander offered. "The migrating fish on 
the coast tend to follow the edge of the Stream. Plankton get caught in the 
eddies, there's more growth potential in the interface of different temperature 
waters, and lines of seaweed build up there and provide shelter."
"How much longer to get to the Isles, sir?" Jerry asked.
"Well, if we don't have to get off course to launch dragons all the time, about 
another two days," the commander said with a grin. He looked up at the sky where 
high clouds had started to cross the sun and frowned. "That's assuming the 
weather holds and we don't have to heave to."
* * *
Herzer slumped into the chair in the wardroom and dragged his helmet off, 
rubbing at his sweaty head. He'd thought about getting a shower but he was just 
too bone weary at the moment.
The door opened up and a steward stuck his head through. It was a new one, a 
tall, lanky fellow who looked both young and old. Herzer was sure he wouldn't be 
able to place his age in the right century.
"Get you anything, sir?" the steward asked.
"God, would you?" Herzer grinned. "I thought sword work was hard but riding 
those damned things is harder than it looks. Water? Maybe some tea?"
"Coming right up," the steward said. "Maybe a bite to eat? There's some cold 
pork and some ship's crackers I can get my hands on."
"That'd be great," Herzer said, leaning back as the steward left.
The man was back in no time and true to his word he brought both water and 
herbal tea as well as a platter with meat and crackers.
"Thanks," Herzer said, taking a long pull of the slightly metallic-tasting water 
and then a bite of cracker. "Join me?"
"Not done, sir," the steward said, but then picked up one of the crackers and 
took a bite. "Mostly."
Herzer chuckled and took another swig of water.
"You're new."
"The other guy busted his ankle on a ladder, sir." The steward frowned. "I'm 
Seaman Annibale."
"Got a first name, Seaman Annibale?" Herzer asked.
"Joel, sir."
"Ever flown on a dragon?"
"No, sir," Joel answered. "I used to be a sailor before the Fall. And after, but 
as a fisherman then."
"So what the hell are you doing as a steward?" Herzer frowned.
"You know, sir, everyone asks me that," Joel grinned. "I suppose I ought to go 
find the idiot that did it and thank him one dark night." He paused for a moment 
and then shrugged. "You're with the general's party, right, sir?"
"Yeah," Herzer replied and then stuck out his hand. "Herzer Herrick."
"Really?" Joel said, smiling. "The Herzer Herrick?"
"Oh, gods," Herzer groaned.
"I mean, I've been reading this book . . ."
"Oh, gods . . ." Herzer groaned again. "Not you, too?"
"I mean, the guy's not a particularly good writer . . ."
"So I've heard," Herzer replied. "And if I ever track him down . . ."
"Did you really kill fifteen guys?" Joel asked, sitting down.
"Not there," Herzer said then grimaced. "Look, the book was way overblown, okay? 
I just did my job."
"But that's where you got the hook, right?" Joel asked.
"Yes, that's where I got the hook. But it was six riders, okay? Not fifteen. And 
Bast got most of them. And, yeah, we were outnumbered, but the Changed didn't 
cover the valley 'like a rippling wave.' There were . . . a few hundred. Look, 
you ever been in a fight, I mean, where people are trying to kill you?"
"Yeah," Joel answered, soberly. "And I've seen a few dead bodies in my time."
"Ever had a friend killed before your eyes?" Herzer asked, not waiting for a 
reply. "Look, it's just butchery, okay? It happens to be butchery I'm good at. I 
don't know what that says about me except . . . I'm good at staying alive. A lot 
of people that day, and other days, that were just as good as me bought the 
farm. Sometimes it just seems like luck. But if you've been there, you know 
that."
"Yeah, I guess I do," Joel said, picking up the mug. "I've got to circulate, 
sir. But thanks for talking to me. You cleared up a lot."
"You're welcome," Herzer said, then grinned. "And if you ever find the bastard 
that wrote that book . . ."
"I'll be sure to send you his address." Joel grinned.
* * *
There was no chance of dragons launching the next day, as the ship was tossed by 
the winds in the morning. A bank of clouds was to the north and the crew 
scrambled aloft to reef the sails. For the next two days the ship was tossed by 
howling winds and blinding rain as the second front in as many weeks hammered 
them unmercifully. This one was, if anything, colder and stronger. And while the 
winds were fair to send them to their destination, on the second day the captain 
had the ship heave to, sailing into the teeth of the gale. Their destination had 
been the death of countless mariners over the ages and he was not about to go 
sailing down on it, unable to get a fix on their position and at the front of a 
gale.
By the third day the winds had started to abate and the rain had stopped. The 
captain had the ship put on the starboard tack and sailed to the west, groping 
forward for a glimpse of Flora or anything else to get a fix on their position. 
Joanna volunteered to go aloft and try to spot land. She wasn't able to land in 
the tossing waves but the recovery area had been reinforced and redesigned so 
that she was able to pull herself out with minimal effort.
"Flora's over to the west," she said, after she had shaken off. "There's an 
inlet, but there's inlets all up and down the coast. That doesn't tell us 
anything. There are some islands to the southeast; we're about sixty klicks from 
them. Nothing due east at all as far as I can see. Oh, and there's clear sky 
well down below the horizon northwest. I think we'll be clear of the clouds, or 
at least the cover will be broken, by evening."
The skipper and Commander Mbeki consulted their charts and came to the 
conclusion that they were too close to the Isles for comfort without better 
conditions or a clear sky to get a navigation fix. They altered course towards 
Flora, which of the two was the lesser danger, and headed into the Stream.
By evening, as Joanna had predicted, the skies were clearing and the wind and 
waves had abated. The latter were choppier, but far smaller and the ship rode 
over them with a graceful dip and yaw that was easy enough to compensate for.
The next morning dawned clear but the winds were increasing and the area around 
the ship was dotted with whitecaps. The skipper had managed to get a star 
reading the night before so the ship was now under reefed sails, scudding 
southward over the tossing sea. When Herzer came on deck after breakfast he 
groaned, sure that the skipper would want dragons up in this mess.
"We can launch, sir," Jerry was saying as Herzer reached the quarterdeck. The 
wind, hard and cold from the north, blew his words away so that he practically 
had to shout. "But I'm not sure about recovery. And I'm not sure we can read the 
water the way you would like. We can see shoals, and we can signal them, but we 
can't really gauge the depth."
"Just steer us clear of them," the skipper said. "As for recovery . . . the 
water's warm," he added with a grin.
"The air sure isn't," Jerry growled, but he was smiling. "We'll do it, sir. But 
we will probably have to do water landings; I'm not comfortable with the way the 
ship is moving."
"Do what you can, Jerry," the skipper said, not unkindly. "I know you're worried 
about the dragons, and their riders, but if we run up on an uncharted coral 
head, they're all going to drown."
"Gotcha, sir," the warrant replied. "Well, I'll take the first flight.
He was quickly in the air and before he had even reached cruising altitude the 
dragon was making the dips and swirls indicating shallow water. He angled to the 
east until he reached a point that looked to be about fifteen klicks off the 
port bow, circled, then headed south.
"We're well out in the Stream, then," Commander Mbeki said. "This is solid deep 
water on both sides and ahead of us for klicks, sir. If we had sonar we'd be 
looking at two hundred, maybe five hundred, meters of depth."
"Yes," the skipper said, "and it shoals out fast. Signal him to stay ahead of us 
looking for shoal water until he's relieved. Signal him to look for mer, as well 
and to signal if he sees any sign of intelligent life."
"Will do, sir."
"Put a wyvern on standby for launch. If he sees anything I want to recover him 
as soon as he's had a good look."
It was no more than an hour later when Jerry went into a hover against the north 
wind. At an acknowledgement from the ship he signaled that there was a 
settlement below him. Then he signaled that there were several small boats.
"Recall him and launch the standby wyvern," the skipper said. "Tell the rider to 
ignore the settlement and head southward. The mer are supposed to be somewhere 
around here. Oh, and send a messenger to General Talbot and tell him that we're 
approaching the last reported position of the mer."
* * *
The man who scrambled up the side of the ship was burned black by the sun with 
hands callused and gnarled from fishing nets. But he looked around him with 
lively interest as a midshipman led him to the quarterdeck.
"Colonel Shar Chang," the skipper said, sticking out his hand. "United Free 
States Navy."
"Bill Mapel," the fisherman said. "This is one hell of a ship you've got here, 
Skipper."
"Yes, it is," the skipper replied with a grin. "We don't have much information 
from down here. How is it?"
"Well, it's not as good as it used to be." The fisherman frowned. "I used to run 
a fishing charter on Bimi island before the Fall and it caught me here. We 
haven't been starving, but the weather's been a nightmare and finding your way 
around without autodirectors isn't the easiest thing in the world. I'd never 
learned star navigation, none of us had, so if we lose sight of shore it's a 
matter of making our way in and finding a spot we recognize. Storms, reefs, a 
torn sail, things we never even thought of before the Fall are all disasters. 
And they're all taking their toll. We've had some problems with vitamin 
deficiencies, too, but since we started getting some fruit from Flora that's 
less of a problem."
"What are you trading?" Talbot interjected. "Sorry, I'm General Talbot, UFS 
ground force."
"The general is also the duke of Overjay," the skipper interjected.
"Duke?" the islander said with a grimace.
"Over my bitter objections," Talbot said, "they've reinstituted a hereditary 
aristocracy. I at least got them to include methods of turnover."
"How's the war going?" Mapel asked. "There's not much news."
"It's bad in Ropasa," Commander Mbeki said. "New Destiny is Changing many of the 
people there against their will. But . . . it does give them some advantages."
"In the short term," Talbot snarled. "We've had to fight them and even captured 
some. They're brutal, aggressive, strong and dumb. Personally, I'll pass, thank 
you."
"But surely they can be Changed back," Mapel protested. "I mean, I wouldn't want 
to Change but here we didn't really need to. I can imagine in Ropasa that having 
enough farmers . . ."
"Their Change is under the seal of a council member," Talbot said. "It will take 
her, or a quorum of Key-holders, to release the Change. Even they cannot release 
it."
"Now that's evil," the islander snapped. "You're sure of that?"
"My wife is a doctor, a fully trained one," Talbot replied. "She was given 
enough power to investigate the Change. Most of them are bound to Celine's 
security protocols. Bound by her name in a very old way of putting it. There is 
no way to release them, short of winning this war. So, since many of them are 
people who resisted them in the fight in Ropasa, if you fall into the hands of 
New Destiny . . . well, you know your 'new destiny.' "
"Shit."
"But on the subject of why we're actually here," Talbot continued. "Have you 
seen sign of the mer?"
"They're not here, now," Mapel replied after a moment's thought. "They've moved 
to the Ber Islands because of the weather; they're seminomadic. They told us 
they were leaving and we were sorry to see them go; they and the delphinos that 
cluster with them were helpful in finding fish."
"How are you fixed for nets?" Commander Mbeki interjected.
"Not well," the islander admitted. "Most of the ones that we have are cast-nets 
from pre-Fall. We don't have good materials for making our own."
"General?" the skipper asked.
Talbot grimaced but then shrugged. "We have some we brought with us, but they're 
for trading with the mer. I can release a couple of the gill-nets to you. That 
should help. But I'd appreciate it if you could show the skipper the location 
that you think the mer have traveled to."
"Easily," Mapel replied. "And I really appreciate it."
"I think that you'll see some traders coming this way soon," Commander Mbeki 
said. "You might want to think about what you can come up with in the way of 
trade goods. We'll tell them that you need nets and suchlike."
"Thank you, again," Mapel said. "Now, if you've got a chart of the area I'll 
point out where the mer went."
* * *
After the islander had left they looked at the maps and the skipper snarled, 
angrily.
"That's the other side of the Banks," he said, pointing to the soundings marked 
on the chart. "There's shoal water everywhere unless we go all the way around 
the Isles. The area they are in is on the edge of a deep, but everything to the 
north, west and south of them is shallow. They're in a sort of crescent. It will 
take two or three more days, if we have fair weather, for us to beat around to 
where they are. There's a passage through the shoals, but it's just too damned 
shallow, and narrow, to dare trying it in the ship."
"I'd suppose that makes sense if they're trying to get out of the weather," 
Talbot said with another grimace. "Jerry, do you think the wyverns can forage 
off of fish?"
"What are you thinking?"
"It's silly for me to be impatient after this long," Talbot admitted. "But I 
don't want to spend another two or three days, if the wind holds, beating around 
the islands. On the dragons we can make it there in an afternoon."
"We can," Jerry admitted. "But they'll be ravenous by the time we get there."
"Can we carry weight over and above us?" Herzer interjected. "We can have some 
of the salt beef and pork cooked before we leave. Load it in bags and we can 
carry our own food. It won't be enough for more than getting there, but it will 
tide them over. Surely we can find something when we get there."
"What about water?" Jerry temporized.
"There's a spring marked on the main island that's by where we're going," Edmund 
replied.
"These islands are nearly deserted," Jerry said. "When it comes to wyverns 
getting fed, you don't want to go with if."
"Get Joanna up here," Talbot said. "I want her input."
The dragon, when the problem was presented to her, was unsure and unhappy.
"I'm not sure we can catch enough fish to matter," she admitted. "You're talking 
about a lot of fish." She looked over the side and then turned to the rail. 
Tapping it open she slid over into the water.
"All sails aback," the skipper yelled. "Bring her into the wind."
Herzer ran to the ladder to pri-fly and when that wasn't high enough scrambled 
up the shrouds to the crow's nest on the mainmast. He could see the dragon's 
form in the clear water. She had submerged and was coursing along the reefs that 
were visible deep below the ship. Suddenly she lunged to the side and snapped at 
something, swimming rapidly with her sinuous, snakelike sculling. She appeared 
to catch whatever she was hunting and moved on. He realized that she was holding 
her breath for a long time and wondered if that was a normal function of 
dragons. Finally, she surfaced and sculled over to the side of the ship.
"If these Ber Islands are anything like here, no problem," she said happily, 
working her tongue at a morsel stuck in her teeth. "With your permission, 
Skipper, I'm going to do a bit more foraging. Sushi's not so bad with enough 
salt water and salt beef as an alternative."
Talbot looked at the sky and nodded. "Jerry, get the wyverns up. See if they can 
do the same. If they can find enough food here for their midmorning snack, we'll 
load as heavily as we can with rations, a few of the nets and other things we 
brought and then head over to the Ber Islands."
"Will do, sir," the warrant said. "I'm not sure about getting them in the water, 
though."
In the event it turned out to be not too hard. Once the riders dove over the 
side, fighting the strong current, the dragons followed. They also quickly 
learned the technique of fishing from watching Joanna and before long they were 
darting throughout the reefs, picking off the large fish that dotted it.
"We're in the islanders' fishing area," Herzer pointed out, looking over the 
side longingly at the water. "I'm not sure they'll appreciate us eating out all 
the big fish."
"They'll eat better with the nets," Talbot said with a shrug. "I'm sure they 
won't begrudge us a few grouper."
"Is that what they are?"
"Probably, from what I can see. Grouper and big hogfish. Hogfish is good eating; 
I wish we could get them to bring a few back alive."
"Permission to go over the side, sir?" Herzer asked. "I'm sorry, but the water 
looks awfully inviting."


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
After jockeying his ship back and forth the skipper had dropped the anchor and 
the Richard now floated in the current. Most of the riders were back on board. 
The few who were not were holding onto a rope let out over the stern.
"Come below," Talbot said after a moment's thought. "Do you think you can hold 
onto one of the dragons in the water?"
"I'm not sure," Herzer admitted. "And I know I can't hold my breath for as long 
as they do."
"Well, I'll show you something for that."
Talbot led him to his cabin and opened the box from Sheida. He took from it a 
rolled up plastic bag and shook it out.
"This is a swimming mask," he said, putting it over his face. The plastic 
immediately shrunk so that he should have been strangling, but he continued to 
talk and breathe, albeit with a muffled tone. "It brings oxygen from the water 
to you, filters out carbon dioxide and exits it when you breathe. When you're 
underwater it converts your words to mer code speech and will translate it for 
you as well as the delphino language. The important thing to know is don't hold 
your breath," he continued, stripping the bag off.
"When you're coming up your lungs will expand from the pressure drop and if you 
hold your breath you'll blow out your lungs. Just breathe naturally."
Herzer took the bag somewhat reluctantly and slipped it over his head. It was an 
unnatural feeling as it smoothed down but he noticed right away that he could 
breathe normally.
"How long will it last?" he asked, pulling it back off.
"It's charged for sixteen hours," Edmund replied, pointing at an almost 
unnoticeable dot of dark plastic on the edge. "But it can recharge from the Net, 
slowly. And if you're underwater when it runs out of charge it has a high 
priority for power. You won't run out. And if you do, you just swim up to the 
surface and head for land; the mer tend to spend their time near the shore. The 
other reason that's important is that what you're breathing is nearly pure 
oxygen. If you go too deep, oxygen becomes toxic. Don't go extremely deep."
"Okay," Herzer said. "Let's try it."
"One last thing," Edmund added, pulling a small block of plastic from the bottom 
of the box. He thumbed it and it sprang into the shape of a pair of fins. "Some 
purists still used these before the Fall; they're swimming fins. Kick your legs 
in a scissor motion. They'll help with the current."
Herzer went to his cabin and changed, aware that he'd hardly seen Rachel over 
the last few days, then headed up to the deck, holding the mask and fins. He put 
both on and dove over the side.
As advertised he had no more trouble breathing in the surprisingly warm water 
than in the air. He took some rapid breaths and found that the mask hardly 
interfered at all. Given that oxygen in the water was far too disperse for him 
simply to be sucking it in, he wasn't sure what the mask was doing, but it 
worked. He had drifted backwards in the current and he quickly kicked his way 
over to the rope. He could see the dragons hunting below him quite clearly and 
picked out the shape of Chauncey.
He surfaced and grinned at Vickie who was eyeing him askance.
"Blood Lords are always prepared," he said.
"Yeah, I can see that," she grumbled.
"I'm going to down and try to catch Chauncey, any suggestions?"
"Yeah, don't try to ride a dragon bareback," Koo replied. "But if you do, you 
can probably hang on to his neck. It's the best bet."
Herzer looked down again and watched the dragons for a moment before heading 
out. The wyverns had their wings half folded into a v and they were moving quite 
fast through the water with short, powerful strokes. They were fast enough that 
it was clear the reef fish stood little chance unless they made it into shelter. 
The dragons would hunt for a couple of minutes then ascend to the surface, 
blowing hard.
He waited until Chauncey surfaced to the rear of the ship and kicked towards him 
rapidly.
"Ho, Chaunce," he said as he approached the floating dragon. He wanted the 
wyvern well aware that it was a rider approaching and not lunch. They both were 
being carried in the current and it was relatively easy to approach from the 
front. He grabbed at the wing-root so he wouldn't be carried past, then 
slithered onto the back of the beast.
Chauncey didn't seem to mind but Herzer quickly found that dragon skin was 
slippery when wet. He had just managed to get his arms around the wyvern's 
massive neck when it submerged.
The dragon went almost straight down through the pellucid water, headed for a 
shadow that was lounging under a ledge.
Herzer suddenly felt a sharp pain in his ears and shook his head, yawning, as 
they "popped" painfully. He grabbed his nose, half instinctively, and blew 
against the obstruction, relieving the pressure and popping them again. He blew 
one more time to be sure, then looked around at the sea-bottom, which was coming 
up fast.
The bottom was sand with broken coral heads, and the big fish, maybe one of 
those grouper that Duke Edmund had mentioned, was using the coral for cover. As 
the shadow of the wyvern swept over it, however, it took off, a brown and gray 
streak, headed across the sand for another ledge.
Chauncey turned to follow and Herzer was nearly ripped from his perch as the 
dragon pumped its wings through the dense water. Clearly the reef fish was the 
faster but Donal suddenly stooped down upon it and it turned desperately to the 
side. Chauncey made another radical turn to the right and the fish reversed 
again, but not in time as the wyvern's head darted down and snapped onto the 
body of the man-sized fish.
The water was clear and the sun high above was shining down so that the sand 
positively glittered, but Herzer was amazed to see that the blood that flowed 
from the fish, was bright, emerald green, like new leaves or growing grass after 
a spring rain. There was a lot of it, as well. It always amazed him the quantity 
of blood that a being could hold.
The fish had been swimming into the Stream and for just a moment the sea around 
him turned to the same bright, emerald hue. He was so surprised that he nearly 
lost his grip again. But the wyvern hungrily finished off the fish, brilliantly 
colored scavenger fish darting out from the reef to get the dropped morsels, and 
headed off on another hunt.
Herzer had never been into underwater sports so he was amazed by the sights 
around him. The shadow of the ship overhead was blue as was the deeper water to 
the west. The dragons passing in every direction were unreal and amazing, their 
wings tucked in and "flying" against the current as they hunted over the reef. 
The water was so clear it seemed that he could see for miles but he realized 
that the visibility was no more than seventy meters or so, as Shep kept drifting 
in and out of sight in the distance.
Sharks had started to gather to the feeding frenzy of the dragons and he was a 
bit worried by that. The wyverns might be able to survive an attack by the much 
smaller sharks, but if they thought they were prey it would be an ugly 
encounter. The sharks avoided the dragons, though, perhaps recognizing through 
some instinct or survival coding ancient beyond belief that the dinosaurlike 
flying creatures were deadly fellow predators. And the dragons ignored the 
sharks, in turn.
The exception was Joanna. Chauncey was beating madly after one of the reef fish 
again, this one no larger than Herzer's thigh, when he saw the great dragon 
emerge from the gloom to the east and close on one of the medium-sized sharks. A 
dart of her head on its long neck and the shark was neatly bitten in two, the 
tail and head continuing to quiver as they drifted for the bottom. Other sharks 
closed around the remnants and her head darted in again to take one of the 
smaller ones whole. One of the sharks turned to bite at her but its teeth 
bounced off her folded wings as her neck turned all the way around and did to 
the shark what it had been unable to do to her. Apparently satisfied, she 
sculled back towards the ship, giving a special flip of her tail in the 
direction of what had once been the most dangerous predator in the sea.
Herzer had released Chauncey to watch the by-play and he suddenly realized that 
he was not one of the most dangerous predators in the sea as a group of sharks 
moved towards him. He wasn't sure what kind they were, except that they were big 
and brown and the most "traditional" sharp shape he had ever seen. And they 
apparently considered him a potential meal. With the exception of his 
belt-knife, he was entirely unarmed and not sure whether to head for the surface 
or the bottom. The sharks were between him and the ship, so heading for that was 
out.
He turned to the side and dove for the bottom just as one of the bigger sharks 
darted forward. He managed to deflect it with a well timed blow on its snout, to 
which the shark reacted by turning and swimming rapidly away, then to the side 
to circle. The punch had not been without damage to Herzer, however, as the skin 
on his knuckles had all been ripped off by the sandpapery skin. He kicked 
towards another, which took that as an opportunity to grab his fin.
The fin was of almost indestructible plastic but the same could not be said of 
Herzer. The shark reacted to the bite by trying to rip off a bit of flesh, 
shaking its head rapidly and powerfully back and forth. Herzer found himself 
being tossed like a rat held by a terrier and distinctly felt something in his 
ankle pop. After it was clear that nothing was going to come off the shark 
released him but by this time the first one had circled around and was coming in 
for another run at more vulnerable parts.
Just as it was about to reach him there was a blue shadow over it and Chauncey 
bit it just behind the head. She wasn't as large as Joanna but her jaws could 
spread almost like a snake's and the powerful jaw muscles cut through tough 
skin, bony cartilage and flesh, leaving the head attached to the tail only by a 
narrow strip of skin.
The water around Herzer was suddenly filled with wings and green blood as the 
wyverns reacted to the threat, and meal, of the gathered shark frenzy, snapping 
in every direction. The sharks tended to head for extremities, biting at the 
wyvern's wings. But, to their dismay, they were just as impossible to pierce as 
Joanna's and the wyverns reacted by dragging the wings over to their mouths and 
having little clingy shark snacks.
Herzer decided that the best thing to do was head for the bottom, like any good 
reef fish, and watch the battle royale from the safety of a ledge. There were 
seven sharks that considered the dragons fair game, but the five wyverns had 
killed four of them before Joanna made her reappearance. She, in turn, killed 
two more and the last was finished off by Donal, who nearly swallowed the 
relatively small shark whole.
As soon as the last of the sharks were nothing but bits drifting to the floor, 
Herzer pushed off from his ledge and headed up to the group, favoring his leg 
and doing most of the work with his right hand. The dragons, however, headed for 
the surface even faster and there was no way to keep up with them. As he was 
ascending he considered what Edmund had said and breathed normally. He did 
notice that he tended to seem to breathe out more air than he took in on the way 
up and wondered what he should do about it. He also noticed that there weren't 
even bubbles, which surprised him, but he guessed that the exhaled gasses were 
distributed by whatever mechanism gathered them in for breathing.
His ears started hurting again when he was close to the surface and he paused to 
let them clear, working his jaw back and forth. As he headed up he noticed that 
he always seemed to be at the surface, but it was always farther away than he 
anticipated. It was something of a surprise when first his outstretched left arm 
and then his head breasted the surface.
He surfaced downstream from the dragons, well away from the ship, but Joanna was 
already serpentining towards him.
"You were almost part of the food-chain there, Lieutenant," the dragon said, 
grinning with her mobile lips. There was a bit of white flesh stuck in her teeth 
with a piece of shark skin still attached.
"Just think of me as bait," Herzer replied with a smile.
"You're taking it pretty well," Joanna said, coasting up beside him. "Climb on."
"I'm used to people, and things, trying to kill me," Herzer admitted. "It's a 
hell of a thing to say, but getting attacked by sharks is the first normal thing 
that's happened to me on this trip."
"You must lead a hell of a life."
"You have no idea."
* * *
"You've got a sprained ankle," Daneh said, as she finished her wrappings. "Not 
bad, but you're going to need to stay off of it as much as possible for the next 
day or so."
The dragons had been recovered, as well as the riders, and they were preparing 
to take off to go try to find the mer. As soon as Herzer's ankle got taped up.
"Not much chance of that," Edmund said, coming up behind her and holding out 
something to Herzer. "Souvenir."
Herzer turned the shark tooth over and over in his hand and shook his head.
"Where'd you get this?" he asked.
"Off the bottom of your fin," the duke said. "It was jammed in a crevice. There 
were score marks on the fins, though. Pretty good considering that it was memory 
graphite."
"You were nearly killed, you know," Daneh said.
"I know, ma'am," Herzer said with a faint smile. "I was there."
"Are you capable of flying?" Edmund asked.
"If I can get a boot over this," Herzer replied, gesturing at his foot.
"We'll figure something out," Talbot replied, nodding. "I want to get going as 
soon as—"
"Boat broad on the starboard bow!" the mast-head lookout called.
"Boat?" Edmund said quizzically, looking off to the west. Somewhere over there 
was distant Flora but it was on the other side of the Stream. And the lookout 
had distinctly said "boat" not "ship" which they had all learned, quite 
pointedly, meant a little boat. Nobody in their right minds crossed the Stream 
in a small boat.
"What do you make of it?" the skipper called up. He had binoculars to his eyes 
but for the time being the boat was below the horizon.
"Looks like a small canoe of some sort, sir, maybe a kayak," the lookout called 
down. "One person in it. Coming up from the southwest."
Half the crew crowded the side of the ship, trying to get a look at the suicidal 
person who appeared to have crossed the Stream in what the lookout noted was, 
indeed, a canoe, not a sea-kayak. As it approached his descriptions got clearer.
"The crew's a female," he called down. "Dark hair . . . wearing . . . a bathing 
suit?"
Herzer suddenly groaned and sat down on a coiled pile of rope, holding his head.
"That's no bathing suit," he muttered. "Five gets you ten it's a leather bikini. 
Which means it's no human."
"No." Edmund sighed, turning away from the rail. "It's an elf."
"Bast?" Daneh gasped. "How did she? I mean . . ."
"Bast?" Rachel asked, having just appeared from below. She shaded her eyes and 
looked to port where the canoe was now faintly visible. "Are you sure?"
"Who else would cross the Stream in a dugout canoe?" Herzer asked.
"And there's a rabbit in the bow!" the lookout yelled down.
"Well, that's one of life's little rhetorical questions answered," Duke Edmund 
said with a chuckle. "The answer being 'that damned bunny.' "
* * *
"Bast," Herzer said, giving her a hug as she swarmed up the side. She kept right 
on swarming until she had her legs wrapped around his waist and her lips planted 
on his.
The female he was referring to was no more than a meter and a quarter tall; she 
barely came to his waist. Her eyes were green with vertically split pupils and 
her ears were delicately pointed. She had high, small breasts and was wearing a 
green bikini of soft, washed leather. She carried a bow and quiver over her back 
and a light saber with a jewel-encrusted hilt belted to her side by a jeweled 
and tooled leather belt. On her left shoulder was a pauldron, a curved piece of 
armor to protect the shoulder, on her right shin was a greave, another piece of 
armor, on her left leg was a fur leg warmer and on both arms she wore leather 
bracers. Other than that she was naked. It was the most impractical getup 
imaginable, but that was pure Bast.
"Hiya, lover," she said when she'd finally drawn back. She leaned over and 
winked at Rachel. "I'm not stealing him, yet, am I?"
"No," Rachel replied with a grin. "As a matter of fact, you can feel free to use 
my bunk. He snores."
"Especially when he's all worn out," Bast admitted, dropping to the deck as the 
rabbit scrabbled up the side. It shouldn't have been able to but its claws bit 
the wood like talons.
"Bast . . ." Edmund said, pausing. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, but . . ."
"But you're on this important secret diplomatic mission," Bast said, as Herzer 
delicately prized her off and set her on the deck, "and you don't want two 
spirits of chaos ruining it."
"That's probably how I'd put it," Edmund admitted with a chuckle. "At least 
mentally. Why are you here?"
"Well, you took lover-boy with you," she said, grabbing Herzer's arm and 
wrapping herself around it. This apparently was too unfamiliar so she swarmed 
back up him, this time on his left side, and wrapped her legs around his waist, 
leaning out for all the world like a koala on her favorite tree. "I couldn't 
leave him to be all alone in the dangerous Southern Isles!"
"Okay, so what's with the bunny?" Edmund said, sighing.
The rabbit in question was a brown-and-white, flop-eared mini-lop who looked for 
all the world like the world's cutest, albeit dumbest, pet. That is if you 
ignored the black leather harness loaded with knives and a pistol crossbow. And 
the mad, red eyes.
"Hey! Island vacation!" the rabbit snapped. "Big-titted blondes, warm beaches, 
sun, surf, sand and, most importantly, alfalfa margaritas!"
"There's no tequila on board," Edmund sighed. "And certainly no alfalfa."
"What?!" the rabbit gasped in a high, tenor voice. "No tequila? In the islands?"
"Tequila comes from Chiara," Edmund explained. "The guava plant grows there. Rum 
comes from the islands."
"Well, that's a point. Navy ships always have a tot of rum once a day. I'll take 
rum. Rum is good."
"Unfortunately, UFS ships are dry," Daneh said, dryly. "As in, not wet. As in, 
no alcohol."
"DRY?!" the rabbit shrieked. He whipped out a switchblade and hopped up on 
Herzer's shoulder, waving the knife at Bast. "You said there'd be booze! A 
pleasure cruise to the islands you said! All the booze I could drink! Maybe even 
telemarketers! I'm going to turn you into elf cutlets!"
"You can try, black-heart," Bast snapped, launching off of Herzer in what was a 
quite improbable back flip and landing on the deck with her saber drawn. "Any 
time, you flop-eared monstrosity!"
"Bast, why did you inveigle this . . . this . . ." Edmund waved his hand at the 
rabbit. "This insanely programmed AI onto this ship?"
"Well, I couldn't leave him in Raven's Mill with both of us gone, could I?" Bast 
shrugged, putting away her saber. "And I'm sure we can find enough rum somewhere 
in these islands to keep him happy."
"Bast . . ." Edmund said, then paused as she raised a finger at him.
"Ah, ah," she said, cocking her head to the side.
"Bast . . ." he said, a wheedling note in his voice this time.
"Ah!"
"Oh, damn," Edmund sighed. "We're just getting ready to leave and we need all 
the weight we can spare for the dragons, spare food for them and our gear."
"I'm light," Bast said. "I'll ride Joanna."
"I give up," Edmund said. "What about the bunny?"
"You're going to visit the mer, right?" the rabbit asked. "That means swimming, 
right? I don't swim."
"Rabbit, you make problems on this ship and they'll make you walk the plank," 
Edmund growled. "In concrete shoes."
"Them and what army?" the rabbit challenged, hopping off of Herzer's shoulder 
and landing on the deck with a solid thump. The switchblade waved back and forth 
menacingly.
"There's a hundred and twenty-five crew and a dozen marines," Edmund said. "If 
worse comes to worst, they'll roll you up in a spare sail and toss you over the 
side weighted with ballast. How long can you hold your breath?"
"A long time," the rabbit said, staring him in the eye. After a moment he quit 
to nibble at his shoulder as if he could care less for the threats. "I'll 
behave. But you'd better find me some booze. I get all ticky when I don't have 
booze."
"There're settlements around," Edmund said. "We'll see what we can do."
"General," Commander Mbeki said. "I hate to break up this spectacle but the 
wyverns are saddled and ready to go. We've got the spare stores and between the 
wind and the current we should be able to loft all of it, if you leave soon."
"We're ready," Edmund replied. "Someone had better tell Joanna that she has a 
spare passenger and while you're loading I need to go talk to the skipper."


CHAPTER NINETEEN
"What . . . is that thing?" Chang asked.
"I'd say a spirit of elemental chaos," Edmund replied with a frown. "But that 
would be superstitious. It, he, is an AI cyborg, not any sort of real rabbit at 
all. He was created a long time ago. And I'm being forced to leave him on your 
ship."
"Thank you so very much, General," the skipper said with a bemused expression. 
"What happens if he goes berserk?"
"Well . . ." Edmund said with a frown. "His programming is almost unbelievably 
chaotic. But one tendency is to never harm his own side in a truly irrevocable 
way. He plays tricks, sometimes quite painful ones. And generally is a bully 
until he gets his way. He'll also betray you, for cash, goods or services, on 
half a chance. But never in a way that will cause true, irrevocable, harm."
"That's . . ."
"Weird," Edmund sighed. "I do believe that the twenty-second century was the 
most . . . complex and baroque century in human history. That's one of the 
results."
"Why would anyone create something like that?" the captain said. "It would 
almost immediately betray its creators, wouldn't it?"
"Oh, yes," Edmund said. "And he was reported to have done so. Something about a 
large bomb. He was apparently based upon a comic from the twenty-first century."
"A comic?"
"You'll see. He's pretty funny if you're into black comedy. Anyway, he had three 
or four primary programming requirements. In sort of reverse order they're: Have 
a fun and comfortable life, beat up a designated 'nerd-boy,' track down the cast 
of a show called Baywatch and be affectionate with the women . . ."
"Affectionate?"
"His term," Edmund grinned. "Spend lots of time around large-breasted blondes 
and kill telemarketers. The last one is his primary programming."
"What's a telemarketer?" the captain asked.
"A form of human gadfly." Edmund sighed, thinking how much of human history had 
been lost to disinterest. "Like a spammer but they used telephones which were…"
"Oh, I've heard of them," Shar said, suddenly. "Weren't they all wiped out in 
the . . . oh."
"Right," Edmund replied. "And you're looking at their doom."
"And you're leaving him on my ship?"
"Have fun. Keeping him drunk sometimes works."
* * *
The dragons were heavily laden but between the wind and the catapult they were 
able to get into the air and the party started out to the east, following the 
course that Edmund and Joanna between them set.
The seascape that they flew over was a patchwork of reefs, wide, white flats and 
small uninhabited islands. There were occasional patches of green in the water, 
which Herzer was informed were patches of sea grass. From time to time they saw 
a fishing boat but that was the only sign of humanity. There were fish aplenty 
in the waters, small schools turning in the sun and flashing up at them. When 
they had started off it had been nearly high tide and as they flew more and more 
of the flats became exposed.
The sunlight on the white flats was nearly blinding and after a while Herzer 
quit trying to look at them, looking out in the distance instead. Within an hour 
or so he could see the waters ahead were turning the green of the shallows with 
blue beyond and he knew they were passing over the flats and approaching the 
deeps beyond.
When they reached the edge of the flats, Joanna turned north tracing the edge of 
the land that was one small island after another. More flats were to their 
north, beyond the thin necklace of islands, but to the south the water quickly 
shaded from green to the dark blue of pelagic seas. Herzer had looked at the 
charts and the water over there was over a thousand feet deep. Admittedly, it 
was as easy to drown in five meters of water as a thousand, but there was a 
special feeling to seeing that immense body of horrendously deep water.
Finally they saw, at the tip of one of the islands, a two story concrete 
building that was their landmark. It appeared to be an ancient, but until the 
Fall well maintained, lighthouse. There were no signs of current habitation 
around it; the bushes were well grown up and the walkways near it were covered 
in weeds.
"Mer!" Koo called, pointing down and to the right. Sure enough, in the midst of 
a pod of dolphins the distinct silhouettes of mer-folk were visible. As the 
shadows of the dragons passed over the pod the mer came to the surface for a 
look, then dove into the water headed southeast.
"Do we land and swim out?" Joanna yelled.
"Land," Edmund replied. "Then we'll see about getting the dragons fed."
They swept in for a landing by the old lighthouse and as they dismounted saw a 
line of heads popping up out of the water.
"Herzer," was all Edmund said, starting to strip off his riding gear.
The wind was still from the north, blowing up a fine grit of sand and quite 
cold. Herzer was shivering by the time he'd stripped down himself and he pulled 
the mask on, looking forward to what he assumed would be warm water.
It wasn't. The water was bitterly cold when he entered it, striding up to his 
waist, then putting on his fins. Edmund was already in, heading out to the 
mer-folk, flapping and splashing like a walrus.
Herzer quickly ducked under and started out himself, staying below the light 
chop. The bottom was mostly sand at the shore but bits of broken reef started to 
appear by the time they were halfway to the line of mer.
The mer-men started towards them as they swam, hesitantly at first and then more 
quickly, a line armed with bone-tipped spears at the front while the rest, who 
were burdened with mostly empty mesh bags, followed behind. When they got to 
within a dozen yards or so, Edmund stopped and hung in the water, feet down, and 
raised a hand.
"We're here from the United Free States; we're looking for Bruce Blackbeard."
Herzer stared at the line of mer that approached. He had seen them before the 
Fall but never in a group and never in their natural environment. They were, he 
decided, no less graceful than dolphins, darting in patterns around each other. 
But they were far more colorful, their tail ends flashing blue, green, red and 
every other color of the rainbow. Their hair was all the colors of the rainbow 
as well and each of them had hair that more or less matched their tails. Besides 
all the other differences from humans, they had huge ribcages which, as he 
watched, opened and closed. Clearly they were gills. Their bodies were also far 
bulkier than those of most humans, but very smooth-skinned and not rippled with 
muscle. They appeared, as much as anything, fat.
The line of spear bearers had stopped as well and now looked at them in 
surprise.
"Bruce is at the town," one of them said. "I think he's expecting you."
"I'm Edmund Talbot," Edmund said. "How far is it?"
"Not far, just out on the edge of the deep," the mer replied. "I'm Jason 
Ranger."
Herzer wondered what it was about his voice that was strange and then realized 
that it wasn't a voice at all, but the computer in the mask converting it. It 
had no particular timbre. The mouth of the mer-man didn't move, except for 
slight changes that might have been subvocalizations.
"This is Lieutenant Herrick, my aide," Edmund replied. "We'd like to visit your 
town. My wife and daughter are with us as well."
"And wyverns," Jason said.
"Yes, there's a ship beating around to here. We expected to find you over by 
Bimi island. The wyverns are going to need to fish for food. Is there somewhere 
they can do that?"
The mer paused at that and shook his head.
"Wyverns fish?"
"They're learning," Herzer replied. "They catch reef fish well enough. And 
sharks," he added.
"These fishing grounds around here are ours," Jason said. "I'd prefer they not 
get fished out. And don't let Bruce find them hitting the reefs or you'll lose 
any goodwill you might have. But if they want to move up or down the coast a few 
klicks, that should be fine."
"I can show them," one of the spear-bearing mer-men interjected. He had blond, 
nearly white, hair and a light tan tail.
"This is Pete. When he's not out hunting, he's one of the best chefs in the 
mer-folk."
"When I've got spices, I'm the best chef in the mer-folk," the cook said. "But 
if we can get me up on one of those wyvern, I can show you where they can fish. 
There's a drop-off to the east. Lots of grouper and big hogs, but too far to 
make it worth our while to fish there."
"Herzer?" Edmund asked.
"We'll have to more or less strap you on," Herzer pointed out. "You don't have 
legs to go in the mount."
"Understood," Pete replied.
"Will you need me in the town?" Herzer asked.
"No, but go get Daneh and Rachel. Tell Warrant Officer Riadou that I'd like him 
back here no later than sundown and that if he can get the wyverns to catch some 
fish, and not just eat them, that would be an interesting, and useful, 
experiment."
"Will do, sir. One question, what about Bast?"
"What about her?" Edmund replied after a brief pause. "I don't have a mask for 
her, or a set of fins. Have Rachel bring out the net," Edmund added as Herzer, 
following Pete, started to swim back in.
"You have nets?" Jason asked.
"We just have one with us," Edmund replied. "All the room we had. But there's 
more on the ship."
* * *
Evan looked up as a rabbit landed on his workbench with a thump.
"What'cha doin'?" the rabbit asked, raising one paw to vigorously scratch at his 
ear.
Evan looked at the apparition blankly for a moment, then said, distinctly: 
"Working on a device."
The rabbit hopped over and looked at the device, then shrugged.
"So you're making a flamethrower. Big deal."
"You know what it is?" Evan said, surprised.
"Of course I know what it is," the rabbit snapped. "I've had them turned at me 
enough times. Used them a time or two for that matter."
Evan noted at that moment that instead of normal rabbit feet, the rabbit had 
handlike forepaws with opposable thumbs.
"Well, maybe you can tell me what's wrong," Evan said. "I can't get it to 
maintain a stream, no matter what I do. I've been working with water, obviously, 
but it sprays outward when I fire it. I don't want a wall of flame."
The rabbit hopped from one end of the scattered parts to another, then shook his 
head.
"You do good work."
"Thank you."
"And I know what your problem is," the rabbit added. "But to tell you, I have to 
extract a price."
"Why?" the engineer said with a puzzled expression.
"Bloody programming, that's why," the rabbit sighed. "I can't just tell people 
things that they need to know, even when I want to. And I'd like to have you 
make a flamethrower. I like flamethrowers."
"Okay, as long as it's not going to get the ship in trouble," Evan replied.
"Actually, I want two things, come to think of it," the rabbit said, scratching 
at his ear again.
"Well, you're only telling me one," Evan pointed out.
"Okay, you've got a point," the rabbit admitted. "What do you want for the two 
things?"
"Well, what do you want for the information on how to build a flamethrower?"
"A smaller one," the rabbit replied. "Small enough for me to use. And you'll be 
surprised how much weight I can carry."
Evan thought about that for a moment, then frowned. "It's not to be used against 
this ship, or any other ship of the free states. Nor any member of the free 
states. Nor any ally."
"Jeeze, you drive a hard bargain," the bunny said with a sigh. "I guess that 
means I can't use it on that damned elf."
"Correct."
"Okay, you'll make it, though?"
"Yes."
"In that case," the rabbit said, holding up a length of pipe. "You need three 
venturi holes, here, here and here," he said, pointing. "About two millimeters 
across."
"That's it?"
"That's it. But you still owe me the downsized flamethrower."
"Not a problem."
"What about the other thing I want?"
Evan contemplated him for a moment then shrugged. "What is it?"
"A still."
"A still?"
"Do you know that I have not been able to find one drop of booze on this tub," 
the rabbit said, angrily, his beady red eyes positively glowing. "I get all 
ticky when I don't have booze."
"Stills give off a quite distinctive smell," Evan said. "But it's possible. For 
your use, not to sell to the crew, right?"
"Man, you are forever putting conditions on things," the rabbit snarled. "Okay!"
"What do I get?" Evan asked.
"What? I let you live while giving me conditions, didn't I?" the rabbit asked. 
"I could just beat you up a little. That's one of my programs; beating up 
nerd-boys!"
"In which case you wouldn't get your still," Evan said. "And I'm not a nerd-boy, 
I'm an engineer."
"There's a difference?" the rabbit asked. "Okay, okay, I'll give you one favor, 
to be called in. If it's completely out of line, I can tell you to jump in the 
ocean. But I'm not allowed to go back on favors unless it's out of line."
"Okay," Evan replied after thinking about it for a moment.
"And no 'I wish for three wishes' or asking for my pass codes or anything like 
that. Tit for tat."
"Fine," Evan replied. "I'll make the still. I know just where to put it."
"Okay, I'm gonna blow this joint," the rabbit said, bitterly. "Some island 
cruise."
* * *
The wyverns had been upset about taking off again without being fed—they could 
smell the salt beef in the bags—and even more upset about backtracking. But 
after a while they settled down to a steady cooing and twittering which Herzer 
knew was their form of muttering.
Pete was riding with him on Chauncey. On reaching land the mer-man had given 
what looked like a closed-mouth cough and water had poured through the slits in 
his ribs. After that he was an air breather just like the unChanged humans. As 
they flew Herzer pointed out the view from aloft including one of the vast 
schools of baitfish.
"Bait ball," Pete replied, shielding his eyes against the westering sun. "Can we 
fly over it?"
Herzer banked towards the ball and got a bellowed comment from Joanna which he 
ignored. The school of fish was about fifty meters on a side, a silver ripple at 
the surface with the water churned to white around it from attacking fish.
"That's menhaden I think," Pete yelled. "But look at those damned tuna! That's 
damned good eating there, especially with a little wasabi."
Herzer could see the larger fish smashing into the bait fish like cannonballs. 
As he watched one of the larger predators came clear out of the water in its 
pursuit. It was hard to judge size without a reference, but the fish had to be 
close to two meters in length.
"We can't really track the pelagics like that," Pete said with annoyance in his 
voice. "They just move too fast. The delphinos can keep up, but whenever we try 
to get to them they've moved before we get there and chasing them's a losing 
proposition."
"Herzer!" Joanna bellowed, sweeping down on him. "We need to get these dragons 
fed, soon."
"Coming, Commander," the lieutenant replied, banking his dragon back towards the 
coast. But his mind kept moving on the problem. There had been enough food for a 
hundred dragons in that school of tuna alone. The reef-fish were all well and 
good, but getting into one of those big schools was going to be the way to keep 
them fed.
In deference to the mer-man, he made a water landing when they reached the 
fishing spot. It would mean loose straps on the ride back and much oiling to get 
them back in condition, but it had been undignified enough carrying Pete to the 
dragon; the least he could do was let him get off in relative comfort.
He loosed the straps holding the mer-man on and then donned his own gear and 
dove under the water. It had been a cold ride in nothing but his bathing suit 
and the water was not much better. He got the straps loose with one hand that 
was fumbling with cold and a hook, grabbed them and headed for shore, dragging 
the leather along with Pete's help.
Once on shore he laid the straps out on the plentiful rocks and looked at the 
dragons disporting in the waves.
"They look like they're having fun," Pete said. He had dragged himself up 
partially on the shore and now leaned on one arm, looking out to sea and 
flapping his tail idly in the waves, like a person tapping their toes.
"They are," Herzer said. "If I wasn't so damned cold I'd be in there with them. 
I don't know which is worse, the water or this damned cold wind."
"We're getting a fire started," Jerry said, opening up the closures on his 
jacket. "You should have worn your gear."
"I was planning on a water landing," Herzer replied, wiping water out of his 
hair with his hands. "Better to be cold than wet gear. I could do with a hot 
bath, though."
"No help there," Pete said. "All these islands are limestone built up from 
coral; the nearest volcanic activity is nearly a thousand klicks from here."
"Just as well," Herzer said. "I'd rather be cold than have a tsunami."
"I can think of a way to warm you up," Bast said.
"I'm sure you can," Herzer replied with a grin.
"But I'm going to go play with the dragons," Bast said, reaching into the pouch 
at her hip and pulling out a breath mask and a set of fins.
"Where did those come from?" Herzer asked. He knew that Edmund only had four 
sets and they were all being used; he had his set rolled up and tucked into a 
pocket of his bathing shorts.
"My pouch?" Bast replied. "I was coming to the islands. I can't breathe water. 
Of course I brought gear." With that she dropped her gear, took her clothes off, 
put the mask on, picked up the fins and waded into the water.
"Can someone please explain who she is to me?" Jerry asked.
"She's . . . Bast," Herzer replied.
"That's not much of an answer," Vickie said acerbically. "She's an elf? I 
thought they were, you know, tall and lean and handsome. Not small and pretty 
and dressed like a character in an anime cartoon."
"She's a wood elf," Herzer replied. "They were created around the time of the AI 
wars. She was created around the time of the AI wars."
"Crap," Jerry said. "How old is she?"
"Physically? About two thousand years old," Herzer replied. "Mentally? Somewhere 
between twelve and two thousand. She told me one time that elves are too happy 
to spend much time grieving. Given that she's seen thousands of human friends 
die over the years, I guess that's not a bad way to handle it. As to caring 
about societal conventions, like not stripping in front of a bunch of people, 
she's going to outlive them all and their conventions. She just . . . well, 
you've seen. Hell, just wait; that's nothing."
"I can't wait until she meets Bruce," Pete chuckled.
"Why?"
"Bruce is . . . not a bad guy," Pete said. "He's held us together and nobody's 
starved; not even the young and the old. Really, he's done pretty well, given 
everything that's going on. But . . . he can be a little . . . stuffy."


CHAPTER TWENTY
Edmund, trailed by Daneh and Rachel, followed the mer-folk deeper into the ocean 
and to the east. They stayed about seven meters below the surface while the 
bottom sloped steeply downward.
Half way to the "village" Jason let out a grunt and headed downward. He poked in 
a crevice with his spear, then twisted it and pulled out a lobster nearly the 
size of his thigh. He wrung the head off and dropped it to the bottom, swimming 
back up to the group and turning his catch over to one of the bearers.
"It's been a bad day of fishing," he lamented. "We'd been in this area not long 
ago and most of the easy fish are already hunted out. We're having to go further 
and further afield to find anything edible."
"Why don't you just move someplace else?" Edmund asked.
"We're not entirely without possessions," Jason said. "So just picking up and 
moving is not an easy proposition; we only do it if it's necessary. And this 
area has some features that we find necessary for our survival these days."
"What?" Talbot asked. But he received no reply.
"I've got a net with me," Edmund pointed out after he was sure the mer wasn't 
going to answer.
"Wait to show it to Bruce," Jason said. He turned to the landsman and pitched 
his voice lower. "You're liable to find a cold reception; Bruce doesn't care 
about anything but the Work." The capital was clear.
"Repairing the reefs?" Edmund asked, looking around. They looked in fine shape 
to him. Billions of fish were swimming across them and sea-fans waved in every 
direction. "I'd think keeping his people fed would be his first job."
"Mostly he agrees," Jason admitted. "But he doesn't want to have outsiders 
involved with us. He thinks that if we just lay low, the war will pass over us 
and we can just continue with the Work."
"And what do you think?" Edmund asked.
There was a long pause before Jason shrugged.
"He's the chosen leader of our people and it's not my job to speak against him, 
certainly not to outsiders."
"What about to New Destiny?" Edmund asked.
"New Destiny considers the mer to be abominations," Jason said, bitterly. "Let's 
just say that I disagree."
"So do I," Talbot said with a nod. "And, speaking from past experience, New 
Destiny tends to spread its feelings far and wide."
"Well, from all reports New Destiny is winning," Jason said.
"Reports are often wrong," the duke replied. "They've never won anywhere that 
I've had a hand."
"You're only one man."
"True, but I said 'had a hand.' Herzer is, often, my hand."
Jason bleated something that the computer changed to a tuneless chuckle.
"I suspect that being your hand is probably where he lost his. Well, Edmund 
Talbot, who never fails, welcome to Whale Point Drop mer-town."
The town spread out before them was larger than Edmund had expected. The area of 
reef had deep crevices gouged through it, generally trending from the shore to 
the deeps. In the center the crevices came together into an open sandy area with 
a prominent coral head in the middle. And the area swarmed with mer.
There were mer-men and mer-maids as well as children, although none of the 
latter were less than a year or two old. Edmund noticed that the mer-maids were 
just as naked in the upper regions as the mer-men and tried to keep his eyes 
away from the display of, in the main, perfect breasts.
In the open area, he could only think of it as the village square, the mer were 
especially thick. Some of them had food for trade, others had handmade goods. 
But the pickings were slim; there was far more communicating going on than 
trading. At the sight of the hunting party, many of the people swarmed upwards, 
but there was obvious distress at the shortage of food they were bringing back. 
There was also a great deal of surprise at the visitors. The computer picked out 
the words "Freedom Coalition" but the rest was apparently a jumble.
Jason tugged Edmund through the crowd and down to near the bottom where a group 
was floating, arguing about something. The argument stopped as they neared and 
the group saw that Jason had a visitor.
"General Edmund Talbot," Jason said, gesturing at one of the mer, "Bruce the 
Black."
Edmund nodded at the mer and smiled.
"I've come a long way to see you," Edmund said.
"And for no good reason," Bruce returned, brusquely. "We're entering no 
agreements with anyone; we've enough troubles of our own without bringing others 
down on us."
"Well, there are some troubles we can help with," Edmund said, opening up the 
heavy package and letting fall the edge of the net. "This is a woven 
monomolecular net. There's nothing on earth that can break it and it will last 
far longer than you'll live. I've others coming on a ship, not woven mono, but 
made of good, sturdy cosilk. Those will last for nearly a generation and are, 
admittedly, easier to fix."
"Gill net," Bruce said. The AI gave it as toneless but it was clearly a spit of 
sound. "Great for randomly picking up innocent, and many of them inedible, fish. 
Very much what we need."
"Bruce," Jason interjected. "We weren't able to get more than a couple of hogs 
and a few damned crayfish. We're starving. A gill net is what we need!"
"Why? To strip the damned reefs again?" the leader replied hotly. "Woven 
monomolecule! What happens when it gets caught? You won't be able to cut it, 
you'll have to tear the reef itself! And what happens when a dolphin gets caught 
in it? It'll drown while you're off gallivanting!"
"Gallivanting is it?" Jason replied. "I don't see you bringing in any fish!"
"There's sea plum," the mer-leader replied.
"There's always bloody sea plum," one of the group behind him said.
"You've come on a fool's errand," the leader repeated. "You might as well go 
back. We've nothing for you, and you've got nothing for us."
"Well, I'll leave you the net," Edmund said. "And we have to stay in the area 
for a few days; our transportation is having to sail around the banks."
"How did you get here, then?" one of the group asked.
"On dragon-back," Jason replied to a series of clicks. "Pete went with them down 
the coast to fish."
"The dragons were fishing?" Bruce asked.
"They can swim," Edmund said.
"Mister Black," Daneh interjected. "I'm Daneh Ghorbani and this is my daughter 
Rachel. I'd like to at least see how you are surviving and how you are doing it. 
We've had hard times as well and I'd like to see if you have anything that 
you're doing that we can pick up. We might have a few new ideas to share as 
well."
Bruce considered that for a moment, then shrugged.
"I can't exactly kick you out," he said, finally. "But I'm not going to join any 
alliances. Not with you, not with New Destiny."
"Especially with New Destiny," someone behind Edmund said.
"New Destiny isn't so bad," a black-haired mer-man said, pushing to the front of 
the crowd. He was one of the largest of the mer and even compared to the crowd 
around him heavy-set.
"New Destiny considers all Changed to be abominations," Edmund replied. "How can 
they not be bad for the mer?"
"If they consider all Change to be abominations," the mer-man asked, "how come 
they're Changing their own people?"
"Edmund Talbot," Bruce said with a sigh. "This is Mosur."
"Well, Mosur," Edmund replied, just as reasonably. "There's a broad difference, 
that most people grasp, between being voluntarily Changed into whatever you 
choose, versus being turned, against your will, into an orc. They've Changed 
most of the population of Ropasa against their will. I've seen the results and, 
trust me, you don't want that happening to you."
"How do you know it's against their will?" the mer replied, angrily. "Have you 
known someone who was Changed the way that you describe? And let me give a more 
accurate description, one less filled with malice. They are Changed so that they 
are tougher and more able to withstand the strain of the post-Fall world. 
Stronger, tougher and knowing how to survive. I think that counts for something. 
Most of the population of Ropasa has survived. They're not living on the ragged 
edge of starvation."
"You don't look starving to me," Edmund said to a general laugh.
"One's the same as the other," Bruce said, loudly. "They'll fight each other and 
they'll both lose."
"You'd best hope so," Edmund replied, sadly. "That we both lose. Because while 
we won't have any issue with you sitting things out, New Destiny will. And if we 
lose they'll come looking for you."
There was a mutter of agreement and Edmund noticed for the first time that there 
were delphinos at the edge of the crowd. They weren't entering the discussion, 
just observing and trading apparently carefully aimed sonar bursts with each 
other.
"So we have your permission to look around?" Edmund asked.
"It's a free ocean," Bruce said. "It's a free town. That's the point. Look 
around all you want. But you won't find me changing my mind."
"I understand," Edmund said, sadly.
"Where are you staying?" Bruce asked, suddenly. "Not down here, it's too cold 
for you."
"You'd be surprised what I can do," Edmund replied. "But we'll be staying up on 
the land. We landed near the lighthouse; the others will be meeting us there."
"The lighthouse?" Bruce challenged. "Why by the lighthouse?"
"Because it's a landmark," Edmund said, shaking his head. "Look, can I talk to 
you a moment?" He looked around. "Alone?"
Bruce nodded his assent and they swam across the square to an out-of-the-way 
alcove while the rest of the mer swarmed around Daneh and Rachel, and Jason 
spread out the net on the bottom.
"What is up by the lighthouse?" Edmund asked.
"Nothing," Bruce answered hotly. "Why are you asking?"
"Because while you've been sweetness and light about everything else, that 
really cut to the bone and I'm wondering why." He held up his hand to forestall 
a reply and shook his head. "Look, you probably are the kind of person who hates 
diplomats and diplomacy. If you even remember what they are . . ."
"I do," Bruce said, tightly. "I've studied history. That's why I'm trying to 
keep us out of this war."
"Fine," Edmund replied. "But the point is, the reason that they wore poker faces 
all the time was that they had things they didn't want to give away. Now, you've 
got something, something important, up near the lighthouse. I'm not going to 
investigate what that is. I'm hoping I don't even stumble across it. But the New 
Destiny folks, if they find out, will pry until they know what it is. And if 
they can, they'll use it against you."
"But you wouldn't?" Bruce asked. "The Freedom Coalition hasn't done anything to 
be ashamed of in this war?"
"No, we probably have," Edmund admitted. "But there's a world of difference 
between what we're doing and what New Destiny is doing. There's a huge 
difference between accidental deaths in combat, or a few soldiers out of hand 
and dealt with swiftly and surely, versus intentional atrocities and Changed 
orcs that are nothing but 'out of hand.' There's a difference between accident 
and intent. And the point I'm trying to make is don't make the same mistake you 
just made with me around them. Or whatever it is you're trying to hide, they'll 
hang around your neck like a dead albatross."
"I'll keep that in mind," Bruce said. "But you keep this in mind. We're not 
taking the mer off to war. We have important work to do here. And we're going to 
continue it."
"Oh, don't worry," Edmund said. "I have that. Chapter and verse."
* * *
Edmund had gotten into a discussion with one of the tool makers while Daneh had 
been dragged off to see one of the mer's casualties. This left Rachel to be 
dragged off by Jason.
They went down one of the narrow crevices to where it turned into a tunnel. 
About a dozen feet in there was a brief break in the overhead and in the 
sunlight was a young mer-maid plaiting a twisted cord.
"Antja, this is Rachel Ghorbani," Jason said.
The mer-maid dropped the material and drifted towards the entrance, smiling.
"Welcome," she said. "There's not much to offer, but if you'd care for some sea 
plum?"
"I don't know," Rachel said. "I've never had sea plum before." Her stomach 
rumbled and she realized that it had been quite a few hours since she had eaten.
Antja went to one of the crevices along the wall and pulled down some plum-sized 
fruits with a suspiciously familiar appearance. Rachel took one and then paused 
as she realized she was wearing a full-head covering. She frowned, then pulled 
the mask out allowing the water to strike her face for the first time. She took 
a bite of the fruit and recognized the taste. She carefully put the mask back 
on, sealing it down, and took a breath, relieved that it hadn't taken any hurt 
from its submersion.
"I'd never heard it called sea plum," Rachel said. "But I recognize it; it's 
kudzi."
"What's kudzi?" Antja asked.
"There was once a noxious vine called kudzu that covered all sorts of areas in 
Norau," Rachel said. "A long, long time ago, someone released a retrovirus on it 
and forced it to produce fruits. The fruit is a cross between kiwi fruit and 
strawberry with a plum skin. Tasty, but it gets tiring. Where do you find it?"
"Anywhere that there's a fresh-water outlet," Jason answered. "Like the spring 
on the island. In the brackish area around it, there's lots of sea plum. It's 
got some good points, fish like to nest in it and it doesn't really push 
anything out of the niche. And it produces sea plum. But, yes, it does get 
tiresome."
"Unfortunately that's about all that we have right now," Antja said. "Unless . . 
. ?"
"We didn't get much," Jason admitted, sadly.
"Well, maybe Herzer and his group will bring something back?" Rachel asked.
"Who's Herzer?" Antja said.
* * *
After about an hour of fishing the dragons came up out of the water, the wyverns 
shivering with cold but burbling happily to each other. Two of them were 
carrying large fish in their mouths and they carried them to shore and dropped 
them, still flopping, at the feet of the riders. After that they all gathered 
around the fire, their wings spread, and soaked up the heat happily as their 
riders dabbed at under-spots.
Pete, once given a decent knife to work with, turned out to be one damned fine 
filleter and in minutes the fish were trussed up and sizzling over the fire.
"What I couldn't do with a little orange sauce," Pete complained as the fish 
were served on broad leaves. He had dragged himself up on the shore to direct 
the cooking and shook his head at the fumble-fingered grilling of the riders. 
When the fish was done he took a bite of one and then shrugged. "I guess it's 
better than what we've been eating; sea plum and sushi without wasabi."
"What's sea plum?" Herzer asked around a mouthful of steaming hogfish.
"You'll find out," Pete said darkly. "It's fine at first, but after a while it 
really starts to pall."
The grilled fish, two grouper and a hogfish, were excellent, despite the chef's 
complaints. The smoky fire added just a hint of seasoning to succulent flesh 
that was perfectly formed and solid, so solid that it had held up to being 
grilled with nothing but some sticks shoved through it.
"This is good," Joanna said. "I mean, it's sort of a snack to me, but it's a 
hell of a lot better than raw, let me tell you. And nice to not be crunching 
bones."
"I see you decided to start without me," Bast called from the darkness. She 
strode into the firelight, still stark naked, bearing two huge tuna and with a 
string of at least two dozen lobster tails around her neck.
"How in the hell . . . ?" Pete asked.
"I heard something about the town not having enough to eat," Bast said simply. 
"We can carry these back."
"Not why," Pete said. "How?"
"Oh, that," Bast said with a shrug. In the firelight, with her hair flat against 
her head and none of her panoply she looked like nothing so much as a young, 
very young, teenage girl. The tuna that she held, effortlessly, must have 
weighed nearly as much as she did. "Do you know how to catch a unique rabbit?"
"No?" Pete said.
"You nique up on him," Bast said. "That fish smells good," she added, dropping 
the tuna and lobster to the ground.


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By the time they were done, with the last scraps given to the wyverns, the sun 
was just about down and Herzer was not looking forward to the ride back.
"I thought a Blood Lord was always prepared," Vickie said, maliciously.
"Pain is weakness leaving the body," Herzer said. "I can take a little cold."
"You'd damned well better not get hypothermic," Pete said. "There's a reason 
that we stay down where the water is relatively warm. And we still need a lot of 
fats." He frowned at that and shrugged. "Those tuna would have been good." The 
now gutted fish, and the lobster, had been loaded on Joanna for transportation 
to the mer-town.
"I've got an idea about that," Herzer admitted as he loaded the mer-man back on 
his mount. True to his prediction the leather had stretched and was loose on the 
dragon.
"You mean other than siccing your girlfriend on them?" Pete asked.
The wyverns were warm, fed and balkish about flying. Furthermore there were no 
bluffs around and the omnipresent wind had died down to no more than a zephyr. 
So the dragons had to take off the hard way.
They turned into the wind and started hopping forward on their big hind legs, 
wings blasting downward with each hop. At each hop they got a little more speed 
and a little more height to flap with until they were finally, barely, airborne.
It was the first time Herzer had taken off that way and he didn't like it any 
more than Pete, who complained vociferously. Herzer had to bury his face into 
the dragon so that his head wouldn't be slamming into its back with each landing 
and he now understood, plainly, why dragon-riders hated to take off anywhere 
that there wasn't a bluff, a good wind or, preferably, both.
"So, you guys want us to fight for you or what?" Pete asked, as they flew back 
to the rendezvous.
"Yes, and or what," Herzer answered, honestly. "New Destiny is building a fleet 
to invade the UFS. We're going to fight it but there's a lot of the buggers. 
We're looking for the help of the mer for scouting and, probably, to attack the 
fleet."
"There's not much we can do to ships," Pete said.
"There's a guy on the ship that's on its way that could probably come up with 
some ideas," Herzer said. "But New Destiny has some seafolk on their side. 
Specifically the orcas."
"I'll have to admit I haven't met a single decent person who has turned 
themselves into an orca," Pete muttered.
"And we're willing to do more than just ask," Herzer continued. "The ship has 
some materials on it, things we thought you might need. Beryllium bronze knives 
and spearheads. Beryllium bronze is more resistant to corrosion than the usual 
type. There's even some things made of stainless steel that the dwarves dug up 
and we ground down. And wasn't that a job."
"Those would help," Pete admitted. "But couldn't we get the same things from New 
Destiny? Or by trading, for that matter?"
"It's a long way from the dwarves," Herzer pointed out. "What can't they get 
from others that are closer? And Raven's Mill has the best textile and rope 
manufacturing on the East Coast; we're where the cord for your nets is being 
made. We can sell that closer, too. I wouldn't say you need us more than we need 
you. But it's close to equality."
Pete didn't answer that, just gestured at the ground, which was already dark 
although the dragons were still flying in the last shreds of sunlight.
"Can the dragons land in this?" he asked.
"As long as it's not on a carrier," Herzer said with a laugh.
"A carrier?"
"How do you think we got here?" Herzer said. "You'll see. In a few days after it 
beats its way around to us."
They landed by the lighthouse, without incident, stripped the harness off the 
dragons and unloaded Bast's catch. The wyverns immediately hopped over to the 
shelter of the bluff to be out of the wind and tucked their heads under their 
wings, nodding off into sleep.
"I'll go find Edmund," Joanna said, walking into the water.
"I'm for town," Pete said, gesturing at the fish and the lobster. "Can I take 
those?"
"And what do you think I caught them for, young mer-man?" Bast laughed. She 
picked up one of the fish and strode towards the water leaving her gear, and her 
clothes, in a trail behind her.
Pete picked up the string of lobster and looked at the other tuna.
"Herzer?"
"Got it," he said, hefting the fish with difficulty. He had long ago realized 
that Bast was stronger than he was but it was a bit shaming to have to struggle 
with the single fish when she had carried two of them easily.
Pete crawled to the water on his hands and submerged without a ripple and Herzer 
quickly followed him, fumbling with the combination of fish, mask and flippers.
The water trailed green phosphorescence around him as he strode into the water 
and he submerged quickly, following the faint luminous trail that Pete and Bast 
left. Bast was in the lead and seemed to know exactly where she was going.
"Bast?" Herzer called. "Two things. One, slow down. Two, how do you know where 
you are?"
"I was here years ago, Herzer," Bast said, slowing down to let him catch up. 
"I'm not sure how long ago, but I recognize it. And there's only one place for a 
mer colony around here."
"I've never heard of you," Pete said. It was clear that he thought he would 
have.
"The great grandfathers of the mer today were not yet born when I was here, 
young mer," Bast laughed.
"That was . . . a long time ago," Pete said.
"There was a mer colony in the Isles before the AI wars, mer-man," Bast said, 
softly. "Even then they were repairing the damage. I recall when the Port Crater 
was made. And why," she added in nearly a whisper.
The response from Pete was an untranslatable whistle.
The town when they reached it was lit in a fairy tale glitter. Luminescent fish 
swam around the square while the entrance of each canyon was lit by glowing 
globes.
"The fish are attracted here by feeding," Pete said. "Careful feeding. The lit 
globes are a type of sessile sponge; I think it was genegineered."
"It was," Bast said. "By the Bettel corporation as a type of underwater toy. 
Just as the wyvern were created by the Disney Brothers corporation."
"You were there?" Herzer asked.
"No, but in days when I was created genesis was still well known," Bast said. 
"These latter days . . . humans have forgotten most of their history. Fire 
lizards, wyverns, even great dragons, were all created by Disney genegineers. 
They've been tinkered with over years, but that is original genesis. Disney even 
did first work on mer, young mer-man. So owe your genesis to creators of 
dragons."
The arrival of the fish, and the lobster, was greeted with acclaim, and Jason 
pushed himself to the front of the mob that crowded around Pete.
"Good job, Pete," Jason said.
"Not me," Pete answered, waving at the naked elf next to him. "Thank Bast here."
"Bast," Daneh said, swimming up through the crowd. "I think we need to find you 
a bathing suit."
"Why?" Bast said. "I'm no more naked than the mer. Those slits on their fronts 
have a purpose, Daneh Ghorbani."
Daneh just chuckled and shook her head. "Whatever."
"This gift . . . it is a gift, right? This gift is much appreciated, Miss . . . 
?" Bruce said.
"Bast," Bast replied, sticking out her hand. "Pleased to meetcha." She somehow 
retained her position in the water even while shaking hands with the mer-leader.
"How did you . . . ?" Bruce said, gesturing at the giant tuna she was holding by 
one gill-plate.
"Oh, no," Pete said, waiting for the dread pun.
"What's wrong?" Bast said with a grin. "Fish are curious. I just let their 
curiosity be their undoing. It's an old trick."
"Well, however you did it, we appreciate it," Bruce said. "Pete, can you divide 
it?"
"Here," Edmund said, swimming over most of the crowd. "Use this," he said, 
holding out a knife.
"Heavy," was all that Pete said as he used it to slide through the skin of the 
fish. "And sharp."
"Beryllium bronze," Edmund said as Bast passed out the lobster. Jason ensured 
that they were passed out to family groups but most of them simply opened up the 
shells and tore out the meat ravenously.
"Do you want some?" Bruce asked as Pete started handing out the thick steaks of 
tuna.
"We ate," Herzer said. "Grouper and hogfish that the dragons caught."
Pete had set aside a large fillet from the first fish and was starting on the 
second.
"Could you section that up, Herzer?" Pete asked. "It's for the delphinos."
"Sure," Herzer replied. His knife was of stainless steel, issued for the 
mission, and much smaller than the one Pete was using. But it sufficed to chunk 
up the tuna, if somewhat messily. When he had the meat cut up he looked at the 
chunks and realized that he had no way to move them.
"Here, let me help you," a mer-maid said. She had long, dark hair that was black 
in the pale phosphorescence and was slimmer than normal in what was generally a 
hefty group, with high, firm breasts, a nice smile and a tail that was 
apparently bright blue. What was strangest was that she had a moray eel twined 
around her neck like a collar. She held out a mesh bag so that he could load the 
chunks of meat into it. "I'm Elayna."
"Herzer Herrick," Herzer said, acutely conscious as her breast innocently 
brushed his arm, of the comment Bast had made about nakedness. Not to mention 
the fact that Bast, who was one of the most dangerous individuals he had ever 
met, was no more than an arm's length from him. But he had been celibate for an 
awfully long time.
"Come on," the girl said, picking up the basket. "The delphinos are usually down 
at the tip of the reef."
He followed her into the darkness and as they neared what he felt was deeper 
water he saw a group of shadows up near the surface.
"That's them," Elayna said. "The delphinos are really strange; as close to 
aliens as we'll ever find. We work together, but they keep a separate society 
from us."
"How do you 'work together'?" Herzer asked as they neared the group.
"They herd fish to us and we try to catch it in nets," the mer-girl said. "Try, 
I say, because our nets are really lousy."
"Fish smell," one of the delphinos blatted. He had been floating at the surface 
but now dove, followed by the rest of the pod.
Herzer felt more than heard a wave of sound cross him and he knew he was being 
sized up by the delphino. While he'd seen the occasional mer, this was the first 
delphino he'd seen in the flesh and was surprised by the size of the being.
"Herzer, this is Herman the pod leader," Elayna said. "Herman, Herzer Herrick. 
He and some friends brought tuna."
"Good is," Herman said. "Much is. Good hunting us, some take. Most take back, 
need not."
"Thank you, Herman," Elayna replied. "Jason didn't get much today so we need 
it."
"Know," Herman said. As she opened the bag he pulled pieces out and flipped them 
dexterously to pod members in some pattern unclear to Herzer. He stopped when 
only half the bag was gone and flipped his nose at Elayna. "Back take. Hunt 
tomorrow."
"Herman," Herzer said, diffidently. "I think that there might be a way to 
capture the big pelagics if you, the mer and the dragons worked together. It 
might not work at first, but I think we can figure it out."
Herman paused and Herzer felt another of those ripples of sonar run across him. 
He wondered what it would look like, what he would look like, to a delphino.
"Good is," Herman said. "Try will. Morrow?"
"I'll see," Herzer temporized. "Hopefully."
"Jason see," Herman said. "Breathe must. Morrow."
"Morrow," Herzer said as the delphino floated back to the surface to breathe.
"What's this idea you have?" Elayna asked as they headed back to town.
"I'm not sure of the particulars," Herzer said. "I need to talk to Pete and 
Jason." He paused as a shudder passed through his body.
"Cold?" Elayna asked.
"Very," Herzer admitted. "But I'll be okay."
"Maybe, maybe not," Elayna said in a concerned voice. "Hypothermia is no joke, 
and there's nowhere to warm up. I get that way sometimes, too. But we have a 
better heat regulation system than landies." She reached into the bag and 
extracted a chunk of tuna, biting into it as she swam. "Of course, it also 
requires more energy, so we have to eat stuff more than landies. And tuna's the 
best; lots of fat."
"I noticed that you're . . . heavier than most landsmen," Herzer said.
"You can say fat," Elayna said with a laugh as she fed some small pieces to the 
moray. "But the fat's really just a reservoir for us. And we've been losing a 
lot of weight lately; I know I have. With the way that we push water through our 
gills, fat doesn't help with the cold. Eating fat does, though," she added, 
taking another bite. "Want some?"
"No, I ate up on the surface," he said. He didn't add that cold, 
seawater-flavored tuna was not his idea of an appetizing meal.
They'd reached the town square and she spread the tuna around to the still 
hungry group, taking a few pieces for herself.
"Having fun?" Bast said, swimming up behind them.
"Uh," Herzer replied, brilliantly.
"Yes, we are," Elayna said. "And I haven't thanked you for the tuna."
"You're welcome," Bast said, smiling at her. "I wonder, were you going to ask 
Herzer if he'd seen the feeding stations?"
"Uh," Herzer said again.
"As a matter of fact, yes," Elayna said with a toothy smile. "Is that a 
problem?"
"No," Bast said, matter-of-factly. "Long celibate he has been; go take the edge 
off. He's good for more than once a night." She smiled at the girl and flipped 
off into the darkness.
"Uhm . . ." Herzer said.
Elayna just looked at him and batted her eyes. "Care to go look at the feeding 
stations, Lieutenant Herrick?" she asked.
Without a word he took her hand and followed her across the night-dark reef.
* * *
"Well, look what the sea tossed up," Rachel said as Herzer strode down the bluff 
from the lighthouse. She was squatting by the remains of the campfire adding 
driftwood to the coals. "Have a nice night?"
The wind had died overnight and backed around easterly. The sky was clear and 
the dawn sun was just starting to lift the remnants of early morning fog. The 
wyverns were awake and starting to mewl with hunger.
"Great, thanks," Herzer said, setting down a bucket of water from the spring 
across the island. "Is there any breakfast? I'm starved."
"Well, you have your choice of fish and sea plum or sea plum and fish," Rachel 
said. "And I'm not surprised you're hungry. I'm surprised you can stand."
"Herzer has the constitution of a bull," Bast said, following him down the 
bluff. "And other things like a bull, come to think of it."
"Oh, God," Herzer muttered. "It's going to be one of those mornings, isn't it?"
"You have only yourself to blame," Rachel replied with a sniff.
"Not if you'd make me an honest man," he retorted, then shrugged. "So I'm having 
fun. It's not interfering with the mission."
"Fooling around with Bruce's granddaughter isn't interfering with the mission?" 
Rachel asked.
"His granddaughter?" Herzer groaned. "Oh, hell."
"Yes, his granddaughter," Edmund said, coming up and squatting by the coals. 
"It's going to be a hot one today," he added, looking at the sky. "But don't 
worry about it, Herzer, we've got much worse problems. Bruce had word that New 
Destiny is sending a diplomatic mission as well."
"Crap," Herzer said, looking around at the sea as if to see a black sail on the 
horizon.
"We'll deal with it," Edmund said. "We'll deal with it . . . diplomatically."
"Who are they sending?" Rachel asked. "Do you know?"
"No. I only know what I picked up in town."
"Most of the people do not like New Destiny," Herzer said. "I know that for 
sure. But I'm not so sure they want to join with us, either."
"Well, we'll have to find a way to get them to see the error of their ways," 
Edmund replied. "Somehow. I wish the damned ship would get here, but with the 
winds the way they are it might be a week."
"What happens if they meet up with the New Destiny 'diplomatic mission'?" Herzer 
asked.
"Hopefully they'll deal with it . . . diplomatically," Edmund replied.


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"Great day to be sailing," Commander Mbeki said as he reached the quarterdeck.
"Sure, if we were sailing the right way," the skipper said sourly. The ship was 
currently on the northerly tack, as it had been for a good half the morning. To 
sail to the east required turning first one way and then the other, tacking, so 
that the winds could be caught by the sails. They had been taking long tacks, 
far out to sea, to ensure that they avoided the shoals along the north side of 
the isles and the voyage was, unfortunately, taking longer than anticipated. "At 
this rate it'll be a week before we get to Whale Point. And what happens if 
they've hared off somewhere else by then?"
"We'll deal with it," Mbeki said.
"Sail off the starboard bow!"
They were well off from the islands so it was unlikely to be some stray fishing 
vessel. Chang and Mbeki both shrugged almost simultaneously.
"We'll stay on this tack," the skipper said. "We'll come up on it."
"If it's hostile, it will have the weather gauge," Mbeki pointed out.
"We'll figure that out soon enough. Get Donahue up on the mast with a pair of 
binoculars; I want to know what we're dealing with as soon as possible."
In no more than thirty minutes the midshipman called down.
"Square-rigged ship," he yelled. "Looks something like a caravel. No flags that 
I can see. Looks like some dolphins swimming around it."
"If it's a caravel we can sail rings around it," Mbeki said.
"Sure, but we don't have so much as bowmen on board," the skipper replied. "Get 
me Evan."
When the engineer was shown onto the bridge he nodded at the news and frowned.
"I've been working on something, but I don't know that you'd want to use it on 
the ship," he admitted.
"What is it then?" Mbeki said impatiently.
"It was an idea that Lieutenant Herzer had," the engineer temporized.
"The materials he asked to bring on board?" the skipper asked.
"Yes, sir," the engineer said. "He wanted a way to make the dragons an offensive 
weapon. He was working on that but I thought I'd make something else."
"What is it, man?" Mbeki snapped.
"A flamethrower," the engineer said nervously.
"Shit," the skipper said, looking around at the tinder-dry wood of the ship. 
"You're right, I don't want that used on my ship."
"Sir!" the midshipman called down. "Sir! There's a flag hoisted now, I can't 
make it out exactly but it's red and blue! And they've changed course towards 
us!" The New Destiny flag was blue field with red ND on it.
"That caps it," the skipper said. "Clear for action, all hands stand by to repel 
boarders."
"I have an idea, sir," the engineer said after a moment. "But we'll have to have 
them to port."
"We'll figure that out later," the captain replied. "Get moving on it. And don't 
you dare fire that damned thing on my ship."
"Yes, sir. I mean, no sir!" the engineer said, hurrying to the companionway.
The two ships continued on nearly reciprocal courses, the caravel bearing down 
on the clipper. Normally it would be no contest; the clipper was far and away 
the faster ship. But the skipper kept her on her course, headed towards the 
other ship. After a few minutes he climbed up to the rigging for his own look 
and returned shaking his head.
"They've got a ballista," he said. "And those are orcas around their ship."
"Changed?" Mbeki asked.
"Probably." He stood there with his hands clasped behind his back, feet spread 
to counter the roll of the ship. "We should show them our heels. We could outrun 
even the orca over time."
"With all due respect, sir," the commander said. "That would look like hell on 
our report."
"It would look worse if we lost the carrier," the skipper said. "We should have 
brought armed sloops with us, I said it at the time."
"Yes, sir," the commander replied.
"But you're absolutely correct that it would look like hell," the skipper 
frowned. "I wonder if our wonder-boy has come up with anything."
* * *
"You want me to what?" the rabbit said. "No way in hell."
"You said one favor," Evan replied. "This is it."
"And I also said 'nothing unreasonable,' " the rabbit replied. "This is clearly 
unreasonable."
"No it's not," Evan said, doggedly. "It's more than likely that you'll survive. 
Especially if you have the flamethrower."
"I can do a lot of impossible things," the bunny said. "But I cannot swim with 
the flamethrower on my back! Well."
"You're not going to swim."
* * *
"This is your plan?" the skipper said, looking at the rabbit at Evan's feet.
"Yes, sir," the engineer replied, nervously. "This is all I could come up with 
on the spur of the moment."
The rabbit was wearing a black suit with a smoked-visor helmet. Attached to his 
harness, in place of the pistol crossbow, was a small circular tank with a, yes, 
rabbit-sized nozzle attached. But the harness still held all his knives.
"This is insane," Commander Mbeki commented.
"You're right," the rabbit said, hopping towards the companionway. "It's crazy. 
I shouldn't do it."
"Come back here," Evan said. "I don't know what happens to you if you go back on 
your promises, but I'm willing to find out."
"Damn," the rabbit said. "Does anyone think that this constitutes unreasonable 
as well as insane?" he asked hopefully.
"Nooo," the skipper said, thoughtfully. "Insane, yes. Unreasonable, no."
"But insanity is defined as unreason," the rabbit said.
"Not really," Commander Mbeki said. "Psychotics are, by definition, insane. But 
they can be quite reasonable people."
"You're really going to make me do this?" the rabbit asked. "That's 
unreasonable."
"But it doesn't matter, if the task is not. If it's stupid, but it works, it's 
not stupid," Evan replied with the logic of an engineer.
"We really don't have time to debate this," the skipper said. "Either you're 
going or you're not. On the other hand, you're an AI. I don't feel that I can, 
with conscience, force you to do something that is clearly insane."
"Damn," the rabbit said, trying to scratch through the suit. "I can't even get 
to my damned ear. Okay, put me on the catapult."
Evan had even rigged a small launching seat.
"How long have you been contemplating this?" the rabbit asked.
"When did you board the ship?" Evan said as the clipper fell off to starboard. A 
ballista bolt from the oncoming ship whistled through the air with an evil hiss 
and poked a hole in the mainsail.
"You made this suit, this helmet and this seat in that time?" the rabbit asked. 
"I'm impressed."
"No, I made the seat then," Evan said, stepping into the launching pit. "I made 
the suit and the helmet when I made the flamethrower. Have fun."
"If I end up in the drink I'm coming for you, Evan Mayerle," the rabbit hissed 
as Evan timed the roll and hit the launcher.
The black blob was fired into the air and as it flew across the gap two knives 
appeared in its hands. It hit the mainsail of the oncoming caravel face first 
but the knives went through the canvas like butter and it slid downward leaving 
two gaping wounds in the black sail. The last that could be seen of it was as it 
flipped off the base of the sail and into the crowd below it. As it landed, 
there was an inhuman scream.
"Poor bunny," Commander Mbeki said. "He didn't last long."
"I think that was whoever he landed on," Evan said, as a spurt of flame licked 
upward and caught the sail. It was quickly involved and turned to ash before 
their eyes. "You might want to have the captain sail out of range for the time 
being."
The wind was fair from the caravel and it carried the occasional sounds of 
screaming, pleas for help and from time to time someone leapt over the side, 
apparently preferring the briny deeps to whatever was going on on board. The 
ship had almost immediately lost way and now rocked from side to side in the 
waves, its helm clearly not manned.
The captain joined them and shook his head when blood started running from the 
scuppers.
"I'm glad he's on our side," the skipper commented.
"I don't think he is," Evan replied. "But he owed me a favor."
"Shall we send over a prize crew?" Commander Mbeki asked. The last, badly aimed, 
ballista bolt had sailed off into the distance some time before.
"No . . ." the commander said after a moment's thought. "I'm not sure that any 
sane human should see what is on board that ship." He eyed the orcas and an 
occasional raylike thing that were coming up and glancing at the ship they were 
supposed to be following. "But I'm not sure that he should have to swim back." 
There were flames licking from the aft of the craft by then and he shook his 
head again. "Let's lay her alongside, near the bow, and recover our . . . 
friend."
They jockeyed the ship over, carefully, and threw grapnels onto its bow to pull 
it alongside. Fire parties stood by because the aft had become fully involved, 
but shifted as they were that was downwind and for the time being the fire was 
held there.
As they pulled alongside the rabbit jumped from one ship to the other, a gap of 
more than three meters, which should have been impossible.
"Well," he said brightly, taking off his helmet, "that was fun. Let's go find me 
some more orcs to play with!"
"It was crewed by orcs?" Commander Mbeki asked as a division under Chief Brooks 
boomed the caravel away and the clipper got back under way. Some of the crew 
from the burning ship had climbed aboard and were lined up against the starboard 
rail under guard.
"No, they were their marines," the rabbit replied, pulling off the fire-scorched 
black suit. "I just kept telling myself it was a cruise of telemarketers and 
there just didn't seem to be enough of them. I haven't had that much fun since 
the last real telemarketer died of old age. I didn't track the bastard down 
until he'd keeled over from the heart attack. They said he'd seen a rabbit and 
that was it for him. The bastard."
Not a sound was heard from the ship as they sailed away, leaving behind a crowd 
of confused orcas.
* * *
Joel had watched the entire "battle," more of a massacre, from his battle 
station on the quarterdeck. He found it interesting, and instructive, that the 
enemy ship was there. Finding one ship at sea was not easy; as sailors said: 
"Lord, the sea is so large and my boat is so small."
It was an unlikely coincidence to find one of the New Destiny fleet placed right 
across their path. About as likely as rounding out a busted flush on a one card 
draw.
Which meant that it probably wasn't coincidence. Which meant that the vague 
possibility that there was an agent on board had gone from "vague possibility" 
to "high probability."
Furthermore, they had known more or less the ship's exact location and plans. 
That meant that the probable agent was among the officers, probably one of the 
primary navigational officers, either the captain, Commander Mbeki, Major Freund 
the navigator or one of the three lieutenants.
The rabbit was an outside possibility, as well. As an AI it could have an 
internal navigational system and even communications. He wished that he knew 
more about it, but everyone with prior experience had left with the dragons.
His hunch was still Commander Mbeki. But it was only a hunch and while he was 
willing to pay attention to his hunches, he wasn't willing to concentrate on 
them.
He needed more information.
* * *
"Orcas approaching to port," the masthead lookout called.
Martin had been pacing up and down the quarterdeck, waiting for word on the 
attack upon the UFS ship. He had spread the ships on a long line across the 
anticipated course of the dragon carrier and the caravels had only had 
occasional visual contact for the past three days. The lookout had reported 
possibly seeing some smoke early in the morning, but from what was impossible to 
determine.
Each of the ships, though, had a small pod of orcas attached. The orca sonar 
could transmit across significant distances and he was using that to keep in 
communication with the dispersed fleet. Why some were returning to his ship, 
however, remained to be seen.
He walked to the front of the ship and looked down at the pod that was riding in 
the bow wave. Suddenly he saw Shanol veer off and head in the direction of the 
oncoming orcas.
He waited impatiently for the leader whale to return and then walked back to the 
maindeck as Shanol and a smaller orca coasted to the side of the slow-moving 
vessel.
"What's up, Shanol?" he asked, leaning over the side of the gently heeling 
caravel.
"Your 'unarmed carrier' just took out the ship that was in its way like it 
wasn't even there," Shanol replied.
"What could have happened?" Martin asked. "They didn't even have the dragons 
with them!"
"Well, it's pretty hard to tell from down here," the orca leader said, 
sarcastically. "I had Manüllat report back in person."
"They didn't board or anything," Manüllat squealed. "The carrier never got near 
them until the ship was already st-stopped. Some of the sailors jumped over the 
side but they were just screaming about a fire-breathing imp."
"They couldn't have summoned anything," Martin snapped. "They don't have the 
power available. The only one that might have is Talbot, and he's already at the 
mer-town."
"Well, whatever it is took your ship out and the carrier is already past your 
line," Shanol replied. "What now, fearless leader?"
"Head to the mer-town," Martin said after a moment. "Time to start phase two."
"Yeah, well I hope phase two works out better than phase one," Shanol replied.
"Yeah," Manüllat squealed. "And no fire-breathing imps."
* * *
The skipper was walking down a lower deck corridor when he saw sailors bracing 
themselves against the bulkhead ahead of him. He wasn't close enough to have 
caused the reaction and he didn't understand the beads of sweat on their faces 
until he saw the rabbit coming around a corner.
"Mr. Rabbit," Chang said. "Just the bunny I was looking for."
"What do you want, Spiffy?" the rabbit asked.
"I wanted to show you something," the skipper replied, waving at him. He led the 
rabbit down the corridor to a locked storeroom and opened it from a ring of 
keys.
"The ships of the UFS Navy are dry . . ."
"Not something you have to tell me," the rabbit said, bitterly. "And no alfalfa 
either. And your women are mostly dogs."
"Well, I can't help you there," the skipper said, opening the door. Inside there 
was a large barrel, already tapped. He took down a half-liter pewter mug and 
held it under the tap until it was full. "But there are times, as the Navy 
recognizes, when it's medicinal to administer a small belt. For just such 
occasions it maintains the means."
He bent down and handed the mug to the rabbit, who peered into its depths 
suspiciously then took a sip.
"Rum, by God!" the rabbit said happily, drinking half the mug in one draught.
"High-proof rum," the skipper noted. "Royal Navy grog to be exact. I can't leave 
the room open, but if you'll step inside I'll come back in a couple of hours and 
have you carried to your bunk. You'll forgive me if I don't want you wandering 
the ship under the influence of alcohol, what with one thing and another."
"Nah, believe it or not I'm a happy drunk," the rabbit said. "Just let me fill 
up one more of these mugs and I'll let you lock back up." He beamed up at the 
skipper as he took another swig. "You know, for a stuffy son of a bitch you 
ain't all bad."
"I was thinking something similar, myself," the skipper said.
"Don't kid yourself," the rabbit said, taking another swig. "I'm all bad."
* * *
"Mistress Sheida," Joel said to the avatar. He had chosen the cable tier for the 
meeting on the assumption that there were multiple exits and hardly anyone ever 
came down there.
"How is your mission going, Mister Travante?" Sheida asked. Her avatar looked 
tired, which meant it was projecting "her" current state.
"Not fun, but that's not important," Joel said. "We were attacked today. The 
ship apparently knew our estimated course, location and speed."
"I see," Sheida sighed. "I guess sending you out wasn't just insurance, was it?"
"No, ma'am," the inspector replied. "I have a suspicion who the agent is, and 
even a feel for motivation. Could you give me some information on Commander Owen 
Mbeki's family?"
Sheida's avatar looked distant for a moment, then shrugged.
"The usual story. A wife, Sharon, daughter Sara. No last known location but his 
primary residence was in Ropasa. You think New Destiny has them?"
"Given one single comment, ma'am," Joel said, nodding. "I'd say that they have 
one or both and are using them as hostages."
"What do you intend to do?"
"I need to have more proof, even for myself, than one unguarded comment, ma'am," 
Joel admitted. "And I also need to know more about an AI rabbit that accompanied 
an elf to the ship. The attack took place after the rabbit's arrival. And while 
he was instrumental in destroying the New Destiny craft, I don't discount him 
being the agent."
"That rabbit, he is a scamp, isn't he?" Sheida said with a faint grin. "I'd love 
to hear more of the story at another time. He's another distinct possibility," 
she added with a frown. "I'll give you two items," she continued, holding out 
her hand and floating a pair of disks across the compartment to him. "I can ken 
those with very little power usage. Place them in strategic locations. If an 
avatar appears near them but not in the same room they'll indicate direction 
when you touch them. If an avatar has appeared in the room, they will record the 
conversation. Will that do?"
"Perfectly," Joel said, pocketing the disks.
"What do you intend to do?" Sheida asked. "Take the information to Duke Edmund?"
"The duke is currently at the mer-town," Joel told her. "We're sailing there at 
the moment. But, no, I don't intend to do that. With your concurrence, as soon 
as I'm sure who the leak is I'll take action. If it's the rabbit we will have to 
act quickly and decisively; he is a dangerous AI. If it is the commander I 
intend to turn him."
"What do you mean by that?" Sheida asked warily.
"It is often useful to let an enemy think they have perfect intelligence," Joel 
replied. "I would suggest that the commander be moved to a very important shore 
post where he can pick up various useful items of information. Most of them 
relatively low level, as, frankly, the movement of this ship is. But from time 
to time he'll forward important bits of information that are higher level. Some 
of them will be real information that we don't mind the other side having. I'm 
sure there are things that you wished you knew that New Destiny knew."
"Indeed," Sheida said, her eyes narrowing.
"Other things will be carefully crafted falsehoods. Carefully crafted because 
you don't want to burn an agent that good."
Sheida frowned. "And I certainly don't want to 'burn' his wife and daughter."
Joel paused and shrugged after a moment. "The time may come when that choice has 
to be made. The preference is to ensure the safety of the agent and their close 
kin. For example, if we catch someone that they don't want to lose, and if the 
commander has lost his utility, we could attempt to trade 'their' person for 
ours. But, sometimes, you have to cut your losses. If it meant harm to Commander 
Mbeki's family to prevent, oh, Paul winning the war, would you do it?"
Sheida frowned and shook her head. "I hate questions like that."
"You need to think about them, ma'am." Joel shrugged, his face hard. "I 
certainly do. Several times a day."
"Still no word on your wife and daughter," Sheida said, sadly. "I take it you 
haven't 'heard' anything."
"No, ma'am," Joel replied. "But if I do, you'll be the second person to know."


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"Duke Edmund," Bruce said, coasting into the swim-through that had been set 
aside for the duke's party. "Would you mind joining me for a short swim?"
"Not at all, sir," Talbot replied, setting down the section of whale bone he had 
been carving.
He didn't ask, and Bruce didn't offer, where they were going. He just followed 
the mer-leader as he popped up above the reef and headed downward towards the 
open ocean.
The reef ended at about twenty meters or so and gave way to sand bottom. The 
light had trailed off, but it was still quite bright in the brilliantly clear 
waters. They turned to the right and swam along the edge of the reef and Edmund 
looked around himself with interest. He realized that while he had been enjoying 
the overall beauty of the reefs, he hadn't had the time, or, face it, the 
inclination to really examine them.
The reefs were covered with fish; schools of ones the size of his hand and 
nearly round of body with blue vertical stripes were everywhere. There were 
other schools of more "fishlike" appearance, fairly long to their height, with 
bright yellow tails. In among the crevices were more small fish, all of them in 
a rainbow of colors. It was only with great trouble that he managed to realize 
that there were drab fish there as well. And finally he picked out ones that 
were camouflaged so perfectly they were almost impossible to see. One that 
looked exactly like a section of reef popped up as they passed and swallowed a 
smaller fish whole. Edmund never would have noticed it if it hadn't moved and 
when it stopped to swallow its prey it nearly disappeared again.
Now that he was really looking around he realized there were many things about 
the reef that were puzzling. Some of it looked exactly like stone. He knew that 
it was limestone that had been built up by the coral polyps. But other portions 
seemed to be covered in fur. These portions were infrequent, but interesting. 
The covering didn't seem to be a slime or a mold; he wasn't sure what it was. 
And then, why were the swim-throughs there? They looked like gouged canyons, but 
there was nothing that he could see to gouge them. Did trickles of fresh water 
open them up? Or water or sand pouring down from the shallows to the deeps?
Furthermore, the reefs were not constant. The area with the swim-throughs, where 
the town was, was built up to several meters over the sandy bottom. But within a 
few hundred yards down the coast it had given way to scattered small rocks stuck 
up barely over the ground.
But even these were alive. There were delicate sea fans dangling from them, 
waving back and forth in the light currents. A turtle the size of a pony was 
lying with its belly on the sand, eating a sponge attached to the side of one of 
the outcroppings. There were brightly colored reef fish. There were even some 
larger fish that looked more of the open ocean type to him. But they had 
gathered around the rocks, one or at most two by each one. He thought, at first, 
that they were hunting something. But they were simply stopped, as much as 
possible, hanging motionless. When they drifted away from the rocks they would 
turn and come back into the current until they were over the rocks again and 
stop, as if they were using them as some sort of location beacon.
Intrigued he deviated from Bruce's wake and coasted over for a closer look.
The larger fish were shaped something like tuna, but had a more rounded head, a 
bluish sheen and a horizontal stripe along their midline. What was happening 
became clear as he got close enough to see details. Smaller fish, one colored 
bright blue, were darting out from the rock and swimming over the body of the 
larger fish. He waited patiently for the larger fish to eat one of them but it 
never did. Instead the small fish swam all over its body, picking at it from 
time to time as if eating the larger fish's skin. They even swam into its slowly 
opening and closing gills and as he watched in amazement one swam right into the 
larger fish's mouth, poked around and came back out.
"Cleaning station," Bruce said and Edmund realized that he had stopped instead 
of following his host.
"Sorry, I was just watching this," he said.
"Good," Bruce replied, clearly willing to dally. "I'd hoped you might actually 
look around you for once."
"Was it that obvious?" Edmund chuckled.
"You're a very focused person, Edmund Talbot," Bruce replied. "And there are 
many things to focus on on the reefs. What's happening there is that the small 
fish, that one's a blue wrasse," he said, pointing at the bright blue one, "are 
picking parasites off the larger fish. Which is an amberjack by the way."
"Why doesn't it eat them?" Edmund asked. "It seems like an easy meal."
"Sometimes they do," Bruce said. "But, by and large, they don't. The small fish 
get the easy meal. The larger fish get their parasites picked off. If they 
didn't have the small fish around, if they ate them all, they'd end up covered 
in parasites. Both of them get what they need; it's what's called a commensal 
relationship."
"I saw a turtle back there eating what looked like a sponge," Edmund said. "What 
does the sponge get?"
"Eaten," Bruce replied with a shrug. "Predation is predation. But . . . that 
type of sponge grows over live coral as well as dead. If it was left unchecked 
it would spread over the whole reef, killing it. Tide and currents along with 
storms would eventually wipe the remnant coral out. So the whole ecosystem would 
die. If you killed all the turtles, it might not come to pass, there are other 
things that eat sponges and they would increase as their food source increased, 
but you begin to understand a small bit of the complexity of the web of life 
that is a coral reef. Take away the damsel fish and algae grow unchecked. Parrot 
fish eat the live coral, but their fecal matter is almost pure sand because of 
the rock they have to ingest to get to the polyps; their shit is what you see as 
crystal white sand. But there's something in particular I'd like to show you; 
it's not far."
"Let's go," Edmund said, turning away from the cleaning station.
Down the section of patch reef a large coral head rose up in the middle of an 
expanse of low rocks. It was about three meters high and two across, tapering a 
bit like a teardrop. It was colored a faint green, as if it had some algae all 
over it. Sections of it were covered with the mosslike growths he'd seen 
elsewhere.
"This is Big Greenie," Bruce said, coasting to a stop and letting the current 
carry him past the coral head. "It's a species called green coral and it is the 
oldest living organism on earth."
"I thought that was some tree in western Norau?" Edmund said, peering at the 
rock. "And is it alive?"
"Oh, yes," Bruce said. "See the fuzzy patches?"
"I'd noticed them before," Edmund admitted. "They look like it's covered in 
moss."
"Those are the live polyps," Bruce corrected. "They're actually related to 
jellyfish. Think of them as upside down jellyfish surrounded by a rock shell. 
They're filter feeders; they extend tendrils that catch plankton as it passes 
by. Once a year they reproduce, releasing clouds of sperm and eggs to drift on 
the wind. But Big Greenie, here, has been doing that for seven million years."
"Damn," Edmund said, impressed.
"It very nearly died," Bruce continued. "Water conditions in the 
mid-twenty-first century were terrible. There was, as it later turned out, a 
normal climactic shift to higher temperatures, then the cycle reversed and there 
was a sharp temperature decline, a mini–ice age. All of those created 
temperature stresses. Toxins released by industry into the water, divers 
touching the reef, industrial fishing that removed vital species, all of it 
nearly killed something that had lived for millions of years. There were 
sections of this reef where less than ten percent included live polyps; that was 
a recipe for disaster."
"Your point?" Edmund said, dryly.
"You are, as I mentioned, very focused, Edmund Talbot. But while it's important 
to focus on the trees, sometimes you have to let the forest speak for itself. 
I'm showing you the oldest tree in the forest because I thought it was something 
that you could focus upon. This is what the Work is all about; ensuring that the 
reef, Big Greenie included, is never brought to those conditions again."
Edmund thought about that for a moment, kicking against the current to carry him 
back to the coral head. He dropped down to the bottom and looked at it closely, 
then backed up when he saw the head of a very large moray stuck back in a 
crevice near the coral's base.
Finally he swam back to where Bruce was waiting patiently.
"I understand what you mean," Talbot said.
"There's a 'but' there," Bruce replied.
"There's a huge 'but' there," Edmund admitted. "The first 'but' is that the 
conditions that you're talking about don't apply. Won't apply. To get to the 
conditions you describe will require industry, major industry. Which cannot 
exist given the explosive protocols."
"Toxins can be created without internal combustion," Bruce said with a frown.
"Not on large scale, without internal combustion or electrical energy. The first 
is prevented by Mother under the explosive protocols. And any power production 
gets sucked up by the damned Net. So you cannot have large-scale industry. You 
have no idea what I'd give right now for a couple of tons of sulfuric acid, for 
example, but producing it in a low-tech environment is a stone bitch."
Bruce opened his mouth but Edmund raised a hand.
"Give me a second here." Edmund grinned. "You had your say. If we win this war, 
the entire system comes back online and all the conditions before the Fall hold. 
You'll be able to replicate all your needs again. There won't be any industry, 
any more than there was for a thousand years before the Fall. Nor will there be 
any more visitors, because there aren't that many people and even with the 
natural population increase that is going on, there won't be more than a billion 
and a half, two billion max, in the next hundred years. There's also a maximum 
even past that point; you can only support so many humans on preindustrial 
agriculture. You forgot nutrient run-off in your litany, by the way."
"It's in there," Bruce said, grimly. "Flora bay was nearly killed by it. And the 
bay is the nursery for half the ecosystem in this region."
"But that won't happen because you cannot transport the fertilizers from where 
they are to where they are needed," Edmund snapped. "God knows we're running 
into that already in Raven's Mill. My point is that while the war is going on, 
the reefs are still out of danger. But you are not."
"So you've said," Bruce shrugged. "But New Destiny doesn't have a reason to 
attack us."
"I'm not talking about New Destiny," Edmund replied. They had drifted away from 
the coral head on the current and were headed in the general direction of town. 
"Your people are excessively vulnerable. And they are valuable to more than just 
us and New Destiny. We passed a settlement on the way here in Bimi island. With 
your underwater abilities, you're a priceless asset to a group like that. How 
long until they come to the conclusion that since you're unwilling to assist 
them, they should force you to?"
"How are they going to do that?" Bruce said, angrily.
"I don't know," Edmund replied with a shrug. "But some of them, maybe not now, 
but soon, will figure out a way. "Why should they dive for lobster when you can 
do that for them?"
"We could ally ourselves with them, just as well," Bruce replied.
"They can't protect you from New Destiny," Edmund retorted. "And they have far 
less to lose than we do. You'd be the cleaner fish to their big fish. Sure, it's 
a commensal relationship, but if I had my druthers, I'd be the big fish. The 
cleaners can't snap me up."
"And you wouldn't be the big fish?"
"We need willing allies," Edmund said, reasonably. "We need you to scout for us, 
to fight for us if we can figure out a way. To communicate with the delphinos 
and the other cetoids. To find the New Destiny ships so that we can destroy them 
before they destroy us. Before they come to my land and I have to fight them at 
my damned walls. That's not big fish to little fish. We can't force you to do 
those things. How do we know that you intentionally missed some fleet? It's a 
big damned ocean, as I'm coming to understand. But I can damned well tell you 
that the fishermen will get out their whips if you don't come back with enough 
lobster."
"You create problems that don't exist," Bruce said, still angry.
"Maybe, but here's one that already exists: you're starving to death."
"We're getting by," Bruce said, defensively.
"Barely, as primitive hunter gatherers, dependent on what you can bring in each 
day," Edmund said, warming to his own anger. "Damnit, Bruce, you're responsible 
to your people, not just to this reef! I've got people under my protection that 
were members of the Wolf terraforming project. Are they working on it now? No, 
they're working on rebuilding civilization; not scavenging for food in the 
forests. And you're not even good hunter gatherers. You're losing body weight; 
Daneh can prove that. You've had people die from nutrient deficiencies. We can 
help. So you don't want gill nets, fine, they take too many of the fish you 
don't want and damage the reef. Fine. We can provide seine nets instead. You can 
target your prey that way. There are other things your people have asked for. 
Lobster pots, long lines—"
"No long lines," Bruce snapped. "They're nearly as bad as drift nets!"
"Whatever," Edmund replied. "Tell me what you want and we'll provide it. Within 
reason. You're not the only group we have to support with arms and materials."
"What's within reason?" Bruce replied.
Ah, hah. "That's to be worked out. We can provide the fighters with some 
weapons. The bronze is better for your purposes; it can be resharpened easily, 
unlike the stainless. But it's hard to make and there are no sources of made 
material whereas we can get blanks, have blanks, of the stainless in quantity. 
But that's hard to work as hell, it takes time which means money. We'll set up a 
credit system for support and ensure solid, and honest, trade, under UFS trading 
laws. We're not going to strip you of people and with our support there are 
products that you can trade for luxuries and that way you won't be entirely 
dependent upon us. As I said, the details have to be worked out, but they are 
details. As willing allies in a mutual protection pact we're not going to let 
you starve at the very minimum. Your mer-men and -women won't have to scrabble 
for every little reef-fish they can catch. And maybe even not have to eat sushi 
for the rest of their lives."
Bruce considered this for a pace and then shrugged.
"I come out here to convince you, and you half convince me," Bruce said.
"The reef will survive, with or without you," Edmund said. "But, here and now, 
the crisis is the war against New Destiny. Win the war and the reef will be 
waiting for you. As you yourself said, Big Greenie survived the worst that man 
could throw at her. She's survived natural and unnatural disasters for seven 
million years. She'll survive this. Assuming that New Destiny doesn't throw huge 
power bolts into her. Another thing that we can prevent."
Bruce shrugged again and then headed back towards the town. Edmund figured it 
was as good as he was going to get. For now.
* * *
Rachel pawed among the leaves and vines, her fins kicking at, and above, the 
water's surface to keep her in place. She was mostly finding hard, unripe fruits 
among sea plum growth.
"Sea plum's one of those 'good-bad' things," Elayna said, foraging in slightly 
deeper water. "It's more of a pest in the waters around Flora, but it has some 
really specific growing requirements."
The bed of vines was anchored near the spring on Whale Point Drop but the vines 
stretched for meters in every direction.
"It interferes with the sea grasses some," Antja said, sitting up so her head 
was out of the shallow water and looking around, then bobbing back down to 
continue to forage. "The roots have to have fresh water, but the fruits will 
only mature in salt. So it's only found where there's a strong fresh-water flow 
that meets salt water. That means right around spring runoffs like this one for 
the most part. And it only grows so far. So it's not a terrible pest. And it 
supports most of the species that sea grass does, for that matter."
"There are all sorts of little fish and . . . stuff in here," Rachel said. "But 
not much in the way of mature plums. Elayna, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure," the girl said, her bright blue tail waving out of the water as she 
rummaged in the vines.
"Where's the eel?"
"Oh, I only bring Akasha out for special occasions," Elayna said, "And generally 
only at night. During the day she hides in her cave. I think this bed has mostly 
been picked over," she added with a sigh. "We need to go find something else. 
Conch? Lobster?"
"Conch is generally found around sea grass," Antja said, looking at Rachel. "But 
the nearest bed is klicks away. I think we need to go bugging."
"Bugging?" Rachel asked.
"Looking for crayfish," Elayna said, then added: "Lobster."
"Oh."
"Mostly the way that we do that is to swim upstream so we can coast back," Antja 
said, swimming towards the inlet's mouth. "But we've been here long enough that 
most of the upstream stuff has been picked over like the sea plum. The lobster 
move around; they come in to refill the niches they hide in, but that takes a 
little time. So, I'd suggest heading east, if you're up for a hard swim back?
"I think so," Rachel replied, picking up the string-mesh bag that had a few 
fruit in it. "What is this made of?" she asked as she followed the two mer-girls 
out to sea. They were swimming slowly since she was a virtual cripple in the 
water but it was still a little fast for her and she was glad when they caught 
the current and it pushed them to the east.
"Mostly seaweed stems," Antja said. "We make some from the sea plum, too, but if 
you cut the vine, you don't get the fruit. Hard choice."
"And both of them rot quickly," Elayna complained. "And aren't very strong to 
start with. They're not very good."
"This is something we can help with," Rachel said. "I don't know if cosilk or 
hemp would be best, but we have both. Not a lot, yet, but more every year as we 
break more ground."
"What I'd really like is a bathing suit top," Antja said, looking at Rachel's 
two-piece. "I'm really tired of having my breasts on display all the time. There 
are times that I don't like being looked at that way, if you know what I mean. I 
won't even comment on the occasional touch."
"Speak for yourself," Elayna said happily. "I like the looks. I don't even mind 
the touch, if it's the right hands."
"That's because you're a slut, Elayna," Antja said, without rancor.
"She's not a slut," Rachel challenged. "She's just . . . comfortable with 
showing off her body. But I know what you mean, Antja. Even this thing is too 
skimpy for me. I never really showed off, much, before the Fall. Except, you 
know, when I was younger . . ."
"Putting on as little as your mom would let you get away with and going out in 
public to flaunt?" Antja said with a grin.
"Oh, I'd shake it," Rachel laughed. "But then . . . some of the looks I'd get. 
They just made me shiver, you know? And I started putting my clothes back on. 
Since the Fall . . . with… some of the things that have happened, you never 
catch me anymore except in long skirts or slacks and a high-buttoned shirt. I 
don't want the looks. At all."
"Well, I don't mind them, thanks," Elayna said. "And I'm not a slut. A slut is 
some girl that sleeps with any guy that crooks a finger. I'm much pickier. Now, 
Bast, Bast is a slut."
"Not by your definition," Rachel said with a laugh. "By your definition, she's 
perfect. But she wouldn't mind being called a slut; she'd probably take it as a 
compliment. But Bast is very choosy and as far as I can see . . . sort of 
serially monogamous. I didn't realize it at first, but she really is. She's 
never even looked at another guy since she started dating Herzer, at least not 
around Raven's Mill. And, God knows, Herzer doesn't worry about hopping from bed 
to bed. If you'd like a slut, Herzer's the male definition. But Bast isn't. 
Hell, she chose my father when he was not much older than Herzer and they 
apparently were quite an item for damned near a decade."
"Really?" Elayna gasped. "Your dad?"
"Oh, yeah," Rachel said with a wicked grin. "Apparently back then, Dad must have 
really been something. Heck, he was living with Aunt Sheida before he met my mom 
and that was either post Bast or concurrent; I've never been sure and I'm not 
about to ask. And then he tossed them both over for Mom. Now that must have been 
a spectacular breakup."
"Aunt Sheida?" Antja said, picking up on the name. "Not the council member?"
"Yep, now Queen Sheida of the United Free States. Even back then she was number 
two or three on the list for a Key, and they don't hand those out at raffles. 
But here Dad is bouncing from Bast to Sheida and then finally settling on Mom of 
all women."
"So he's never slept with Bast again?" Elayna said. "That's hard to believe. 
She's so . . ."
"Sensual," Rachel finished the sentence. "After Mom left him, taking me along, 
he apparently had some time with Bast. But . . . I'm not sure what was going on 
there. I'd say he needed the company; he was really busted up when Mom left."
"When was this?" Antja asked.
"When I was about four," Rachel said, sadly, remembering the arguments vaguely 
as not happy times. "My dad was a really serious reenactor before the Fall. He 
lived in a stone house, cooked his own food, or had a nanny servant do it 
anyway, the whole thing. Like some feudal lord. I mean, it wasn't crazy living; 
he had hot and cold running water. But it was from a cistern on the hill and 
that was filled from a spring. When I say cold I mean cold. Anyway, the way I 
pieced it together, Mom wasn't willing to raise me like that and he wasn't 
willing to leave. So he clung to his life like a limpet and . . . Mom made a new 
one. He came and lived with us for a while but he just couldn't hack it. 
Technology really seems to drive him crazy if he's living with it every day. So 
by the time I was six or so, he was gone for good. I'd still visit him from time 
to time, especially for Faire. It was great when I was a kid. Dad was the local 
'Lord' and I'd get all dressed up and people would fuss over me. But then as I 
got older, it just got so . . . old. So I stopped going to visit him."
"What happened?" Elayna said. "Why'd you go back?"
"Duh, the Fall, dummy," Antja chuckled, grimly.
"Duh, indeed," Rachel said with a frown. "Mom and I lived . . . hell, not that 
far from Raven's Mill. No more than a hundred klicks. Do you know how hard it is 
to walk a hundred klicks, carrying food, in the middle of the storms they had 
after the Fall?"
"Yuck," Elayna muttered.
"Yeah. But what more perfect place to go? Before the Fall it was 'This water is 
like ice and why do I have to use this old-fashioned flush commode? Why don't 
you just transport like any normal person, Daaadddy!' When I got there and saw a 
flush commode, and a hot bath being drawn, I cried like a baby. No more 
squatting in bushes! No more rough flannel and cold river water! Mom . . ." She 
stopped and breathed for a moment. "Mom got first crack at the tub. But, anyway, 
that's how Mom and Dad got back together. And . . . after a while they got back 
to being . . . friends. For a while there, it was really sickening, like two 
giggly teenagers. Now they're just . . . well, they're just about the most 
perfect couple I've ever seen. They discuss problems, rarely lose their temper 
with each other and compliment one another for what they do. And Bast, returning 
to the subject of the discussion, has been smart enough not to interfere. Why 
should she? She's got Herzer!"
"So what about you and Herzer?" Elayna asked. "I heard you were sharing a room 
on the ship? Care to pass on any tips?"
"He snores," Rachel said, sweetly. "As for the rest, Herzer's like my brother. I 
. . . we've never. We're not going to be doing that."
"Why?" Antja asked, reasonably. "I mean, I've got Jason and Herzer's got no tail 
to speak of, but that doesn't mean I can't see the attraction. Hell, you've only 
got to take one look at his bathing suit to see one attraction."
"I did!" Elayna snickered.
"Well . . ." Rachel said, coloring slightly. "If . . . if there's such a thing 
as an 'antislut' that's me. That doesn't mean I'm down on girls who enjoy bed 
hopping; Marguerite was one of my best friends before the Fall and she lost her 
virginity about the time she started blooming tits. And never looked back. But 
me . . . I've just never been interested."
"You mean in guys?" Elayna asked.
"I mean in sex," Rachel responded. "Guys or girls. I just don't care. I like 
guys, and girls, as friends. But I'm not interested in . . . all the squishy 
awfulness. It sort of makes me queasy to tell you the truth."
"That's weird," Elayna said. "I can't really imagine that."
"That's because you've got a sex drive," Rachel said with a sad frown. "I don't. 
It's like being tone-deaf. You can listen to the music, but all it is is noise. 
Unpleasant noise at that. The thought of . . . Herzer's dick in me is . . . 
ooooh!" she ended with a shudder of disgust.
"Okay," Antja said. "I have to agree, that's weird."
"Well if a normal sex drive is like a five," Rachel said with a shrug. "And 
Elayna here is, say, an eight, I'm like a negative one."
"And what's Bast?" Elayna said.
"Three thousand one hundred and fifteen," Rachel laughed. "More or less."
They had drifted to an area of scattered patch reef, most of them a meter or so 
high, and Antja suddenly darted downward, reaching into a crevice.
"Gotcha," she said, pulling the lobster out of its hole. It waved its antennae 
at her furiously and kicked with its tail but most of the motion stopped when 
she wrung the body off of the tail and dropped the latter into her bag.
"They generally hang out under ledges and in cracks," Antja said, dropping down 
to the sand bottom to swim along the side of the section of reef. She was 
peering into the ledges under the rock and then darted her hand in again. This 
time she drew it out with an expression of disgust.
"What we need is spears for this," she said. "It's not particularly sporting but 
we're not here for sport."
Rachel coasted a little farther down and picked out her own patch of rock. She 
got down on the sand and looked under the reef but it was nearly black to her 
eyes. The sun was high and shining down through the water as if the ten meters 
or so over her head wasn't even there. And the shadows under the rock were 
nearly impenetrable. But she could see stuff on the sides, little fish darting 
in and out. Then she saw a shadow move under the rock and backed up in a hurry 
as a small shark came sculling out lazily. At least, she thought it was a shark. 
It looked a little like one except that the mouth was pursed as if it had been 
eating a lemon.
"Nurse shark," Elayna said as she swam by. "They're harmless if you don't bother 
them. On the other hand, they'll tear you a new one if you do. A guy before the 
Fall, a mer and he should have known better, tried to ride one. Fortunately the 
nannites fixed him right up. But he Changed back to normal human and never got 
in the water again."
"How do you see under here?" Rachel said. She had changed patches and was now 
looking under the new rock, warily.
"You get used to it," Antja said, drifting past. She now had three lobster tails 
in her bag, one of which was huge. "Watch them, though, they've got spines. You 
have to grip them firmly but not hard. Firmly enough that they can't get away; 
they'll rip you up struggling out of your hand. But don't grab them so hard that 
you poke yourself."
"Great," Rachel said, catching a glimpse of some antennae waving just down the 
reef. She pushed herself off the bottom with her fingers and snuck up on the 
crayfish. It was apparently unworried about her approach, except for waving its 
antennae more aggressively. She moved her hand in closer and then lunged. She 
wasn't quite fast enough, but she got ahold of the antennae at the base, 
surprised by the struggle the lobster was putting up. She managed to get her 
other hand around it and then wrung the tail off quickly.
"Got one," she said, happily. Then noticed the small cuts in the fingers that 
had snagged the antennae. The salt water stung them but there wasn't much she 
could do about that.
"Gloves," Elayna said, popping up from a section of reef about ten meters away. 
"That's what we really need: Gloves."
"Not if you use a spear," Antja said. She was out of sight, only her golden-red 
tail sticking up out of the reef. The colors only really came out when they were 
close to the surface.
"Why do you guys all have colorful tails when the water makes them all look 
brown or green at depth?" Rachel asked, going back to her hunting.
"Our eyes process out the blue light," Antja replied, then paused as she 
apparently lunged for another lobster. "Until we get deep and that's all there 
is. But when we're at, say, twenty meters, we see things just as clearly, 
color-wise, as you do up here. But by the time you get down to say, thirty or 
forty meters, it kicks back over to 'normal' vision because just about 
everything but blue has gone away."
"Is it harder for you to see?" Rachel asked. "I mean, down by the town and 
stuff. Everything down there is blue."
"No," Elayna replied. "We've got superior night vision, too. Kind of like a cat. 
We can probably see better than you can. That might be why we can see under the 
rocks better, too."
"I see this one," Rachel said, darting in and getting ahold of the body this 
time. She'd figured out her grip and didn't get cut for her troubles, but her 
hand scraped on the rock as she drew the struggling crustacean out. She also 
realized that she was tired. And there was a long swim back against the current. 
"This isn't easy."
"No, it's not," Antja said. "I'm not sure we're getting more calories than we're 
going to burn off, especially with having to swim back against the current 
carrying the tails."
Rachel thought about that and then laughed.
"I'll carry them back," she said, spotting another lobster. "I can walk up on 
the shore. That way you guys don't have to wait for me to catch up."
"Works," Elayna said. "But we can keep in the shallows, that way you'll have 
company. That way you can tell me all of Herzer's terrible secrets."
"I think those are Herzer's to tell," Rachel said, pausing in her hunt.
"Oh, that's no fun," Elayna replied.
"Well, most of Herzer's life before the Fall doesn't contain many terrible 
secrets," Rachel replied as her hand darted in and just missed the more wary 
crayfish. It had been a large one, too. "He had a genetic condition that my mom 
cured, just before the Fall, fortunately. It got worse as he got older and 
especially worse around puberty. He . . . didn't have many friends and no 
girlfriends to speak of."
"That's pretty unbelievable," Antja said. Her bag was nearly full and she rested 
on the top of the reef for a moment. Rachel suddenly realized that the scales on 
their tails had more than decorative purposes; if she had tried that, with the 
mild swell that was pushing over the rocks, she would have come away with a 
scraped-raw butt.
"He . . . twitched," Rachel said, finding it hard to explain. "He worked out but 
he couldn't keep any muscle mass; he was like a shaking twig all the time. And 
he had a speech impediment. Sometimes he'd drool or one of his limbs would just 
start spasming. It was . . . awful to watch. He'd been a fun kid, played sports, 
and then this . . . disease just wasted him away. I admit I started avoiding 
him. I'm pretty ashamed by that but it was just too weird. Anyway, Mom figured 
out a cure just before the Fall. Basically she killed and brought him back to 
life." Rachel swallowed at another thought she didn't want to voice. "Which . . 
. makes them bound in a weird way. Anyway, that's why he didn't have 
girlfriends. Now after the Fall," she continued with an evil glint in her voice, 
"that's another story."
"So I'm just the latest?" Elayna asked. "I'd sort of figured; he was . . . 
pretty good. Actually, darned good."
"A lot of that is because of Bast," Rachel replied. She popped up over the reef 
to see Antja taking a bite out of one of the lobster tails. "Aren't we supposed 
to be sharing with the town?"
"I've got too much to carry back," Antja said, reasonably. "If I eat some, I 
carry it in my stomach."
"We can switch out bags," Rachel replied. "I'm never going to fill this one at 
this rate."
"Works," Antja said, finishing off the lobster tail and wiping her hands on her 
scales. "These things are a lot better cooked, though."
"So, why's it Bast?" Elayna said. Her tail was flipping back and forth savagely 
as she shoved an arm deep into a crevice. "Hah, gotcha ya bastard."
"Bast considers it a solemn duty to train her current boy-toy," Rachel replied, 
dryly. "And she's been doing a lot of training with Herzer."
"It shows," Elayna laughed. "Although it took him a few minutes to figure out 
the differences in anatomy. After that it was great."
"Herzer has two great skills in life," Rachel said. "Fighting and . . . the 
other. I wish I could appreciate either one."
She snagged another lobster and carried it over to Antja, who was dragging what 
had been Rachel's bag behind her. It was more than half full.
"How do you do that so quickly?" Rachel asked.
"I've been doing it since I was a kid," Antja replied. "My parents were mer and 
they had me as a mer; I've been bugging my whole life that I can remember. For 
that matter, I've hunted this reef before; I know where they tend to hang out. 
Try over there," she said, pointing to a patch of reef that looked identical to 
the empty one that Rachel had just been working.
When Rachel approached the reef she could understand half of Antja's success; 
the ledge under the rock was packed with bugs from side to side, their antennae 
waving at her angrily. She reached into the mass and snatched one out while the 
others skittered from side to side, trapped by her body and the shallow ledge. 
As fast as she could reach she pulled lobsters out and wrung their tails. Some 
skittered by her, turning to use their powerful tails to skim over dangerous 
open ground, but she heard Elayna whoop behind her and dive on them.
In moments she had over a dozen tails lying on the ground among the scattered 
bodies of the lobster.
"So it's a trick," she said, smiling, as she gathered up the tails.
"Sure, isn't everything?" Antja replied. "I think that about does it. Three bags 
full as they say."
"So, you were born as a mer," Rachel said. "Did they, what? Did they crack the 
can under water? Some sort of underwater uterine replicator? What?"
"No," Antja said, in a tone that showed she didn't want to discuss it.
"Sorry," Rachel replied, hurt. Given everything that they had been talking about 
it seemed a harmless enough subject.
"I'm sorry, too," Antja said. "I just don't want to talk about it, okay?"
"Okay," Rachel said. Then she paused and her brow furrowed. "Antja, after the 
Fall, all the controls on the landsmen, well, let me make this plain, the 
landswomen, reproductive system turned off. We had an awful time with the first 
. . . menstruation. Did yours?" she asked, delicately.
"Yes," Antja said, tightly. "On the other hand, they designed mer better than 
'normal' humans; we, thank God, don't menstruate."
"But, you are fertile?" Rachel asked, realizing that she'd just tiptoed into a 
minefield as Elayna came over a rock with a set expression on her face. "You and 
Jason could have a baby? Elayna, for that matter, might be carrying Herzer's?" 
She looked over at Elayna who had a stricken expression on her face as if that 
thought had just occurred to her.
"Yes, we are," Antja said. "I wish you would stop pursuing this line of 
questioning."
"Sorry," Rachel said, "call me incurably curious. Just one more: Antja, what 
happened to the babies?"


CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Daneh had spent most of the day working with the mer healers. They had no 
trained doctors but a few of the mer had been familiar with basic first aid and 
had been pressed into service. Unfortunately, in the saltwater environment there 
was not much that could be done. The flip side was that many of the standard 
infections were unable to gain a hold.
Mostly what they had to deal with were poisons from the various denizens of the 
deep, rashes from running up against the wrong coral and the occasional shark 
bite. She was shown one such, a nasty gash on the mer-man's tail that had been 
clumsily stitched up. She gave a brief class on proper suturing, something that 
she had learned only after the Fall, and suggested some poultices for the 
rashes. They had about done the rounds when Germaine, one of the healers, drew 
her aside.
"Mistress Daneh," the mer-woman said, nervously. "There's something I need to 
show you, one case we'd like some help on. But Bruce said we weren't to tell you 
about it. You can't let on that I did this."
"I won't," she said. "Where is it?"
"It's a bit of a swim," the mer admitted. "I'll see if I can find a delphino 
that will give you a ride."
She came back some time later with one of the delphinos.
"This is Buttaro," Germaine said.
"Daneh, lady," the delphino spit. "Help baby?"
"Yes, I will," Daneh said. "If I can."
"Hold fin," the delphino said, rolling so that she could grasp the dorsal. "Go."
The delphino stayed low to the reef as they headed for the inlet overlooked by 
the lighthouse then turned towards where the spring was. On the far side of the 
spring it took a breath though its blowhole and then dove towards the bottom 
where there was a crack in the rocks.
The way led through a twisted series of tunnels and then Daneh saw blue light 
ahead. They surfaced in a cave.
She had noticed that some of the mer were pregnant, but had not seen any babies. 
As she entered the cave her ears were assaulted by the sound of at least a 
dozen, mostly crying. There were more than babies in the vaulted, but crowded, 
cave. Mer-women swam around the rocky shelves, leading some of the older infants 
in water games.
Germaine surfaced by her and looked at her pleadingly.
"Mer can't breathe water at first," she said, coughing out a lungful of water. 
"They don't have the mass to fight the cold and their lungs aren't strong 
enough. They have to be born on land. They have to stay on land for a year, 
generally, until they can live in the water."
"This is one hell of an Achilles' heel," Daneh said, quietly. "I can see why you 
didn't want us to know about it. You'd better hope like hell New Destiny 
doesn't."
She led the way to one of the ledges but was confronted by an angry mer-woman.
"Germaine, I can't believe you brought a landie here!" the woman snapped.
"Daneh is a doctor, Rema," Germaine replied, just as hotly. "Would you rather 
that Maturi die?"
"No, but . . ."
"I don't know if I can do anything," Daneh said, soothingly. "But I will try. 
And I promise that I will do nothing to endanger your babies."
The woman looked at her questioningly, then shrugged.
"Do what you can," she said. "For all it's worth."
Germaine led her to the ledge and then climbed out awkwardly, crawling to the 
rear where a very young mer-maid cradled a child in her arms.
Daneh took one look at the baby and made a reasonable diagnosis, but she wanted 
to be sure. She looked at the mer-maid and held out her arms for the baby.
"Daneh is a doctor," Germaine said. "A real doctor. She might be able to help."
The girl looked up at her pleadingly, then handed the baby over.
Daneh walked carefully through the crowd of mer-folk, packed nearly hip to hip 
on the small ledge, to where the light was better and examined the baby closely. 
It, she wasn't sure if it was a he or a she because of the recessed genitals, 
was clearly a newborn, but the baby was far under what should to be normal 
weight and had a yellowish tint to the skin. It was sleeping but when she rolled 
back one eyelid it woke up and gave a pitiful mew of displeasure. The whites of 
its eyes were yellow as well.
"It's not serious," she said, returning to where the girl lay. "I think. If we 
can get it out of this cave. Is this a he or a she? I can't tell."
"He," Germaine said. "What is it?"
"Childhood jaundice," Daneh replied. "I'm relatively sure. It's definitely 
jaundice. In adults that comes from damage to the liver but in children it can 
manifest from birth."
"He's never been strong," the girl said, her mouth working. "And he's been that 
color."
"He needs sunlight," Daneh said, looking around the gloomy cavern. There were 
only a few slits that let in light. "Which clearly is in short supply. It helps 
if he can be given oil from fish livers, if I recall correctly. But sunlight 
alone might cure him."
"Just sunlight?" Germaine said, aghast. "Are you sure?"
"No," Daneh snapped. "I don't have medical nannites to make a diagnosis, nor do 
I have any to effect a cure. But I've seen it before and we had items at Raven's 
Mill that permitted me to research a similar case. And sunlight alone worked for 
her."
"He can hold his breath well," the girl said. "But if he swallows water he won't 
be able to cough it back out as weak as he is."
"Mer children, we have learned," Germaine said, "have a much stronger breath 
hold reaction than normal human children. But it's a long swim."
"Where would you take him on the surface?" Daneh asked.
"There's a sheltered cove that we use to wean the children to the outside," 
Germaine replied.
"Not far, I take it?"
"No."
Daneh stripped off her mask and placed it on the child's head where it conformed 
as well as to an adult. The mer-baby didn't like the sensation and gave off a 
tooth grating yowl of fear, thrashing his head from side to side.
"It's okay," Daneh said, putting out her hand. "He can use it to breathe on the 
way out. But, please, bring it back to me," she said, gesturing at the blue-lit 
water. "There's no way that I can make that swim on my own."
"Thank you," the girl said, crawling over and touching her on the leg. "Thank 
you."
"Thank me when he gets well," Daneh said, squatting down to hand the child to 
Germaine who was already back in the water. "It will probably be a week or so. 
And he may have sustained some permanent liver damage. And there's a possibility 
with infantile jaundice of brain damage. But if we caught it in time, he should 
be fine."
"Thank you," the girl said again, slithering over the edge of the rock into the 
water and heading for the entrance.
"You might not be so bad after all," Rema said from the water's edge.
Daneh walked over and dangled her feet in the water, looking around the 
sound-drenched cavern.
"Like I said when I surfaced," she sighed. "This is one hell of an Achilles' 
heel."
"Let me tell you a story from the bad old days," Rema said, hoisting herself out 
and sitting with her tail flapping in the water. "Fur seals give birth once a 
year. They congregate in colonies up in the Arctic. When the pups are born their 
fur is milk white, ice white to blend into the ice they are born upon. It's also 
very soft."
"I'm not going to like this story, am I?" Daneh asked.
"No, you're not," the mer-woman replied. "Well, at some point this was 
discovered by man. And men would go up into those seal rookeries and use clubs 
to bash in the heads of the seal pups. Up on land, there wasn't much that the 
mothers could do."
"I was right, I didn't like the story," Daneh said, looking around the cavern. 
The mer-babies were apparently born with almost gray tails, but over time they 
took on the whatever shade they were meant to have as adults. She could envision 
the genetic coding still. She shook her head and sighed again. "You need guards. 
Guards with legs."
"And give our hearts into the hands of the guards, you mean?" Rema asked. "You 
see our problem. Who watches the watchmen?"
"There's one group that, at least in this generation, I would trust with this 
treasure," Daneh said. "But only one group. And only in this generation."
"And what do we pay them with?" Rema asked. "Sex with mer-maids?"
Daneh laughed and waved her hand at the expression of fury on the mer-woman's 
face.
"No, it's not that," she said, still chuckling. "It's just that the only 
representative of that group has, unless I'm much mistaken, already been paid in 
that coin."
* * *
Elayna had invited herself along so it was a fairly large group: the three 
riders, Herzer and Bast, Elayna, Jason and Pete who took off, strapped to 
various dragons.
"Delphinos were signaling that there was a group of tuna feeding somewhere to 
the southwest," Jason called as the wyverns reached cruising altitude. They had 
fed skimpily and were hungry for more.
The group headed out in the indicated direction and soon saw the feeding school, 
spotting it first by a large flock of birds overhead.
"There's more than tuna down there," Herzer called as they swept low over the 
assembly. The school of fish—it was hard to call them bait fish since most of 
them were fair-sized eating for a human—was absolutely huge, stretching for 
nearly a klick in one direction and a half a klick in the other. The fish were 
mouthing at the surface creating a pattern of circular ripples while at the 
edges the larger predators churned the surface into froth.
"Mackerel," Pete called. "And there's everything on them. Sailfish, marlin, 
tuna. Hell there's probably wahoo and barracuda in the mix!"
"We can just fill this net with mackerel," Jason said. "Mackerel's good eating. 
Getting them back is going to be the problem."
"Dolphins," Koo called. "Or maybe delphino, bearing in from the northeast."
"How do you want to do this, Jason?" Joanna called.
"This was Herzer's idea," Jason pointed out. "The riders are going to have to 
stay up at the surface. And God only knows what's down there. Can they swim that 
long? How do we get back? Is something going to eat them?"
"Joanna, can you hold out on breakfast for a while?" Herzer yelled.
"Not happily," she replied. "But if you want me to play shark guard, I will."
"And you're positively buoyant," he said. "The riders can hold onto you if they 
get tired."
"I'm only buoyant up to a point," she replied. "But I see the logic. The wyverns 
can feed first."
"Then we get one or more of them back so the riders can hold onto them," Herzer 
said. "If the delphinos will let us, we'll ride back with them, the dragons 
following. Maybe the dragons can pull the net, maybe the delphinos. We'll scoop 
some of the mackerel for them, making their hunting easier."
"That's how we usually handle it," Jason said. "But with lots less fish."
"Well, let's get down, get the mer unstrapped, talk to the delphinos and get the 
net deployed."
* * *
The scene underwater in the bait school was a maelstrom. The sounds of the 
cavitation of literally millions of fish filled the water with a sound like 
thunder. Scales from dead and damaged fish rained down in a continuous 
silver-glittering cloud. And in every direction fish of various sizes were 
swimming chaotically. Besides the sound and the movement, the colors of the fish 
were confusing. A group of sailfish, swimming past faster than a dragon, were 
changing hue along their sides, rippling with blue and yellow stripes as they 
passed. Narrow, torpedolike fish that Pete identified as wahoo were marked the 
same way. The mackerels themselves changed hue constantly, presumably to make it 
harder for their predators to fix on any one fish. The chaotic patterns, the 
sound, the enormous sense of movement were oddly terrifying.
Herzer finally tore his eyes away from the spectacle and grabbed onto Joanna's 
spread wings. The delphinos had clustered in her shadow and he saw more forms 
clustering in the depths. As he watched a mackerel, squirted out of the school 
by the press of the predators, dart across towards the shadow and presumed 
safety. One of the forms rose in a way that at first seemed slow and lazy, then 
suddenly sped up, slashing in for a strike on the bewildered bait fish. The form 
turned out to be a massive marlin that quickly darted back into the deeps, the 
tail of the mackerel sticking out one side of its beak.
"I don't know where to start," Jason admitted.
"Don't really look at it," Herzer said. "Unfocus. Just let it all be a blur."
The dragons were clearly having some of the same problems but it hadn't slowed 
them much. They darted into the swarm, just a few more large predators to feast 
on the plenty, and started picking off fish at the edge, mostly the predators 
that had come for the mackerel.
Herzer had come for tuna, primarily, but they were running so fast it was hard 
to keep an eye on them. They would go by so fast that even by panning his head 
it was hard to see them as anything other than a blur. Their tails were a blur; 
they seemed to move faster than a hummingbird's wing.
He found himself getting overwhelmed again and took his own advice, grabbing a 
corner of the net as Jason spread it out.
"Right," Jason said, finally. "We'll just head into the school. When I give the 
word, Herzer and Elayna just try to hold steady and Pete and I will swing it 
around." He looked at the wall of fish of every conceivable size and gulped some 
water. "Follow me."
Pete and Jason headed straight into the baitball, through the wall of predators. 
Herzer saw one yellowfin tuna that was bigger than Bast slam into Pete as he 
neared the mackerel but Pete was merely buffeted for a moment and kept on 
heading in. Jason was at the top of the net and Herzer could see clearly when he 
entered the baitball because he simply disappeared.
The net in their way immediately affected the mackerel and a large slice of 
them, ten meters or so long and a few meters deep, turned aside and formed their 
own ball as predators slashed into them. Herzer tried to pull the net to a halt 
at the edge of the main ball but it was wriggling madly in his hands. A tuna 
slammed dead into his side and both of them rebounded from the impact, shaken. 
He stuck a hand out and jammed it into the momentarily drifting tuna's gills and 
was rewarded by a panicked frenzy for his troubles. The tuna, which was not much 
smaller than he and probably weighed more, thrashed against his side, dragging 
him off in an upward spiral. He got his hand free and grabbed the net with flesh 
and metal hands, striving with all his might to kick his way out into the open 
water. By this time he had been dragged fully into the mackerel and their 
flashing bodies were all he could see. They swarmed all around him, butting into 
his side, face, legs, like a thousand maddened cats. Suddenly his head crested 
the water and try as he might he could not get the net to budge; the weight of 
the fish in it, their frenzied fighting, Pete and Jason pulling on it, all 
combined to simply tow him through the water.
Suddenly a talon shot out of the water and grasped the net by his hand. He let 
go as Joanna took over, dragging the net, and a mass of fish, out of the main 
school. He gratefully swam out of the frenzy and into the comparative peace 
alongside.
The net was a gill net, long and relatively short, not the purse seine that 
would have been ideal for the purposes. But by tying it on the bottom and ends 
and letting it float to the surface they had gathered a huge quantity of 
mackerel, and several relatively small and confused tuna.
"You know," Joanna said. "Just when we need that damned ship."
Jason was pulling mackerel out with his hands, mostly those stuck in the net, 
and handing them to the delphinos. He pulled one out for himself and expertly 
stripped it of its skin, then tore into the flesh. Joanna dipped her muzzle into 
the net and caught a couple more along with one of the small tuna.
"Tuna," she said after she swallowed. "Tastes just like chicken."
"The question is," Herzer asked, floating at the surface, "did this work better 
than, say, diving in and grabbing them by hand or mouth?"
"Oh, yeah," Jason replied. He dipped under the water and blatted at the 
delphinos.
"Better," Herman said. "Less energy. Better."
"But we have to get the net back to town," Herzer replied.
"Eat fish, fill net, go town," Herman replied. "Fish fresh."
"Yeah," Jason mused. "They'll live in the net, so they'll be fresh when we get 
back. And they can stay in the net for a day or so, except for getting caught in 
the weave."
Herzer was watching Chauncey try to catch the big tunas. He had tried to snatch 
them on the run, but they were just too fast. Finally, he struck out with his 
half-folded wing and managed to temporarily stun one, which he quickly picked 
off. Others followed his example and the wyverns were quickly replete with fish.
"They learn," Herzer muttered.
"Oh, yeah," Jerry said. He and the others had swum over to the floating net, 
from which the delphinos were now stripping the gill-caught fish. "They'd never 
learn anything if it wasn't by example. When one sees something that works, it 
copies it. That's half of the way that they're trained."
"That's unusual in the natural world," Herzer pointed out.
"They're not natural," Jerry replied with a shrug. "All this swimming is fun, 
but this water is damned deep and we're way out here. How long are we going to 
stay?"
Herzer hadn't really noticed the depth, concentrating on the problem, but he 
realized they were out over the deeps for sure. The water was a deep, rich blue 
and the light from the sun formed a cone fading into the depths, his shadow in 
its midst.
"Dragons are fed, delphinos are fed, mer-dudes and dudettes are fed," Herzer 
said, tearing his eyes away from the attraction of simply going down and down. 
"I'd say we fill the net and head for home."
"Works for me," Jerry replied. "I'm getting tired of paddling."
"Try to get the dragons over to you," Herzer said. "They float. In the meantime, 
we have to try to fill this thing again."
The second time they left the bottom tied and swam the net, with both ends open, 
into the school. It quickly filled with mackerel, and in this case several very 
irate, very large, yellowfin tuna. They tied the top and end for good measure, 
then started dragging it back towards town.
The dragons were content to scull along on the surface and their riders, 
including Bast and Herzer, took that method of transportation. The mer switched 
off with the delphinos, who had stubby fingers on the ends of their pectoral 
fins, dragging the squirming net back to town. So it was a group of very tired, 
but triumphant, hunters that returned just as the sun was setting with enough 
protein, on the fin moreover, to last the town for a few days.


CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Jason, Pete, Antja, Elayna and the weapons maker, Jackson, had dragged 
themselves up on land to join the landsmen for a good old fish fry. The fillets 
of mackerel had been wrapped in seaweed and left to cook on the coals while they 
feasted on lobster tails, sliced into cutlets and spitted over the fire. This 
was the group's share, and maybe a bit more, from the bags the girls had 
returned with.
"The question is," Jason said, around a mouthful of hot lobster, "can we do this 
without the dragons?"
"If the baitball is nearer the town," Herzer replied, juggling one of the 
cutlets from hand to hand to cool it. "If you can't swim out fast enough 
yourself, you can ride on the backs of the delphinos."
"The problem was always getting enough back to town," Jackson said. He was a 
short, burly mer-man with black hair and tail and the only one that Herzer had 
seen with a beard. "With nets that's fixed."
"Nets fix a lot of things," Pete said. "Nets, lobster pots, grouper traps, long 
lines. We can use them all."
"Only if we can get Bruce to go along," Jason pointed out. "He's death on 
commercial harvesting."
"He's going to find slow going fighting that battle," Antja said, popping a 
cutlet into her mouth. "This is the first time we've been well fed since the 
Fall. And while picking lobsters out one by one is fun when it's a game, I'd 
much rather go pick up filled traps. These tails took most of the day to round 
up."
"You can trade for all of those things," Edmund pointed out. "You might even be 
able to find a source for stainless steel. I doubt you'll find one for the 
bronze. But it's going to be slow going without some sort of support."
"We hear you," Jason said. "We've got the picture. The problem is that if we 
ally with you, we're New Destiny's enemies. And we have to consider that, 
carefully."
"You're already their enemies," Herzer replied. "They hate Change. They may have 
allied with the orcas, but that's a marriage of convenience. If they win, you 
can bet that their first action will be to round up their so-called allies and 
put them through a Change of their making."
"The ocean is big," Antja said.
"But places where you can birth your young are not so widely found," Daneh 
interjected.
"What?" Herzer asked.
"What?" the mer-folk all said at once.
"Who told you that?" Jason snapped.
"Someone who needed a diagnosis," Daneh replied mildly. "One that, if they 
hadn't gotten it, would have led inevitably to the death of the child in 
question."
"The yellow baby," Antja said.
"Correct," Daneh replied. "A simple case of jaundice that was easily corrected. 
But there are damned few trained doctors left in the world, and for sure you 
won't have access to them. That is something else that we can give you no one 
else can. And there's more."
"Oh?" Jason said. "What?"
"You know how bloody vulnerable you are," Edmund replied. He had obviously been 
talking to his wife. "We can provide the guards that can ensure your security."
"So we're just supposed to hand over the care of our children to you?" Jackson 
said. "That's a pretty huge leap of trust."
"It's not like you have a lot of choice," Edmund replied. "We're not going to be 
the last people to find out about it. You have to get guards somewhere."
"Why should we trust you?" Jason asked. "Why you as opposed to someone else?"
"Would you trust me?" Herzer asked.
Jason thought about it for a moment then nodded. "Yeah, you I'd trust."
"How about someone that I said could be trusted even more unreservedly than me?" 
Herzer asked. "Someone to train and command the guard force? We'd draw them from 
our best soldiers, each of them with experience."
"Gunny?" Edmund asked.
"He's getting a little long in the tooth even for the Academy," Herzer said. 
"But he'd be just the person to guard whatever you're talking about. And I can't 
imagine a better retirement spot than down here. We could cycle the Lords 
through on rotation. I think that most of them would scramble for the spot."
"Station a group of dragon-riders down here as well," Jerry said. "We've got the 
wyverns for it, but they'll have to be moved east and brought down on carriers. 
And we need more trained riders."
"If you ally with us, we'll establish a base," Edmund said. "A permanent 
station. There will be a permanent guard force that can watch over your birthing 
caverns. Hell, build something less makeshift; from what Daneh told me that 
place is a deathtrap. Probably not here, I'd prefer someplace more accessible. 
But we can do it."
"Why?" Jason said. "What is worth all that trouble and expense?"
"We need you, the delphinos even more, against the New Destiny forces," Edmund 
said. "And, hell, Herzer's right. Guards will give their eyeteeth for the 
posting. Especially in winter."
"Bimi's not the greatest place in winter," Pete pointed out. "Winds from the 
north turn it into an icebox from time to time."
"It's a hell of a lot better than Raven's Mill," Rachel replied with a grin.
"Would you have to trust us?" Edmund asked. "Yes. But we will be trusting you, 
in turn, to give us good information on the Destiny forces. And to be willing to 
attack them if it comes to it."
"Well, I have to admit, you've convinced me," Jason said. "But it's Bruce you 
have to convince."
"No," Edmund replied. "I just have to convince enough of the mer that I'm right 
and he's wrong."
"I don't know that I want to go there," Jackson interjected. "Bruce has a lot of 
supporters who are going to follow him even if it's the wrong idea and they know 
it. But we've survived by sticking together."
"That's what the mackerel said," Edmund replied, scooping out one of the fish 
and unwrapping it from its seaweed. "Right up until they got eaten."
* * *
When Bruce, inevitably, found out, he was furious.
"I cannot believe that someone showed you the birthing cavern!"
"I'm a doctor," Daneh said, coldly. "There was a sick baby. He's probably going 
to get well now. He wouldn't have if they hadn't shown me."
"So to save one life they've threatened us all!"
"What threat?" Edmund said. "Seriously. You go on and on about all the history 
that you've studied, but I guarantee that I know it better than you. I know 
exactly what hostages those women and children make, but they're hostages 
already!"
"What?" several in the group said.
The discussion was taking place in the middle of the square. For once, thanks to 
the net full of mackerel and grouper dropped onto the town by returning dragons, 
there was enough to eat and leisure to gather and discuss the latest crisis.
"Your birthing problems are always going to be your greatest weakness," Edmund 
said. "A weakness you can't control without allies on the surface, allies you 
can trust unreservedly. There's no way, for example, to change out hostages. 
Humans, without breath masks, cannot survive underwater. Babies certainly 
cannot. So you can't force anyone who guards you to give you hostages in return. 
So, sooner or later, you're going to have to find allies to guard your babies, 
allies that you trust. Let me ask you this, would you ever, in your wildest 
dreams, trust New Destiny to guard them?"
From the mutterings from the crowd the answer was clear but Mosur had to pipe 
up.
"So you're saying we should trust you?"
"Yes," Edmund said. "With more than that. We'll establish a fleet base somewhere 
in the islands, probably near the Bimi chain. We'll rotate through our finest 
soldiers, the Blood Lords, Herzer is one, to guard your children. We'll 
establish a power shield so that if New Destiny strikes, the children will be 
shielded. Face it, we're the good guys. I know well what horrors are possible in 
war. But we guard against them. All of our beliefs, all of our philosophy, say 
that if we undertake this trust, we will guard it with our lives, our fortunes 
and our sacred honor. And there are only two choices, us or New Destiny."
As he said this shadows began to fall over the reef and a pod of orcas passed 
over the square. They started to circle and the largest detached himself and 
drifted over the gathering.
"So, landie, you say that our brethren should trust you tailless landsmen, do 
you?" the orca said, drifting to a stop. He paused and rolled one eye at Bruce 
the Black. "Etool Shanol," the orca said, bowing slightly. "Ambassador from New 
Destiny."
"Oh, bloody hell," Herzer muttered.
* * *
"We had a ship with us, carrying provisions to help you in your need," the orca 
continued. "But it was brutally waylaid by a ship from the so-called Freedom 
Coalition and burned, killing everyone on board."
"I'm sure that they approached the, effectively unarmed, carrier with parley 
flag flying and all good intentions," Edmund replied, dryly. "I'm sure they 
didn't simply open fire as soon as they were in range."
"We are on a mission of peace," Shanol replied. "Why ever would they attack your 
craft? So you see the lies that the Freedom Coalition spreads," he said, pulsing 
the sonar loudly. "They ask you to trust them; I suppose they ask for your 
support. While all that New Destiny asks is that you remain neutral. We have no 
need of your support; we orcas as well as other sentients of the ocean support 
New Destiny. As its name implies, it is the destiny of the world for it to grow 
and prosper. Peacefully, if possible. But the so called Freedom Coalition has 
thus far prevented it, attacking our leaders at the last peaceful meeting of the 
Council, so in fear of the historical inevitability of New Destiny that they 
stooped to violence. They always stoop to violence."
"If the triumph of New Destiny was so inevitable," Edmund replied, "Celine would 
not have introduced deadly poisons into the meeting. Nor would Paul be attacking 
us at every turn, building an invasion fleet, gathering forces on his coast. You 
could just sit back and let historical inevitability take its toll."
"The people of Norau suffer under their tyrannical rule of an hereditary 
aristocracy, Duke Edmund," the orca replied, nastily. "It is the duty of New 
Destiny to free them from their feudal bondage."
"The people of Norau voted upon the constitution," Edmund replied, tiredly. 
"Groups that have joined since have joined through plebiscites. We do not 
conscript soldiers, Change people horribly. We do not refer to the Changed as 
'abominations.' "
"So you say, Duke Edmund, but I do not see these people here. I see a duke and 
his family."
"I am one of those 'people,' " Herzer responded, hotly. "I chose that life over 
yours, because I've seen the evil that comes wherever New Destiny touches! I 
will fight you with every ounce of my strength. With my last breath, I will 
curse you!"
"Ah, yes," the orca replied, smiling as only an orca can smile. "His family and 
his chosen lapdog. I trust that Mistress Daneh is recovering from her ordeal."
Herzer was halfway across the square before he felt arms holding him back. He 
struggled for a moment then shook them off and paused, panting.
"You finny bastard," the lieutenant replied. "If it's the last thing I do I'll 
see your bird-picked carcass floating on the surface."
"So you see the inherent peacefulness of the Freedom Coalition," Shanol replied 
to the group. "We send peaceful orcas, water dwellers, like you. And an unarmed 
freighter that is brutally waylaid and sunk. The Coalition sends an armed 
carrier, a general, and his hot-headed young lieutenant, a lieutenant that has 
been a party to crimes against his own people."
This time, Herzer was able to ignore the jibe.
"My demons are my own, fish-face," he said. "But at least I control them, not 
let them run at the head of the pack."
"Pod, young man, pod," the orca sighed. "So, you see the truth of the choice. 
The violent philosophies of the Freedom Coalition, whose stated aim is to take 
over the world and rule it as they see fit. Or simple neutrality and protection 
from them by aid of New Destiny."
"Yes, we can see it clearly enough," Jason replied. "Gentle lies in the mouth of 
the predators upon dolphins and whales or the simple truths spoken by people who 
have shown themselves to be our friends."
"You may believe who you wish, Jason Farseeker," the orca replied, calmly. "But 
we are simple eaters of fish, just as you are. Perhaps we do not survive on sea 
plum, but, then again, who would, given the choice?"
There was a chuckle from the crowd and Edmund looked around and shook his head.
"Bruce and I have been discussing history," Edmund said. "I remember other 
groups, as should he, who, in their time, claimed 'inevitability.' The strange 
thing about all such groups, the Nazis, the Communists, the Wahabbists, the 
Melcon AI, is that, in every single case, those who lived under their benign 
leadership suffered untold hardships. The Nazis disliked various groups within 
their control and they were marched to slave labor and gas chambers, killing 
nearly ten million all told. The Communists believed that things should go a 
certain way, that things should be done as they commanded, and in their 
blindness, and often quite open-eyed, they killed nearly a hundred million 
people before true historical inevitability dragged them off their thrones. And 
everyone knows the story of the AI wars; it is far too grim to repeat. Yet, in 
every case, the side that claimed inevitability was brought to the ground. By 
free peoples, going open-eyed to their deaths, aware that they were doing so so 
that their children, and grandchildren," he added, looking at Bruce, "would not 
suffer the fates of those lucky individuals caught in the clutches of 
'historical inevitability.' "
"Yet, you speak of untold hardships," the orca replied. "How many died in Norau, 
Duke? Far more died in the Dying Time than in Ropasa. Because the leaders in 
Ropasa saw the need for a firm hand and ensured that their people were fit to 
survive. The people of Ropasa did not starve by roadsides, desperately searching 
for succor."
"Strangely enough," Edmund said, dryly, "I remember those days. And I seem to 
recall that New Destiny had a far higher energy budget than the Freedom 
Coalition. Something about illicit access to the terraforming project power 
budgets. An access, I might add, that Herzer and I had a hand in ending, 
preventing the project from total energy drain. But by the time they were done 
they had taken more than half the power out of the core, putting the project 
back by over two hundred years."
There was a mutter from the crowd at that. Even in the years after the Fall the 
Wolf 359 Terraforming Project was remembered, like a good dream at the end of 
the night. If there was anything to look forward to it was that at the end of 
the war they, or their children or their grandchildren, could continue the 
millennia-long project to create a new, livable, planet.
"Lies and damned lies," the orca said smoothly. "Show me proof of this. I would 
be very surprised if there was any."
"Well, I'd have to have access to Mother, wouldn't I?" Edmund replied. "And if I 
did, you would question the access. But I was there when Dionys McCanoc 
destroyed himself in a rush of power. It was I that put him in his prison of 
energy, a prison that was breached with the power equivalent of a nuclear 
weapon. Of course, he'd neglected to shield himself, so the prison became his 
tomb. Where, I wonder, did he get all that power? He, the New Destiny tool, who 
was the sole surviving member of the Project council. All the other members 
suffered mysterious, or not so mysterious, deaths just prior to and after the 
Fall."
"You call innuendo and supposition proof?" the orca asked with a blatted 
chuckle. "But we stray far afield. You want these good people to risk themselves 
in a doomed gamble. We but wish them to maintain themselves in neutrality. In 
proof of our goodwill we had brought goods to help them, nets, fishhooks, traps 
and harpoons. Unfortunately, all of them were destroyed by the Freedom 
Coalition. This is proof, not innuendo."
"And, as I said, I'm sure that it was just a friendly meeting on the sea," 
Edmund replied. "That your ship did not, for example, attack an unarmed 
clipper."
"And if it was unarmed," the orca snarled, "how did it sink our ship?"
"That, I'll admit, is a puzzler," Edmund said. "Honestly."
"All I know is that they fired some sort of device off of the clipper," the orca 
replied. "Black and small as a yellow snapper. But the ship stopped and the 
scuppers ran with blood."
Edmund turned as he heard a liquid chuckle and looked at Bast, who was staring 
at him with merriment in her eye.
"Are you not glad, Duke Edmund," she said, still chuckling, "that I brought that 
bedamned rabbit?"
Edmund started chuckling and ended up laughing heartily.
"You think?"
"Aye, methinks. A small object? Scuppers running with blood?"
"Poor doomed bastards," Herzer said, chuckling as well. He turned to Jason and 
grinned. "Let's just say that we have a secret weapon. It won't usually work, 
but when it does . . ."
"Scuppers running with blood?" Jason said, gulping. "I don't know."
"You haven't been through territory that New Destiny has ravaged," Herzer 
replied. "You haven't stood before their Changed orcs, come upon the ruins of 
buildings, and people, that they leave behind," Herzer said, trying to check 
himself but realizing that the fury that lurked always just below his calm 
exterior was coming to the fore. "You haven't seen the feeding pots, with the 
legs of children turning in the boiling water."
"Lies and damned lies!" the orca bellowed, looming over the unChanged human. 
"Recant those untruths!"
"When you recant your lies, you . . . you . . . I can smell the flesh of dolphin 
on your breath like the evil stench of the lies you have been spouting!"
The orca blatted him with sound and hooked his tail around, hitting the 
lieutenant with a blast of water that struck like a full body hammer. Herzer was 
thrown backwards through the water, half stunned. But he was used to fighting 
half stunned and before he had ceased to tumble his knife had appeared in his 
hand and he circled up and to the right, turning to try to get in on the flank 
of the orca.
Suddenly the orca found two strong fingers pinching his blowhole and a long, 
slim, dagger pointed at his eye.
"Take a bite out of my boyfriend," Bast purred, "and I'll drive this all the way 
to your brain."
"You wouldn't dare," the orca said.
"I've killed better orcas than you," she whispered, staring him in the eye. "And 
what you are is a psychopathic monstrosity. But, then again, so am I," she added 
and took a deep breath, letting it out in a long, unearthly sonar scream that 
echoed off the walls of the square.
Herzer shivered and froze as the reverberations of the unholy, multitonal shriek 
washed through his body. It was the most gut-wrenching sound he had ever heard, 
including the death shriek of horses, which was as close as he could come to 
identifying it with a known sound.
"Enough!" Bruce yelled. "Herzer, Bast, you're no longer to come into this town! 
Ambassador Shanol, I am forced to permit your continued presence, but one more 
such outburst and I will have you barred from the village as well, and your pod 
with you. Is that clear?"
"Yes," the ambassador said, blowing out bubbles as a sort of throat clearing. "I 
. . . regret my outburst. But the statement that I would eat the flesh of my 
good friends the dolphins . . . you understand."
"Fighting will not be tolerated," Bruce said. "That I understand. Duke Edmund?"
"Herzer is one of my staff," Edmund replied. "And, I might add, has made 
valuable contributions to this community. But I accept that he is not to come 
within, say, one hundred meters of the town square. That means if we need to 
meet, it is a reasonable swim for one or both of us. As for Bast," he sighed. 
"She goes where she wills."
"I'll not come back to this town until invited," the elf said. "But those 
reshanool had better stay far from me or I'll teach them what the myth of the 
food chain really means."
"Agreed," Bruce said. "And Ambassador Shanol, you and your pod are to stay away 
from the visitors from the mainland. The first sign of any further conflict and 
I am going to expel both groups."
Herzer had already sheathed his knife and now nodded at Edmund, then turned and 
swam towards shore followed by Bast. As he passed over one of the canyons, Antja 
and Elayna popped out of a swim-through and Pete and Jackson popped out of 
another.
"This sucks!" Pete said angrily. "That damned dolphin-eater turns up and you 
just get tossed out. It's not like you struck the first blow; he hit you solid."
"Yeah," Jackson added. "You okay?"
"I've had worse," Herzer said.
"I'd noticed the scars," Antja said. "But I hadn't wanted to ask. Or about the 
hand."
"Well, I think it's time to tell you all about it," Herzer said. "But not here. 
Up on shore where fish-face can't come."


CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Herzer was actually glad to get out of the water. He had been losing weight, 
too, on the high-protein diet and constant cold. The warm sun of the Isles felt 
good on his back.
"After the Fall, I fell in with a guy named Dionys McCanoc," Herzer said as the 
group dragged itself onto the shore.
"Met him," Bast said. "Bastard." She sat down behind Herzer and started 
massaging his neck. "Let me handle the orcas, lover. But if you have to fight 
one, remember they're really sensitive about their blowholes. Get them by that 
and it's like holding a man's balls. I mean, in a fight, not, you know . . ."
"I know," Herzer said, smiling. Bast could make everything a joke, which was 
just about the only way to live life he decided. "Anyway, McCanoc."
"Didn't Edmund mention him?" Pete asked, as Jason dragged himself out of the 
water.
"This sucks," Jason said, crawling over to the group. "I wanted to stick a spear 
in that arrogant New Destiny fisker."
"Didn't we all," Jackson replied. "Bast, that was unbelievable. I never saw you 
move, you were just there."
"Bast is an elf," Bast said, then raised a hand to forestall comment on the 
apparent non sequitur. "Everyone seems to think that elves are human. Not. Elves 
were constructed from ground up. No haphazard evolution for us. Look, somewhat, 
human, but are not. Better, stronger, faster, which is a very old joke. But also 
. . . happier. Less . . . serious than humans. Humans with their short lives 
always live in the now, which is good in a way. But elves are half the time in 
Dream, only way to spend a millennia or so. Me, I tend to spend most of my time 
in the now. Sometimes it hurts. I'll live on when Herzer gets gray and dick goes 
all flabby and then he dies. And I'll remember him, as I remember scores, 
hundreds, of others. And love them all. As long as Bast lives, they live on in 
one heart," she said, tapping her chest.
"But Bast is not a human, nor a Changed human. Bast is an elf. And what is 
impossible, even for most Changed, is normal to elves. Be glad elves so happy. 
If not, there be no more humans on earth."
"So you're not a Change race?" Antja asked. "Like the mer or the delphinos?"
"No," Bast said, shaking her head. "We're a made race, like the dragons. And, 
like the greater dragons, we have abilities that were, finally, recognized as 
just too dangerous to let breed unchecked. So most of us retreated to Elfheim 
and live in Dream."
"What abilities?" Jackson asked.
"That is for elves, and Mother and the Council, to know," Bast said with a grin. 
"But know this, I can take an orca, any single orca and probably more than one, 
in the water, mask or no mask. I'll give you one: I can hold my breath as long 
as delphino. Mask is really unnecessary so far."
"Damn," Jason said.
"I am as fast as a mer in the water," she added. "And can keep it up as long or 
longer." She nodded at a rock in the sand by Jackson. "Throw rock."
"This?" Jackson said, picking it up.
"Throw. Hard. To hit."
"I don't want to hit you," Jackson temporized.
"Won't," Bast said. She waited, leaning on one arm, the other hand languidly at 
Herzer's side, until Jason threw. She caught the hard-flung rock out of the air 
and, in turn, tossed it against the bluff so hard it cracked and left half of 
its mass buried in the limestone.
She stood up and pointed about a hundred yards down the beach.
"See big rock?" she asked and took off.
Her speed was phenomenal, especially since she was running on sand. The sand 
flew up behind her like a rooster-tail and by the end of the run she was 
striding nearly five meters at a time, bounding more like a gazelle than 
anything human. But she slammed to a stop at the end and then began cartwheeling 
and back flipping nearly as fast back to where the group was sitting with open 
mouths. She ended in a multiple flip and twirl that had her lowest point no less 
than two meters off the ground; she had jumped nearly twice her own height into 
the air.
"Not human," Bast said, dropping back to a lotus position and not even breathing 
hard. "Look, somewhat, human, but less human than chimpanzee." She smiled at 
Herzer. "Will not comment on what that means for mating, morality wise."
"The elves were created as super-soldiers, by the North American Union," Herzer 
amplified. "Bast . . ."
"Bast was created by Nissei Corporation during height of AI war," Bast said. "Is 
old joke, old even then, 'cheap Japanese knockoff.' " She grinned at the joke. 
"But not so bad knockoff, no?"
"Not bad at all," Jason said. "Jesus."
"Bast, I've got a question," Herzer said. "What was that . . . horrible sound 
you made when you were holding Shanol."
"That was the hunting scream of an orca," Jason said, shuddering. "I've heard it 
before."
"There are two types of orca," Antja amplified. "There are pods that generally 
stay in one area and hunt fish. And then there are nomad tribes, which hunt 
marine mammals. They're practically identical, but the nomads use that . . . 
sound when they are hunting. And for all they look the same, they're pretty much 
two distinct subraces of orca. And that sound . . . it's eerie as hell."
"It is indeed," Bast said. "Often thought that it was original of banshee's cry. 
But Herzer was explaining some of what Edmund and dolphin-eater were talking 
about."
"Yeah, Herzer," Antja said. "I want to know what he said that set you off the 
first time. Something about Doctor Daneh."
"As I said, I fell in with Dionys McCanoc," Herzer said, for a moment reliving 
those days and seeing the house-broad McCanoc as if he were alive. "This is . . 
. I have to give you the background, sorry. I . . . knew he wasn't the greatest 
guy in the world. No, I'll be more honest. I'd discovered shortly before the 
Fall that he was a bug-house nuts bastard. But . . . when I was growing up, I 
had a genetic problem that screwed up my nerves. I shook all the time, had a 
hard time speaking. And it was just getting worse and worse. So I didn't have 
many friends. And when it got worse I ended up with almost none. McCanoc . . . 
picked up on that and drew me into his circle. Generally as the butt of his 
jokes. But when I got better, when Dr. Daneh cured me, finally, I still hung 
around with him. Right up until just before the Fall, when I decided to give him 
a wide berth."
"What happened?" Elayna asked, cocking her head to one side.
"Dionys-fisker set up rape of homunculus," Bast answered. "Little girl 
homunculus, program to hate and fear sex."
"And . . . he invited me," Herzer said. "The problem being, as he had realized, 
I was . . . very tempted." He looked up at the group around him and saw 
responses ranging from disbelief to anger. "As I said, I have my demons."
"And very fine demons they are," Bast said, patting him on the leg. "Love it 
when you let them off leash."
"Bast!" Antja said.
"Hey, is fun play rough sometimes," Bast said. "Herzer very gentle lover when 
wants to, right Elayna?"
Elayna blushed bright red but nodded.
"Very nice," was all she said.
"Everyone demons have," Bast said, looking off to sea. "Question is, do we run 
demons or demons run us?"
"Don't get too angry with Herzer," Jason said, looking at Antja. "Unless you've 
never thought about some of the play that we do. 'Who's my pretty little baby?' 
with her hair tied up in pigtails?"
This time it was Antja's turn to blush but she just nodded at Herzer to 
continue.
"Anyway, that was when I started avoiding McCanoc. Up until the Fall," Herzer 
sighed. "I found him, or he found me maybe, shortly after. And . . . we were 
wandering with a group. No, not even wandering, waiting for something. McCanoc 
was always talking about his friends coming for him. And then we ran out of food 
and McCanoc decided that we needed to . . . take some from passersby."
"Bandits," Jason said.
"Oh, yes," Herzer replied. "He almost made it sound romantic. If it hadn't been 
for the constant rain and the hunger. I was thinking more in terms of begging 
food from them until whatever manna McCanoc expected dropped from heaven. Or, 
probably, just leaving the group, although McCanoc had said he considered that 
desertion. But before I could decide, one of the lookouts caught their first 
passerby. Who happened, by awful coincidence, to be Dr. Daneh."
"Oh, shit," Pete said. "What did you do?"
"Well, McCanoc, big-hearted guy that he is, offered me first rape," Herzer said, 
his face hard and cold. "There were eight of them, McCanoc was armed with a 
sword, others had knives. I was unarmed. So I did the only thing a true hero 
would do in the situation; I ran."
"Damn," Jason said, shaking his head. "Not much else you could do. Except die 
pointlessly."
"You didn't tell us about this," Antja said, looking at Rachel. "This was when 
you were on your way to the town, Raven's Mill?"
"Yeah," Rachel replied, tightly. "I didn't tell you. It's not something I tell 
everyone I meet. Even people I like. And . . . it took me a long time to admit 
it, but Jason's right, there was nothing that Herzer could have done except die 
and maybe get Mom dead in the process. In a way it took more courage, more 
sensible courage, to run and try to find a weapon than to stay and die."
"I guess we both had our secrets," Elayna said, looking at Herzer oddly.
"Yeah, but it doesn't make it a lot easier in the deeps of the night," Herzer 
said, his jaw working. "I was looking for a weapon, anything solid, but I got 
back after they were . . . done. I helped Dr. Daneh, and Rachel, on the way to 
Raven's Mill and then joined the Raven's Mill military at the first chance I 
got. I've always been into war games; I used to do enhanced reality before the 
Fall. But . . . I won't say that my demons weren't on my back about it, either. 
I'd gotten very good at being angry at that point. I wanted to kill something, 
to gut something, preferably McCanoc, but anyone like him would do.
"A few months later, lucky me, McCanoc turned back up at the head of a small 
army. We'd been training hard, but we were still outnumbered ten to one and most 
of the army was Changed, who are no joke to fight. They're strong, aggressive 
and very hard to kill. But we beat them, mostly by maneuvering them onto fixed 
positions and slaughtering them; McCanoc was no tactician. In the end, though, 
he attacked, himself, and he had powered armor and some sort of draining nannite 
field. I tried to stop him, and got this," he said, holding up the prosthetic, 
"for my pains."
"I tried to stop as well," Bast said. "Armor was too tough. Sword, any sword, 
just bounces off field. I hate powered armor. Unless I'm wearing it."
"Anyway, Edmund took him out," Herzer said.
"How?" Jason asked. "Powered armor, nannite field? What the hell did he do, 
drown him?"
"Ever hear of Charles the Great of Anarchia?" Herzer asked with a sly grin.
"Took over Anarchia, oh, a hundred years ago or so?" Jason asked, to a nod. 
"Ruled in peace for ten years, set up a representational government and left, 
disappeared?"
"He didn't disappear," Herzer said. "He took his dead brother's name. Edmund."
"Holy shit," Jackson said. "You're joking!"
"Nope, you've been dealing with him every day," Herzer chuckled. "Let's just say 
that the greatest master-smith in the world was not going to be fighting with 
unpowered armor and weapons. Bast, how would you take out Duke Edmund?"
"Strong crossbow," Bast replied seriously. "Two hundred meters, minimum. From 
behind. Only way be sure to live."
* * *
"Well, this is another fine mess you've gotten us into," Daneh said.
"That it is, love," Edmund muttered, "that it is."
They had parked themselves in one of the swim-throughs and now watched the 
suddenly much more nervous mer moving around in the square as the antenna of 
crayfish waved at them from just too deep under the ledges to reach.
"The ship's late," Rachel said.
"That's not what has me worried," Edmund replied.
"And dealing with orcas, in the water, is not going to be easy," Daneh said.
"And that's not what has me worried," Edmund replied.
"All right, Solomon," Daneh said, in an exasperated tone, "what does have you 
worried?"
"When I got here, I knew the name of Bruce the Black, but not what he looked 
like," Edmund replied. "I knew none of the other mer by name. And I didn't know 
that New Destiny was sending a mission."
"Damn, I didn't catch that," Daneh said. "He knew Bruce by sight. He knew 
Jason's name. He knew about Herzer and me."
"That indicates one damned effective intelligence agency," Edmund said. "And 
intel is half the battle. I'd let Sheida handle that end, assuming that she was 
doing as well as the enemy. No such luck. Damn!"
"What are you going to do about it?" Rachel asked.
"Not much I can do from here," the duke replied. "Except prove that it's only 
half the battle. But when we get back I'm going to be asking some hard 
questions, and not trusting the answers. They knew about the carrier. They were 
able to intercept it. On the other hand, they've made damned poor use of their 
intel so far. Letting slip that they knew that much was just stupid."
"Maybe there's even more that they know," Daneh said.
"I'm sure they do," Edmund said. "But that's not the point. How did they know 
that the ship was taking the northerly route? How did they know where it was? 
Intercepting a ship at sea is not easy, even if you know where it's going to be 
in general."
"You mean there's someone on the ship passing them information?"
"Has to be," Edmund said. "As well as sources on the land. And someone piecing 
them together and passing on the useful bits."
"Two guesses who the one on the ship is," Rachel said, bitterly. "And only one 
counts."
"If you mean the rabbit," Edmund replied, "you might be right. But don't jump to 
the conclusion. Admittedly, it fits its programming. But I'm not sure of the 
means. Does he have an internal sensor? If not, how did he know where they were? 
What was his means of communication? Why destroy the ship if he'd directed it 
in?"
"So, who?" Daneh asked.
"I'm not a mind reader," Edmund said. "But we'll do some discreet investigating 
when the ship gets here. We know that it's close, if the orcas were there and 
then here. That might, admittedly, be disinformation. But given the way they 
used the information they had, I doubt it. You can't always count on your 
enemies being stupid, but it's nice when they are."
* * *
Shanol coasted to a stop above the swim-through and then paused as if taking in 
the seascape.
"They brought dragons," a voice pulsed out of the darkness below.
"We were informed they would," the orca replied. "That's not a problem."
"That's what you think. They swim and can hunt underwater. The big one's 
developed a taste for bull shark; she bites them in half."
"Nothing that's bred for the air can match us in the water."
"Nothing is to happen to Elayna," the voice said.
"As promised, you can have your pick of the mer-women when we are done. 
Although, I must admit she is a toothsome morsel."
"Elayna and Antja then," the voice said. "Although Elayna doesn't have the best 
taste in the world; she's been swimming out with that jerk Herzer."
"An interesting datum, to be sure," Shanol mused.
"Where are the rays?"
"Nearby, waiting for my signal. If we can resolve this little problem peacefully 
we shall. If not . . . other measures must be taken. I've tarried too long. Be 
ready when the time comes."
"Just make sure the rays know who the good guys are," the voice said. "I don't 
want to get caught up in that."
"Oh, they know who the good guys are," the orca pulsed in humor. "That's who 
they're aiming at."
* * *
Bruce had called both of the representatives to a meeting in the town square. He 
looked at both of them and shook his head.
"You're like two children scuffling in a schoolyard," Bruce said. "All around 
you is beauty, and all you can see is your conflict. Well, I will not let it 
come to us. I have sounded the feeling of the community, and I hereby give you 
my decision: The mer will have nothing to do with either of you. We need nothing 
from either of you that is worth the trouble it would bring. This is my 
decision. It is final and irrevocable. I request that both groups leave and not 
trouble us again."
"For myself," Shanol said, "your neutrality is all that I sought. My work here 
is done and I and my pod will leave immediately."
"Well," Edmund said. "We're waiting on our ship. We request to be allowed to 
stay until it arrives. I have some details to work out with Jackson anyway; I 
still think that you need more materials and I'm working on a list that I'll 
pass to traders. But as soon as the ship arrives, we'll leave."
"Very well," Bruce said. "You can stay until the ship arrives, it will be here 
soon?"
"Within a day or two, I hope. It is already overdue."
"It had to stop and burn a peaceful merchant," the orca said, snidely.
"Enough," Bruce said. "This is what I want far from here. Shanol, go now. 
Edmund, as soon as possible."
"Very well," Shanol replied. "I hope to see you again in better times." With 
that he gave a flick of his tail, which blew water across Edmund, and headed out 
to sea, whistling for his pod.


CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The next day dawned clear again and before the mists were off the ground, the 
dragons were aloft searching for a school of sizeable fish.
Koo and Vickie had stayed on land, so the only rider with Herzer was Jerry, who 
was the strongest swimmer. In the detritus from before the Fall, Jackson had dug 
up a set of fins and a conformable mask and snorkel, which fit the rider, and he 
intended to participate as much as possible in the hunt. Elayna had stayed back 
at camp, but the group included Jason, Pete, Jackson and an older mer-man named 
Bill, all of whom planned on working the net. Bast had also chosen to stay back 
at the town.
They spiraled upward, the dragons having to work for altitude with neither 
thermals nor wind, and looked for anything moving. But the surface of the ocean 
was glass smooth for klicks and there was no sign of migrating pelagics to be 
seen.
"I guess it's reef fish, today," Jerry said.
"Whatever," Joanna complained. "I'm damned hungry."
"If we can take just a little time," Bill said, "sometimes schools wait for the 
ebb tide by Roberts Inlet. It's not far down the coast."
"By where we went fishing the first time," Jason said.
"We can try it," Joanna grumbled. "And if they're not there we either eat 
reef-fish or mer-men that send us on wild goose chases."
Herzer looked back to the east, squinting into the rising sun, and saw a flash 
on the surface.
"Hang on," he said, spinning Chauncey practically on his own tail. "There's 
something back there."
"Dolphins," Jason said, as Nebka banked around to follow Joanna. "Or maybe 
delphinos."
"Delphinos," Joanna said. "I can see the rounded foreheads."
"From here?" Pete asked. He was riding behind Jerry and squinting to try to see 
what everyone was looking at.
"I can adjust my eyes for enhanced distance vision," the dragon said. "They're 
delphinos. But . . ."
"Why are they just standing on their tails?" Herzer asked. It was apparent the 
pod was not moving, just thrashing at the surface. As if they were trying to 
attract attention.
"I dunno," Joanna said. "But there's something closing on them from the 
direction of the town. Something underwater."
"Commander," Herzer said. "Will all due respect, I suggest we proceed 
immediately back to the town."
"It's an orca," Joanna growled. The whole group had been gliding in the 
direction of the delphinos and now the great dragon started flapping her wings, 
accelerating. "It's hunting them."
She entered a steep glide then pulled out as she swept over the delphinos. She 
stayed on level flight, wingtips just above the ocean, until she passed over the 
orca. She had timed the strike, by luck or planning it didn't matter, perfectly 
and just as she swept over the unsuspecting orca broached the surface. As it 
did, all four talons shot down and sunk into its skin.
She had banked upward as she struck and had nearly forty kilometers of forward 
momentum so the massive marine mammal was plucked from the waters as neatly as a 
fish being caught by an osprey.
But the massive orca weighed a good percentage of her own weight and Joanna 
quickly discovered that getting him out of the water was not the same as keeping 
him out. After a few desperate wing beats she released the whale and let him 
drop, bleeding, back into the water.
The orca, however, seemed to have had enough, and dove for the reef below, 
heading out towards deeper water and away from the delphinos.
"Just peaceful diplomats, huh," Joanna said as she gained altitude. She banked 
towards the village but took a look back at the trail of blood from the wounded 
orca. "Buh-bye, buh-bye now."
"We need to get down there!" Jason shouted.
"Let me and the dragons handle this," Joanna replied. "Herzer, the birthing 
cavern."
"Shit!" he said, banking Chauncey towards the land as the rest of the dragons 
thundered into the shallows. "I'll be back!"
* * *
Rachel was watching her father, who was talking to one of the older mer-folk in 
the shadows of a ledge. The mer-man was nodding his head as Edmund talked, 
clearly agreeing with what the general was saying. Edmund had been doing the 
rounds ever since Bruce had ordered them to leave, late into the last night and 
was at it again even before breakfast this morning. He seemed to reach some sort 
of agreement and was just starting to swim away when there was a shrill screeing 
in the distance.
Rachel had become inured to the constant low-level noises of the sea. There was 
a constant snapping, which she had been told were shrimp although she rarely saw 
them. And there was the semiconstant pinging of the delphinos that hovered near 
the periphery of the town. But this was different, it set her teeth on edge and 
made her want to get up and run.
When Edmund heard it he seemed to recognize it and headed up above the enclosing 
coral with Rachel following.
When she got above the coral she spun around, looking for what was making the 
noise but what she saw was a line of raylike forms heading in from the direction 
of the rising sun.
"Attack!" Edmund bellowed, just as the rays swept across the crowded square.
The creatures, Changed humans, were the size of manta rays, nearly three meters 
from wingtip to wingtip. But instead of the soft, plankton-gathering mouths of 
manta rays they had vertically slit mouths lined with sharklike teeth. Rachel 
saw a line with a bony harpoon head dart down from the belly of one of the 
leading ixchitl and strike the mer-man that Edmund had been talking to. The 
mer-man struggled for a moment then went flaccid as the line began to accordion 
back up to the ray. When the still-twitching mer-man reached the belly of the 
ixchitl the beast tore into his body, tearing off great strips of flesh as the 
shallow water turned red around it. More of the darts were dropping among the 
mer as those that could dashed for the relative safety of the ledges and 
swim-throughs.
Bruce the Black suddenly appeared from one of the swim-throughs, a bone-tipped 
spear in his hand, and shot up into the crowd of ixchitl. He caught one of the 
beasts in the maw and the hard-driven spear penetrated through its mouth and up 
out of the back in a welter of blood. But even as he took that one out, another 
speared him and the leader of the mer shuddered as its neurotoxin ran though his 
veins.
"Get under cover!" Edmund bellowed at her, drawing his knife.
Rachel ducked under the ledge but continued to watch her father, sure in her 
heart that he was as doomed as the former mer-leader. But Edmund seemed to dodge 
the ixchitl's darts as if he had been fighting them all his life. She saw him 
cut one that came at him and swarm up the retracting organ that dangled from the 
belly of the beast. When he reached the ixchitl he drove the knife into its anus 
and cut upward, gutting it from bottom to top. As the ixchitl thrashed in its 
death agonies the general shoved his arm into the slit and grasped something in 
the interior, dragging the ixchitl's body around to block another cloud of 
descending darts; he had created a giant shield out of the ixchitl's body.
The shield was unwieldy in the extreme but Edmund had not planned for simple 
defense. His free hand darted out and grasped the retracting cord attached to 
Bruce and let it raise him, and his shield, up to the ixchitl that was preparing 
to feast on the mer-leader. The ixchitl apparently divined his intent because it 
began to flap wildly, but because of the drag of the dead ray that Edmund 
grasped couldn't pull at any speed. It apparently had no conscious control of 
the retracting harpoon cord. Edmund was inexorably drawn up to the belly of the 
beast. He gutted it with another of those powerfully driven thrusts then cut the 
cord loose, leaving Bruce free to drift to the bottom.
More of the rays were gathering around him, though, and all the mer that were 
left had darted for safety. He managed to kill another of the beasts, who could 
seemingly only fire their darts straight down, but the crowd around him was 
eventually going to get a dart past his defenses. It seemed only a matter of 
time before the beleaguered general would be killed when a shadow passed over 
the square and Nebka dropped out of the sky into the midst of the rays, Bast 
hitting the water beside her like an avenging angel.
The dragon turned its head like a snake and caught one of the rays on the wing. 
The wyvern's broad, crocodilian head shook like a shark and ripped most of the 
wing off, leaving the mortally wounded ray to writhe in a death spiral to the 
reef below.
But the dragon was nothing compared to Bast. The elf moved with an unnatural 
grace and blinding speed, like some knife-wielding demon. She disdained the 
gutting technique of Edmund, instead whispering in from above and slicing along 
the back of the rays, cutting the muscles to their great wings, her knife 
slicing through their tough skin as if it were paper. She had taken out two of 
the rays before the rest of the dragons appeared, swimming over the reef edge 
like great birds of prey and descending upon the suddenly outgunned ixchitl.
The rays, at the appearance of the dragons, turned for deeper water and put on a 
burst of speed until the last one vanished over the reef edge, chased by the 
wyverns as Joanna coasted to a stop over the square.
"Commander Gramlich," the general said, tossing aside his ersatz shield, "get 
the dragons back; those damned rays can overwhelm them if they get their act 
together. And the orcas are going to be around somewhere. Daneh!" he bellowed as 
he drifted down to the twitching body of the mer-leader.
Rachel darted out of her shelter and to the side of the mer-leader who lay on 
the sand by the coral head at the center of the square. The mer-leader was still 
alive, twitching in the grip of the neurotoxin but Rachel could think of nothing 
to do for him. Suddenly, her mother was beside her.
"It's a paralyzing toxin," Daneh said. "Probably voluntary muscles only, which 
means he can't breathe. If we can get water over his gills he'll survive. But I 
have no clue how to do that."
"Get him to the surface," Edmund said. "Mouth to mouth."
"We can't get the water clear," Daneh said, desperately. "There's not enough air 
in our lungs to blow him out."
"He's trying to say something," Elayna said, dropping to the sand by her 
grandfather and grasping his hand. "Just clicks. But . . ." she leaned forward, 
holding up his head and cradling it to her. "Grandfather?"
"Cave," Bruce said. "Cave . . ." and then his eyes rolled back in his head.
"The birthing cavern," Edmund said, coldly, turning to look towards the land. 
"I'd wondered where the damned orcas were."
* * *
After Daneh had told about the birthing cavern, Herzer had taken the trouble to 
walk the crest of the island until he found the light-source of the cave. It was 
near the summit of the island, above the spring that had made the ancient 
lighthouse possible in its day. Now he winged Chauncey to a hard landing and 
sprang off the wyvern, slapping it on the flank.
"Go follow the other dragons, Chaunce," he yelled, pounding up the slope to the 
cracks in the rock.
When he got there he could hear the screams from below and his heart dropped, 
but he got down on his belly and peered into the fissure in the rock.
His eyes were blinded by the bright light on the surface but after a moment he 
could see the tableau below. A small orca was swimming back and forth in front 
of the main ledge, where most of the mer-women and their children were huddled, 
as far back as they could crawl. From time to time it turned and got up speed, 
finally lifting its body out on the ledge and writhing back and forth, trying to 
snap up one of the mer. Finally, it writhed back and forth and dropped down from 
the ledge, circling back through the water for another run.
The crack was narrow and the drop was at least fifteen meters. Not a problem if 
he was falling in water, assuming it was deep enough, but Herzer was well aware 
that he was not Bast; if he fell into the water the orca would be on him before 
he could react and Herzer would just be a part of the food chain. He turned and 
lowered himself into the fissure and then rammed his good fist into the rock, 
dangling over the drop below.
* * *
The orca came back for another run and got out of the water, just about reaching 
the tail of one of the mer-women. He snapped and writhed, but try as he might he 
couldn't, quite, reach the twitching tail. Finally, he started to hump himself 
backwards and was just about in the water when he was hit by a tremendous blow 
from above.
* * *
Herzer was half stunned by the impact and knew that he was going to feel it for 
days afterwards. He had hit the orca just forward of the dorsal fin with both 
feet, but they had both immediately slid out from under him on the slick skin of 
the beast and he had impacted on his hip and side, flipping sideways on the 
right side of the orca, entering the water with a tremendous splash.
The impact, however, had stunned the orca as well and Herzer was the first to 
gain some semblance of consciousness. He kicked himself back from the depths to 
which he had sunk and, taking a leaf from Bast's training, slid his prosthetic 
into the blowhole of the orca and grasped the flexible flesh on the side of it. 
Then he squeezed.
The sonar blast that the orca released was like nothing that Herzer had ever 
heard, the shriek of a dying child the size of a whale was the closest he could 
imagine. It thrashed its way to the surface and blasted out air, flailing its 
tail and spinning around the cavern until it impacted nose first on one of the 
unyielding rock walls.
"Quit this!" Herzer shouted. He put his knife by the eye of the beast and it 
quieted.
"Leb go ob my ho!" the orca said as distinctly as it could. Its surface method 
of communication was its blowhole, which Herzer still gripped, although less 
firmly.
"The hell I will," Herzer said. "I've got a cutting edge on this thing. I can 
cut right through the muscle. You won't be able to submerge for weeks until it 
heals. You'll starve to death first."
"Baberd," the orca said. "Pleab?"
"No," Herzer replied. He suddenly realized that the orca, by its dorsal fin, 
size and, hell, demeanor, was no more than a teen, probably a young one. "Where 
are the rest of the orcas?"
"Nob gonna te'," the orca said. "Leb go."
"Fisk you," Herzer said, engaging his pinky muscles and bearing down with the 
internal gear.
There was another shriek from the orca and it sobbed in pain.
"Where are the rest of them?"
"A' da fron," the orca sobbed. "Wai'ing."
"For you to bring them little mer-snacks?" Herzer said, nastily. "I don't think 
so. Turn around and put your tail up on the ledge. And no tricks; I can press 
harder than I have. Not to mention putting this knife right into your 
brain-case."
He maneuvered the orca's tail onto the ledge and had one of the mer-women secure 
it with his leather belt to a projecting rock. Then he let go of the creature's 
blowhole and swam around to where it could see him with eye and sonar. Herzer 
ducked below the water for the conversation.
"I know what it is to fall in with the wrong companions," Herzer said. "Which is 
the only reason you're still alive. I'm going to ask the mer-ladies not to kill 
you. On the other hand, did you catch any of the children?"
"No," the orca said. "I didn't want to do this, but Shanol . . ."
"I know," Herzer said. "And I also know that having power over the defenseless 
can be a rush. I know that you enjoyed yourself, even while you hated feeling 
that way. Am I right?"
"Yes," the orca whispered.
"I don't have time for this, but you need to think about something while you're 
tied up here. Which side do you really want to be on? Who are you, inside? A 
good guy or a bad guy? Think of this as a chance to correct a mistake. And use 
it."
He popped up to the surface of the water and looked at the mer-women, still 
huddled on the ledge.
"Ladies, this young man is very sorry for causing you all this distress," he 
said. "For that reason, and because he's a source of information, I'd appreciate 
the hell out of it if you could see your way clear to not beating him to death 
with rocks."
There were a few half hysterical giggles at this speech but one of the mer-women 
crawled forward in a furious slither.
"He nearly ate my Gram!" she shouted. "I want him dead!"
"Yes, well, as I said he's sorry," Herzer replied, heartily. "And we all have 
our character flaws. I, for example, get angry when a reasonable request isn't 
granted. Am I making myself clear, ma'am?"
"Yes," she said, gulping.
"Glad we've got that sorted out," Herzer replied. "Now, I think I need to go see 
what's waiting at the entrance."
"You're crazy," the mer-woman said. "The rest of the orcas are going to be out 
there!"
"Well, better out there than in here," Herzer pointed out. "And if this 
youngster doesn't bring them out little mer-snacks they might try to wriggle 
their way in. I think I need to go make sure that doesn't happen."
"Why?" the mer-woman asked. "Why are you doing this?"
"As I said," Herzer replied, sadly. "We all have our character flaws." Then he 
ducked under the water and headed for the blackness of the tunnel.
* * *
The tunnel was pitchy black, a solid darkness that seemed to creep into his 
soul. It also was so tight in places, he had no idea how the orca had wormed its 
way in. Possibly there were better ways through, ways that would be visible to a 
creature with sonar. But Herzer could only grope his way along, hoping against 
hope that there were no side turns that would take him off into some tunnel from 
which he might never find his way. Again and again he hit projections of rock, 
once solidly on his forehead, and he brushed against things that he really was 
sure he didn't want to see. Once his hands settled into a mass of corruption 
that burned his skin so that he flailed back wildly, shaking his good hand as it 
tingled and burned.
Finally, when he was sure that he had lost his way and would be wandering around 
in this watery tomb forever, or until his air ran out, there was a faint gleam 
of blue light. His eyes, adjusted to the darkness, started to let him 
distinguish the walls around him and he sped up, headed for the light, headed 
for hope. Until the light was extinguished as an orca head popped into the 
opening and blasted him with sonar.
"Well, what do we have here?" Shanol said. "If it isn't the little lieutenant. 
What happened to Tomas?"
"He saw the error of his straying ways," Herzer said, suddenly tired. He could 
see the other orcas cruising back and forth; it looked as if most of the pod was 
out there. He could hold the entrance against them, he was sure, but his every 
bit of training resisted simply standing on the defensive.
"You'd better hope he's still alive," Shanol said.
"What do you care?" Herzer said. "You were the one that sent him into a tunnel 
that could have killed him."
"I knew he could get through," Shanol said. "There's a lot I know. Like what 
happened with you and Daneh. Do you dream of her at night, Herzer?"
"Oh, man, you have been reading too much pop psychology," Herzer laughed. 
"There's a degree of anger there. But anger is such a useful emotion when you 
learn to properly channel it." With that he darted forward and slammed his knife 
into the orca's eye.
Shanol had opened his mouth to dart forward and catch the human but the narrow 
entrance of the tunnel prevented him from moving and Herzer's sudden attack 
caught him off guard. He screamed in sonar, bubbles pouring out of his blowhole 
and backed up, his tail flailing wildly.
Herzer lost his grip on the dagger as he was slammed into the roof of the tunnel 
and he backed up into the entrance as the orca swam backwards, blood streaming 
from his eye, the hilt of the knife standing out like some bizarre ornament.
"Kill you!" the orca screamed, heading to the surface and getting a breath of 
air. But the sound he made was as much sob as scream.
"Come on and do it, then," Herzer shouted back. "Come into the tunnel! I can 
stay under as long as I like. You have to breathe. Come into my parlor, little 
fly!"
"I'll kill you," the orca sobbed. "Kill you and eat you! Eat you alive, from the 
legs up! Nittaatsuq!" he continued, leaning the knife towards one of the other 
orcas.
Like the delphinoids the Changed orcas had stubby fingers and the indicated orca 
drew the knife out of the eye socket with a quick jerk and a scream from his 
leader. Then Nittaatsuq got what he thought was a brilliant idea and swam 
forward, thrusting his pectoral fin with the knife gripped clumsily in its 
fingers into the narrow crevice.
Herzer simply laughed and grasped the blade with his prosthetic, wrenching it 
out of the grip of the orca with an expert twist.
"Thanks for my knife back," Herzer laughed. "I was sure I'd lost it for good."
"BASTARD!" Shanol bellowed, charging at the entrance, then turned aside, 
trailing blood.
"Hey," Herzer said, in a thoughtful tone. "Don't sharks home in on the smell of 
blood?"
"I'm going to kill you," the orca ground out.
"You keep saying that," Herzer responded. "I don't think you're orca enough. 
I've had much better people than you try to kill me and so far they've all 
failed. By the way, the orca that was after the delphino found out that he 
really doesn't like dragons. And as soon as they get done with the ixchitl, 
they'll be back for me. I'd suggest you beat feet before they get here."
"We will," Shanol said after a moment's pause. "But we'll be back. You wait."
"Breathlessly," Herzer replied. "I'm so looking forward to it."
When the orcas were gone he took a deep breath, noticing for the first time a 
slight constriction on his breathing caused by the mask. He started to panic, 
his breath coming faster and faster, feeling that he couldn't get enough air 
into his lungs. Finally, he got a grip on himself, thrusting the dagger into a 
convenient crack and holding onto the walls as he strove to conquer his 
breathing. Finally, when he stopped hyperventilating, he started to calm down, 
as the mask finally had enough time to pump the built-up carbon dioxide from the 
fight out of the area. Eventually he hung, limp, from his deathlike grip on the 
rock until Chauncey and a group of worried, spear-wielding mer-men appeared in 
the entrance and he could finally leave his lonely vigil and swim to the surface 
to gulp in lungfuls of good, clean, salt-tainted air.
* * *
"I warned you about the dragons!" Mosur said.
"I am in no mood for you," Shanol replied, tightly. The salt water in his wound 
stung like fire.
"We need to get out of the area," Shedol said. The orca second in command had 
returned covered in punctures and slices from Joanna's attack. "We can't stay 
down long enough to keep out of the vision range of those damned dragons."
"We can just go back," one of the pod pinged nervously. "There's too many of 
them."
"No," Shanol replied.
"The ixchitl are calling for us to ambush them," Shedol noted. "They have a 
plan."
"BE DAMNED TO IXCHITL PLANS!" the big orca boomed. "No. I have a plan." He 
turned to Mosur and ran a wave of sonar over him. "You're of no use to us now."
"Good," Mosur said. "I'm quit of this."
"And we have a long way to go," the orca continued, running his sonar over the 
mer again. "And I'm hungry."
With the small bone that they used to communicate underwater, it was almost 
impossible for the mer to scream.


CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The wind was fair from the northeast and the carrier rolled over a slight sea 
with a string of islands to its north.
"If this holds we'll be up to the mer-town by dusk," Commander Mbeki said.
"Three days late," the skipper growled. Beating around the edge of the islands 
had been a slow process, especially since they'd had to negotiate some tricky 
shallows.
"You can't control the winds, sir," the commander replied.
"No, and I can't control New Destiny, either," Chang replied. "We lost half a 
day with that little encounter."
"Well, so far, so good," Mbeki said.
"Something in the water to port," the lookout called.
"I think I should have knocked on some wood," Mbeki said. "Could you be clearer 
than 'something'?" he yelled.
"No, it's . . . coming up from the depths. Looks like a . . ."
Before he could complete the sentence a gigantic tentacle snaked over the side 
of the ship, smashing the rail and twisting into the ratlines of the mainmast. 
The ship heeled hard over to port and shuddered as the weight of a giant squid 
caught it.
"KRAKEN!" the skipper yelled. "Chief Brooks! Axemen! Sound general quarters!"
More and more tentacles slithered over the side of the ship as the beak of the 
immense squid was revealed. One intelligent eye was just visible below water 
level and it rolled from side to side, searching for prey. It found it as one of 
the sailors dashing at the tentacles was caught around the waist and hoisted, 
screaming, over the side of the ship. The screams were abruptly cut off as the 
sailor's head was thrust into the half-meter-wide, parrotlike beak of the squid. 
It crunched with bitter finality.
Mbeki found himself down on the deck, snatching up the fallen axe of the sailor 
and hacking at a tentacle that had wrapped itself around the mainmast. The beast 
was trying to turn the clipper over on its side and its immense weight might 
just manage it. The body of the beast was half out of the water, its tentacles 
given free play around the maindeck. It caught another of the crew, one of the 
marines who were stabbing at the tentacles with boarding pikes, and the marine 
was dragged over the side, still stabbing at the immense tentacle wrapped around 
his waist.
Mbeki and Brooks were hacking at the tentacle around the mainmast, in a rhythm 
with one striking as other raised his axe, when one of the blindly thrashing 
tentacles wrapped itself around the commander's ankle and started dragging him 
towards the edge. He grabbed a stanchion and his arms were nearly ripped from 
their sockets as he struggled to keep from being taken to the beast's maw.
Brooks leapt over the half-severed tentacle attached to the mast and hacked 
downward at the one wrapped around the commander's ankle. The tentacle had only 
caught him with a tip and a single blow from the chief severed it to lie 
flopping on the deck. But even as he turned back to the one around the mast, the 
ship heaved over on its side and the water came up over the bulwarks as the 
squid half humped itself onto the ship. Now that it could see what it was doing, 
its tentacles attacked the axe-wielders and Brooks found himself wrapped in its 
slimy clutches.
He hacked futilely at the thigh-thick tentacle around his waist but it was to no 
avail and he found himself in the air, being lowered to the beast's maw. He saw 
it open to receive his head just as a jet of fire went past his ear, and 
impacted squarely on the beast's mouth.
The tentacle around his waist tightened convulsively and he felt his eyes 
practically pop out of their sockets as the air was driven from his lungs. The 
next thing he knew he was flying through the air.
* * *
Evan heard the screams from the deck and felt the ship heave over as the big 
kettle drum on the deck began to pound the signal for battle stations. Without a 
thought he caught up the flamethrower and started to make his way onto the deck. 
The ship heeled again and he was thrown against a bulkhead, the flamethrower 
half thrown over his shoulder catching his arm painfully. He saw the damned 
rabbit in the corridor, and shouted at him.
"What the hell are you doing just loafing along?" Evan yelled, getting the other 
strap over his shoulder. "We've got a problem!"
"And that means what to me?" the rabbit said, stopping and nibbling at his 
shoulder. "Me, I'm heading for the lifeboats. You can deal with whatever it is."
"Damn you," Evan said, stepping over the rabbit and heading for the 
companionway.
The rabbit looked after him then pointed a finger at himself.
"I damn thee," the rabbit muttered. "Shoot, didn't work."
* * *
Evan stumbled onto the deck to a scene of pandemonium. Tentacles were slithering 
across the deck in every direction or were already wrapped around pieces of the 
ship. As he stepped out of the companionway the ship tilted to an alarming 
degree and water shipped over the side as the kraken hoisted itself up. He saw 
Chief Brooks chopping at a tentacle that had caught the XO and then the chief 
was caught by another tentacle and lifted into the air.
Evan found himself screaming as he ran through the jungle of writhing arms, 
desperately clicking at the self-starter for the flamethrower. Finally the pilot 
light caught and he slid into knee-deep water and pointed the device over the 
side, triggering it for its first test.
The stream, he noted in a strange abstraction that made the whole experience 
dreamlike, was darned near perfect, some droplets coming down from the stream 
but most of them impacting in the target area. As the jellied gasoline hit the 
squid just above the mouth—he'd been aiming directly for the maw but close was 
good enough with a flamethrower—the squid convulsed, its jets closing to pull it 
back. The tentacles thrashed wildly and then with another massive pulse it 
slithered off the edge of the ship and disappeared back into the depths so fast 
it was gone before the ship had heaved back up onto an even keel.
Evan found himself on the deck, the end of the flamethrower dripping jellied 
gasoline onto the, fortunately water-covered, deck. He stumbled to his feet and 
shut down the valves as sailors grouped around him, pounding him on his 
shoulders in lieu of his tank-covered back.
"Mister Mayerle!" the skipper bellowed from the quarterdeck.
"Sir," Evan said, spinning in place and giving the skipper a salute that, as a 
civilian, was not strictly necessary.
The skipper returned it anyway and then grinned.
"Damned fine job," the skipper said. "Thank you. But before you use that thing 
on my ship again, kindly find something that allows us to extinguish those 
little fires you just left behind."
"Yes, sir!" Evan said. Buckets of sand had already been dropped on the dribbles 
that had hit the deck and looking over the side it was clear that the ship had 
drifted clear of the puddle of burning fuel the scorched squid had left behind.
"Commander Mbeki?" the skipper called.
"Sir?" the commander said, getting to his feet.
"We've got some damaged rigging," the skipper said, turning to look at the 
sails, some of which were flapping in the breeze. Fortunately the wind was not 
strong or they would have shivered themselves to pieces. "Get a damage party to 
work. How's the chief?"
"I'll live, Skipper," Brooks said, getting shakily to his feet.
"Bridge!" the lookout called. "Dragon, fine on the port bow! Signaling. Number 
Twenty-three, forty-seven, fourteen!"
" 'Enemy in area,' " Midshipman Donahue said. " 'Under attack. Make all sail.' "
"Bit late," the skipper said. "Get to work, Commander!"
* * *
"Wait," Joel said as one of the deck apes started to flip a severed tentacle end 
over the side.
"What?" the seaman asked, tired and unhappy from the battle and the cleanup. 
What he didn't need was one of the damned wardroom stewards slowing him down.
"We need to keep a souvenir," Joel said, stooping to pick up the tentacle. 
"We'll put it in alcohol and set it up in the mess or something."
"Whatever," the seaman replied. "I've got work to do."
"As do I," the steward said, picking up the tentacle and taking it below.
Now if he could only get a gene scan out of Sheida, one of his cases might at 
least get closed.
He rounded up a jar and wood alcohol in the galley and then carefully stored the 
chunk in his seabag. After that he went and checked his telltales.
The rabbit roamed all over the ship, mostly being a minor nuisance and bugging 
people. But the external telltale, when he touched it, pointed to the aft of the 
ship and he went to pick up the data from the one in the wardroom.
The latter was occupied, however, by Commander Mbeki who had a pile of documents 
spread out on the table. He was sitting at the far end, fountain pen in hand, 
staring at the papers with an abstracted expression.
"Sorry, sir," Joel said. "Anything I can get you?"
"Not right now, Joel," Mbeki said, looking up with dark eyes.
"You look worn out, sir," Joel said. "A mug of herbal tea? Some food?"
"No thanks, Joel," the commander said, shaking his head.
"Sir, I can see you're busy," Joel said, nervously. "But, could I talk to you 
for a moment?"
"I don't know," the commander said, looking stern for a moment. "What about?"
Joel shut the door and then shrugged. "I sort of need to . . . go out of the 
chain of command, sir. It's about something you mentioned. And I've been 
thinking about it a lot."
"What's that?" the commander said. "And you know I don't like sailors breaking 
chain of command."
"Yes, sir, but it's about my family, sir," the seaman said, gulping. "What you 
said about New Destiny, sir. Just before we shoved off one of the civilian 
laborer guys asked me if I knew where my family was."
"And what did you tell him?" Commander Mbeki asked.
"I was sort of surprised, it wasn't like we were talking or anything," Joel 
replied. "He just up and asked. Then he said that if they were in Ropasa, he 
knew some people who were smuggling people out, those they could find . . ."
"Indeed," the commander said, frowning. "You realize that there are several 
possibilities here."
"I hadn't thought about it at the time, sir," Joel shrugged. "But I have since. 
It might be legit. Then again . . ."
"It might have been a New Destiny agent trolling for sources," Mbeki replied, 
his face hard.
"Yes, sir," Joel gulped. "The thing is, I told him who my wife and daughter 
were. What do I do now? I feel like such an idiot."
Commander Mbeki rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger and 
grimaced.
"Well, don't think you're the lone idiot," he muttered. "Joel, for now, you've 
brought it to my attention. I'll think about what to do with it. I should pass 
it on to the Criminal Investigation Division. But those idiots can't find their 
ass with both hands. For now, I'm going to sit on it. If you get any more 
contacts, any more, tell me. Clear?"
"Yes, sir," Joel replied. "What should I do if, you know, if they're from New 
Destiny and they found them? What if they tell me to . . ."
"In that case definitely contact me, not CID," the commander said.
"Yes, sir."
"Take care, Joel," the commander said, picking up his pen and uncapping it. "And 
we did not have this little conversation."
* * *
Edmund scrambled up a ladder dangling over the port side as the ship heeled to 
starboard; the carrier was getting its dragons back.
"Belay that," he said, waving at the receiving party. "No time." He looked up in 
the dim light at where teams of sailors were rapidly rerigging the damaged 
cordage. "What happened?"
"We were attacked by a kraken, General," the skipper said. "That was the second 
attack that we sustained. And I doubt that the kraken was some generic denizen 
of the deep; it was definitely aiming for us."
"Damn, damn and double damn," Edmund snarled. "We have a hell of a situation 
here, Skipper. Let's go below."
* * *
Edmund sketched out the attack on the mer-town and listened as the captain 
detailed the two attacks on the ship.
"Well, we're in a fine pickle," Edmund admitted. "The mer need to move. They say 
that there's a much more defensible position over by the Bimi islands and they 
want to go there. Soon. Normally that's not a problem. But they can't protect, 
or even carry for that matter, their babies, not if they're under attack. And 
I'd guess that as soon as the ixchitl and the orcas lick their wounds they will 
be back."
"You want us to transport the children?" the skipper said, frowning. "We can do 
that, but I can't guarantee that we won't be attacked again. That kraken . . . 
was frightening. And I can think of ways that it could attack that we wouldn't 
be able to counter with Evan's flamethrower. Grab us from underneath and gnaw 
through the hull comes to mind."
"It's the best chance that we've got," Edmund said, well aware that with a spy 
on board it was more dangerous than he was making out. "Bruce is dead. Jason 
hasn't been elected as their leader but he's already taking charge, and he's on 
our side. Hell, all the mer are on our side except a couple that are dead set on 
supporting New Destiny and they have made themselves scarce since the attack. 
We've got the mer, and the delphinos for that matter, on our side. But we need 
to get them to this Key Harbor or whatever and get their babies protected. And 
the only way to get the babies there, is by sending them with you. I'm putting 
the lives of the mer in your hands, Skipper. Can I trust you?" Edmund realized 
very well that he might be putting them in the hands of an agent of New Destiny, 
but looking in the eye of the skipper he saw not a flicker of misdoubt.
"Before anything happens to them I will die in their defense, sir," the skipper 
replied. "And so will every one of my crew."
"I need some of the dragons," Edmund said with a nod. "I'll take Joanna, 
Chauncey and Donal. You take the rest and the regular riders. They've shown they 
can take on just about anything that New Destiny has thrown at them; I'd be 
surprised if the three of them, working together, couldn't even take on a 
kraken."
The skipper nodded seriously at this, then started to crack a smile. Finally he 
put his hands over his face, trying very hard not to laugh. Edmund could tell it 
was half hysterical.
"Are you finding something humorous, Colonel?" he said coldly.
"It's just . . ." the skipper said, taking a breath and wiping his eyes. 
"General, just for a moment, step back and think. I'm commanding a 
dragon-carrier. And I'm fighting kraken and black-sailed caravels. Every now and 
again . . . it just catches me off guard and I have to giggle. I got this job 
because I was a tall ships' sailor. I took out barkentines so that groups of 
people could experience what it was like to sail in the tall ships. Now I'm 
figuring out how to use dragons to protect my warship. It just . . . gets me 
sometimes. I wouldn't do this in front of the crew, but . . ."
Edmund stared at him coldly for a moment, then grunted. Before he knew it he was 
laughing as well.
"Okay, you got me, but I just gutted a Changed human being and stuffed my arm 
into its chest, to use it as a shield," he said, chuckling blackly. "You think 
you've had a strange day?"
* * *
"Daneh," Edmund said, coming up behind the doctor as she was tying off the last 
suture in one of the injured mer.
The square had been a shambles after the battle, but most of the debris, dead 
ixchitl and pieces of dead mer, had been cleared out. The ixchitl had been 
disposed of by the simple expedient of feeding them to the dragons.
Some of the mer had taken less of a dose of neurotoxin than Bruce, who had been 
hit by at least two harpoons. They had been able to maintain a ragged breathing 
and Daneh had concocted, on the spot, a form of tail-to-chest resuscitation that 
had let them live long enough for the fast-decaying toxin to work itself out of 
the body. Others had been badly bitten by ixchitl or had simply injured 
themselves in the flight to safety. It was one of the latter she was finishing 
work on, a young mer-man who had gashed his arm, badly, on the coral, jamming 
himself into a crevice.
"Hold on, Edmund," Daneh replied. "You're going to need to favor that for a few 
days or the stitches will tear out. I'd put a bandage on it if we were on the 
surface, but nothing really stays here in the water. Just be careful of it."
"I will, ma'am," the boy said, wincing at the pain of the wound.
"Daneh, I want you and Rachel to go on the ship," Edmund said as the boy swam 
away.
"I'm going to be needed with the mer," Daneh said. "There's going to be more 
fighting. I'm not just going to run for safety."
"Daneh," the duke said, drifting closer and lowering his voice. "You and Rachel 
are the only ones I can send that I know aren't the leak. You're going to have 
to find some way to figure out who it is."
"You know it's that damned rabbit," she replied, quietly. There were mer around 
and it would do their morale no good to know that the women and children were 
being sent on a ship that had a potential agent onboard.
"No, I don't know it's the rabbit," Edmund said. "And neither do you. Don't 
assume that. The one person I refuse to suspect, though, is Evan."
"Why?" Daneh said, then frowned. "Not that I would, either."
"Because he's such a perfect little engineer," Edmund replied. "You can tell 
what he's thinking just by looking at him. I don't think he could carry it off. 
I may be wrong, but I also think that he might have an idea how to ferret out 
the mole. Whoever it is has to be communicating somehow. Even if he's being 
visited by an avatar, there are traces of their presence. Evan should be able to 
figure something out. If he can't, I'm out of ideas."
"Okay," Daneh said. "I can see that. But Rachel could go."
"I want both of you to go for the same reason you both came down here, I trust 
you more than Rachel and, really, it's going to need two. Just go, okay?"
"Okay," she sighed, reaching out to stroke his face. "Take care of yourself."
"I will," Edmund said. "It's you I'm worried about."
* * *
Getting the mer-women out of the cavern was easier than retrieving their babies. 
But the latter, well swathed in sailcloth, were lifted out through the light 
fissures and then both groups were ferried out to the ship and hoisted over the 
side on slings.
While that was going on the ship was discharging its cargo. Since there weren't 
enough of the bronze-headed spears that had been brought as friendship gifts, 
they were supplemented with boarding pikes. The pikes were made of low-carbon 
steel and would rust quickly in the salt environment but they were all that were 
available. As this was going on, Edmund went over the side and rounded up Herzer 
and Jason.
"Here," he said, when he finally found them going over plans for the retreat. He 
thrust out two scabbarded short-swords, wrapped around by heavy belts of a 
synthetic fabric.
Herzer drew his and tried to whistle. The blade was bright silver and 
surprisingly light. The design was identical to the Blood Lord blades that he 
had trained with but while they were light and maneuverable, this blade felt 
like a feather.
"What is this?" he asked. "Titanium?"
"No, it's a high-tech alloy from the twenty-third century," Edmund replied. 
"Angus showed it to me just before the Fall. It takes power to work initially, 
but I had some prepped when the Fall came. I made those just before we came down 
here as a bribe to Bruce. It's much better than titanium; among other things you 
can shape it to a damned near monomolecular edge. Don't run a finger down the 
blade to see how sharp it is."
"I won't," Herzer said, strapping on the sword. The belt was just long enough.
"Thank you," Jason said, sounding weary.
"We're taking Donal, Chauncey and Commander Gramlich," Edmund said. "Put that in 
your calculations."
"Thank you again," Jason said. "I thought you were going on the ship."
"No, I'm sending Rachel and Daneh that way," he admitted. "But I'll hold on to 
Joanna to keep up."
"The straps aren't going to take the strain," Herzer pointed out. "It's going to 
be a long ride. And they're only half as effective if they're stuck in the water 
all the time."
"I know," Edmund said with a grin. "I think it's time to find out if you can 
ride a dragon bareback."


CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
"Evan, we have a problem," Daneh said, coming into the engineer's crowded office 
with Rachel trailing her.
"There are female members of the ship's company," he said, uneasily. "The 
dispensary has everything that . . ."
"Not that kind of problem." Daneh sighed. The engineer, while brilliant at what 
he did, had the social skills of a rhinoceros. Which made what they needed to do 
a bit of a problem. "Edmund is convinced that there's a spy for New Destiny on 
the ship."
Evan opened his mouth to protest and then closed it, nodding.
"They do seem to find us with remarkable regularity," he replied.
"And they knew too much about our party when we got to the Isles. Now, it could 
be anyone . . ."
"It could be me," he said, looking at her suspiciously. "Or you. No, not you. 
You weren't on board when they intercepted us before."
"And, sorry, Evan," Rachel said with a smile. "I don't think you could bring it 
off."
"No, probably not," the engineer said with a grin.
"But you might be able to find out who it is," Daneh said. "Edmund told me to 
tell you 'avatar traces.' I have no idea what he's talking about."
"Hmmm." The engineer frowned and nodded. "When avatars, or any manifestation of 
Net energy, are formed, they give off a minute electromagnetic field. It's 
caused by the not quite perfect intratransmission of data among the nannites or 
fields that are formed. And in the case of straight projections, because it's a 
quantum field projection, the energy is actually quite high. In cases where they 
pass through grouped pieces of metal or other conducting materials they tend to 
create a static charge area that is similar in some respects to Saint Elmo's 
fire . . ."
"Okay, okay," Daneh said. "You don't regale me with the physics and I won't tell 
you about DNA interactions."
"You're a genegineer?" Evan said, delighted.
"No," Daneh replied. "Before the Fall, I fixed their screwups. But the point is, 
if he, the spy that is, is using a transmitter or being visited by an avatar, 
there should be traces."
"Well . . . yes," Evan said. "But very faint ones. I don't know how . . ." He 
paused and murmured to himself. "Perhaps if I . . ."
"I'll leave it to you," Daneh said, patting him on the knee. "But this is 
between us. If you find anything, report it to Rachel or me. No one else. 
Clear?"
"Not even the skipper?" Evan said.
"Not even the skipper." Daneh paused and then shrugged. "Whoever it is, they 
always appear to know our exact position. If they're not using a position 
locator, and I don't see why they would have access to one, then it has to be 
someone who has access to the updated navigational charts. How many members of 
the crew does that make?"
"Oh."
* * *
It was nearly midnight before the work was done and all the gear of the mer was 
loaded on the ship or on their backs. The group at the surface waved to the 
women and children on the ship in farewell. The younger mer, even those that 
could free-swim, had been loaded on board as well, most of them protesting 
furiously. Finally all preparations were complete and the ship raised anchor, 
filling its sails with the dying landwind, and moved off to sea.
"The faces of the women aren't something to take with you on the ship," Herzer 
muttered.
"What?" Jason said at the apparent non sequitur. "They're the ones on the ship."
" 'Bird of Prey March,' " Herzer said. "I really need to teach you some 
Kipling." He paused and frowned as they swam back to where the dragons were 
gathered. "Actually, there's one that's more fitting."


  "Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,
  From glen to glen, and down the mountainside.
  The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying.
  'Tis you, 'tis you must go, and I must bide.
  But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,
  Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow.
  'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow,
  Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so."
As he sang the clustered delphinos echoed the song back in weird harmony, the 
siren song drifting across the dark waters until finally it died away.
"That's a damned sad tune to start this journey on," Jason said.
"It's a damned sad journey," Herzer replied, taking his place in the protective 
hemisphere. The plan was to have Joanna take the point with dragons near the 
surface on all four sides and the armed mer-men in a hemisphere with the unarmed 
women and a few of the older males in the middle. The latter weren't there just 
to be guarded. The landsmen and the dragons needed fresh water and they were 
dragging along barrels of it. The fresh water was denser than the salt so the 
barrels tended to float but it was still going to be hard going. The delphinos 
were ranging out as scouts, but at the first sign of trouble they were to enter 
the protective bubble; there was no way for them to fight either the orcas or 
the ixchitl. Much less the reported kraken.
"You know a lot of songs like that?" Jason said as the group moved off.
"I love war," Herzer admitted. "It's a damned sad thing, but it's the one thing 
that I'm really good at. And if you love war, you have to know its face, the 
good, the bad and the ugly, and there really are all three faces. War has a 
beauty that is almost addictive, winning or losing. An ancient general said: 'It 
is good that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.' Music is to war 
what food is to sex, a very nice accompaniment. So, yeah, I know a lot of songs 
and poems about war. For that matter, I'm a pretty good cook," he added with a 
chuckle.
"You're weird, Herzer."
"So I've been told," the lieutenant admitted. "On the other hand, there are some 
that aren't quite so dreary. Old Ireland was called the land of sad war songs 
and happy wars. But Norau was the land of sad, or at least unwilling, wars and 
happy war songs. Let me teach you one of those."
And so, with the delphinos echoing back the tune through the night-dark seas, he 
taught the group of mer-warriors the words to the song "March of Cambreadth."
The ixchitl struck at dawn.
* * *
The day dawned clear with scudding winds from the north. On them the clipper 
rolled south under nearly full sail at almost forty klicks per hour.
"Great day to be sailing, sir," Jerry said as he scrambled up the ladder to the 
bridge. "Do you want to launch?"
"Hell, yes," the skipper said, bellowing for all hands to turn the ship into the 
wind. When the crew was engaged he turned back to the rider. "I want constant 
top cover. Keep an eye out for that damned kraken. And, of course, any New 
Destiny ships. We're not going to bother parleying; I am not willing to be 
Mister Reasonable with this cargo."
"Aye, aye, sir," the warrant said, saluting. Shep had already been brought from 
below so Jerry settled his gloves, glad for the first time in nearly a week to 
be in proper gear, and loaded her on the catapult. As soon as the wind was off 
the port quarter he launched for the dawn patrol.
* * *
Jerry had been recovered and Koo was aloft when the lookout called down to the 
bridge.
"Dragon signaling, sir," the sailor called. "Number twenty-four, and four dips!"
"Enemy in sight," the signal midshipman read off. "Five ships."
"Bloody hell," the skipper growled. He had the weather gauge of the ships and 
more speed than they, either with or against the wind. But the position they had 
chosen was a narrows that he had the choice of passing through or beating around 
for another two or three days, maybe a week. And there was another thing.
"Damnit, XO, they're waiting for us," the skipper snarled.
"Maybe, sir," Mbeki said, with a shrug. "But this is the logical path if we're 
taking the southern route. They might have another force on the northern turn as 
well."
"I don't buy it, XO," the skipper said, shaking his head. "Once is happenstance, 
twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."
"Yes, sir, nuke Mars now," Mbeki said, completing a joke so old its genesis had 
been lost. "But this is only twice."
"No, that damned kraken as well," the skipper said. "Well, it doesn't matter, 
one way or the other. We have to pass through. But we're still below the horizon 
to them. Bring the ship into the wind, I need to talk to Warrant Officer 
Riadou."
* * *
Evan knocked on the door of the wardroom and entered without permission to the 
frown of the skipper.
"What?" Chang snapped.
"I heard that there are more ships ahead," the engineer replied, seeming not to 
notice the rebuke. "I was looking for Jerry. Herzer asked me to make something 
for him, but in all the bustle we never got to test it."
"What?" Jerry asked.
"Well, the skipper was saying that he wanted the ship to be more offensive."
* * *
A leather-and-wood device had already been strapped to the breast of a 
protesting Shep when they reached the deck. It was mostly wooden box, with three 
partitions, and some leather reins and wooden levers, apparently to open the 
partitions.
"I'm afraid it's . . . somewhat dangerous to the ship, sir," Evan said. "Loading 
is the worst part. You see, each of the compartments has a pottery jug of 
jellied gasoline in it."
"Ouch!" Jerry said. "But . . ."
"Oh, it also has a fuse," Evan said. "It was that that took me so long to make. 
The first few designs tended to detonate prematurely."
Jerry had a sudden clear image of what it would be like to be riding a flaming 
wyvern and closed his eyes against it.
"They'd better not prematurely detonate on my ship, Mr. Mayerle," the skipper 
said angrily.
"Well, I'm fairly confident in this design," the engineer said with an 
abstracted expression. "There's a vial of sodium and a vial of water in the base 
of the jar. When the two hit something solid, the sodium ignites and that, in 
turn, ignites the gasoline. As long as they're not dropped . . . That was why I 
was commenting on the loading."
"We're going to need to come up with some very careful procedures," the skipper 
said in a definite voice.
"Yes, sir," Evan replied. "But, there they are."
"I just pull the straps?" Jerry said, looking the device over. There were three 
straps and three boxes. He noticed that the boxes had pins through their covers; 
until those were released, they couldn't be opened. The pins had white pieces of 
canvas on them that fluttered in the wind. If they hadn't been pulled, it would 
be evident.
"Well, I suspect that hitting the ships will be harder than you anticipate," 
Evan replied. "Wind drift, differences in speed. But . . . yes."
"Skipper," the dragon-rider said with a feral grin, tightening up his gloves. "I 
think we've got us a strike carrier."
"As long as we have something to sail to," the skipper noted, looking to the 
north where the ship was now pointed. "Okay, I'm going to stay below the 
horizon; it's up to you riders. Go show them why they don't mess with the UFS."
* * *
The ixchitl had been lying doggo in the sand but one of the delphinos just ahead 
of Joanna spotted them and raised the alarm. However, before it could turn to 
run back to the ring of defenses one of the ixchitl erupted from the sand and 
passed over it, firing down with its nematocysts.
Joanna reacted immediately but even as she clamped her jaws shut on the ray it 
was too late; the harpoon had done its work and the delphino rolled over on its 
back as the neurotoxin coursed through its body.
The group was suddenly surrounded by a white cloud as the school of ambushing 
rays erupted out of the sand, filling the water with their wings. They rushed 
the bristling hemisphere but could neither penetrate the shield of spears, nor 
get above the group to fire down.
The dragons, meanwhile, were ravaging through their school, chopping at the 
rays. Ridden by Bast, Edmund and Herzer, they kept near the surface where the 
ixchitl's rays could not reach them, but they could bite downward. The ixchitl 
found themselves trapped between the dragons above and the hemisphere of spears.
Finally they backed off and one of the larger ixchitl turned on its side, its 
normally white underbelly flashing through a range of colors. At apparent 
command two of the rays on the far side broke off and then came back at speed, 
leaping high into the air and into the midst of the crowd of mer-maids and 
huddling delphinos.
They arrived with a tremendous splash and the impact momentarily broke the spear 
line. They also fired their harpoons immediately, and apparently at random, 
hitting one of the mer-girls and a delphino.
Even this did not avail them much. The spear line reformed before the ixchitl to 
the outside could do anything to help their comrades and at a squealed command 
from Herman two of the delphinos grabbed the nematocyst cords, practically 
before they could begin pumping poison, and rolled with them, like great 
crocodiles, until the cords were ripped from the bellies of the beasts.
Furthermore, the mer-women were not unarmed and they fell on the ixchitl with 
the fury of anger and desperation. Two of them were badly bitten but the steel 
and bone knives jabbed and fell and before long the ixchitls' carcasses drifted 
downward on the light current.
At this the ixchitl leader flashed his belly again and the whole group broke off 
the attack, heading for deeper water.
Herzer directed Chauncey up to the surface with his knees and pulled back his 
mask for a breath of real air. They had attached sailcloth collars to the 
dragons, even Joanna, and the riders held onto them while riding. But the 
dragons spent most of their time under water, like a dolphin, and it meant 
spending all his time breathing through the mask. Since the battle with the 
orcas he'd developed a distaste for the mask, all mental he well knew, but real 
for all that. So he took every opportunity to get a breath of real air.
Jason surfaced beside him, lifting himself on Chauncey's wing to blast out his 
lungs as Joanna, Bast and Edmund popped to the surface.
"Well, breakfast for the dragons was catered," Joanna said, swallowing the last 
of an ixchitl.
"You'd better hope that neurotoxin is digestible," Herzer said, looking around 
at the placid sea. The wind was from the north and with the islands blocking the 
breeze there was barely a chop where they had been attacked.
"We need to rest," Jason said. "And we've got wounded."
"Well, we can't rest in the middle of the water," Edmund said. "Those damned 
orcas will be back sooner or later and they can break the spear line if they're 
willing to take some casualties. Break up the hemisphere and we're done."
"The mer can pull themselves out on the beach," Herzer said. "But the delphinos 
can't."
"A bay," Bast said. "One with a narrow entrance but enough water in it for the 
delphinos to float."
"There's one up the coast," Jason said after a moment's thought. "But . . . it's 
a ways."
"No help for it," Edmund said, pulling his mask down over his face. "The orcas 
and ixchitl will be dealing with fatigue, too."
"Fatigue!" Jason said. "We've been fighting or swimming since yesterday 
afternoon! And we're out of food."
"We just keep going," Edmund said, pointing Nebka into the water. "That's all we 
can do."
"Fight until you die and drop," Herzer said, looking at Jason steadily as he 
pulled his own mask down. "Now you know what it really means."
"What are you? Iron?" Jason snarled. Even though Herzer had been on the dragon 
most of the way, he knew that the landsman had been doing more than his share of 
fighting.
"No," Herzer said, "I'm a Blood Lord. Works out to the same thing, though. Blood 
to our blood, steel to our steel."
* * *
Jerry waved Koo back to the ship and took up station overlooking the 
black-sailed caravels. Koo, though, flew alongside and made a questioning sign 
at the device slung under Shep. Jerry thought about it, realized that they were 
going to have to come up with a sign for "bomb rack" and made the sign for 
"weapon." Then he added "Weapon Yazov. Send Yazov," and waved Koo away.
He watched the ships as he waited for the other dragon to first be readied and 
then reach his position. They were tacking back and forth across the narrow 
passage in a ragged line, clearly intending to block the passage. Since the only 
boats they had seen were local fishing boats, and none of them near here, they 
were clearly waiting for the clipper. And the war between New Destiny and the 
UFS was already declared. But he still felt uncomfortable about what he was 
about to do.
By the time Vickie and Yazov had reached him, he had come up with a tentative 
plan. He had been watching the boats and noticed that besides going forward, 
they had a nasty tendency to crab sideways away from the wind. The term "to 
leeward" came to mind from conversations among the ship's officers. So he had to 
account for that when he was dropping his . . . bombs. Fire bombs, technically. 
When Vickie reached his position he waved her closer so they could talk.
"I'm going to make my runs," he said. "Watch what I do and we'll try to figure 
out the best way to work this."
"Okay," she yelled. "Is it just me, or does something feel wrong about this?"
"It's not just you," Jerry yelled back. "But that's why they call it war."
He lined up to come at the front of the boat, high enough that arrows wouldn't 
reach the wyvern. He had to mentally judge the drift of the boat, and the 
dragon, and released his first bomb when it was where he thought it would hit 
the ship. He had lined up long-ways on the ship, since that made for a bigger 
target area, and the bomb dropped clean but over the windward side; he'd made 
too much correction. The ship was also closing too fast, so he lined up from 
astern this time and tried again. This time the bomb fell off to the leeward 
side. Finally, he came to the conclusion that he needed to get closer to the 
ship. He banked around and got back up to altitude again, but this time he 
waited until he was almost over the boat and then put Shep into a steep dive, 
pointed right at the mainmast.
He could clearly see figures in black armor on the deck, pointing crossbows up 
at the dragon. But most of them loosed far too soon and the arrows hissed back 
down into the sea. He dove to well below his previous point and then released, 
pointed just forward of the mainmast, and pulled Shep up and to windward.
The dragon could not pull out of the dive immediately and he ended up banking 
out and to the side, nearly at the level of the mast. A flock of bolts from the 
crossbows followed him as he banked up and away, but most of them struck the 
nearly invulnerable wings. Jerry could distinctly hear the guttural cries of the 
orc marines and the shouts of the crew, as well as several awful screams but he 
waited to see the effect until he got the dragon up to altitude again. Shep was 
whimpering and Jerry craned around but couldn't see any damage.
"You've got a bolt in his leg," Vickie said, drifting over him. "It's barely in, 
but you're going to have a fun time landing."
"Don't go as low as I did," Jerry said.
"I won't. Look at that sucker burn, though."
Jerry banked around and looked down at the caravel. The bomb had apparently hit 
just forward of the mainmast and the maindeck was fully involved. He could see 
fire parties trying to stop the flames but the jellied gasoline simply spread 
out when hit by water. As he watched, the mainsail caught fire and was whipped 
into ash in a moment. The mast had caught as well and even as he watched men and 
orcs were jumping over the side to escape the flames. The orcs, in their armor, 
sank like stones, but the crew was lowering the boats and some of the unChanged 
humans were going to survive. Some.
"A shallow dive doesn't seem to do it," Jerry called. "Come from the rear and 
drop towards the mainmast. Watch the way they fall off to leeward, but the wind 
is pushing the bombs, too. And don't get as low as I did."
"Will do," Vickie yelled.
"I'm heading back to base," Jerry called, turning the dragon towards the 
carrier.
The ships had come into the wind and were beating to the north. They had 
apparently figured out that the carrier was up there somewhere. Jerry made a 
mental note to pass that on to the skipper.
* * *
Martin watched the object drop away from the dragon in puzzlement until it burst 
into flame.
"So much for there not being any way for the dragons to harm us," the captain 
said. He was a squat man named Gebshe with a cynical outlook on life. He raised 
an eyebrow at Martin and shrugged. "That's one fine barbecue. What now? We 
apparently cannot shoot them down."
"They came from the north," Martin said. "Turn that way and sail this tub as 
fast as you can. Try to find that carrier. If we can close with it, we'll 
destroy it. If not . . ." Martin shrugged.
"I think we'll do that," the captain said. "But I also think we'll have the 
boats standing by, just in case."
Martin had placed the ship that he was on on one wing of the formation of 
caravels. The dragon-rider, naturally supposing the center ship was the leader, 
had concentrated his fire on that one, which was now well on the way to burning 
to the waterline. In his haste, he hadn't thought of what raising signaling 
flags would mean and as soon as they went up the mast the replacement 
dragon-rider, which had lined up to drop on the far ship, banked around and 
headed for his.
"Gebshe," Martin said, "you have my authority to maneuver independently."
"Why, thank you, kind sir," the captain said, judging the line-up of the rider. 
"I can't imagine that I would do so entirely on my own."
Martin grinned. At least the captain was retaining his sense of humor in this 
disaster. Because disaster it was. He knew there was no way that the ships could 
catch the carrier if it kicked up its heels. Which it would as soon as it heard 
they were headed its way. And the dragons were impossible targets; they just 
stayed too high for the crossbows to reach. But that might mean they could avoid 
their bombing, for now. If they could just hold on until dusk. In the night they 
could slip away and be well away by dawn. He didn't care what his orders were; 
there was no way he was going to sit here and be used for bombing practice.
The dragon had lined up on its bombing dive and he looked at the captain.
"Just waiting for it to get too deep in to correct," Gebshe said, then "Port 
your helm! Jib sheets!"
The caravel came around slowly, too slowly, and the dragon expertly corrected, 
making minute changes in its wingtips to keep the round-hulled ship in its 
sights. It loosed, high, but accurately, and the bomb dropped just behind the 
mainmast.
The effect was much more hideous up close. A group of sailors were trimming the 
mainsail and the bucket of liquid fire dropped over half of them, clinging to 
their skin as they ran, screaming, over the edge of the ship and jumped in the 
water. As they ran they spread droplets—Martin could track the progress of one 
by the blazing footprints he left—spreading the fire even wider.
A crew had been standing by with buckets and a pump, but even pouring water on 
it simply spread the fire around. As he watched, the ropes of the mainsail 
caught fire, the fire traveling quickly up the tarred cordage and catching the 
sail on fire. It disappeared before his very eyes. By the time he looked back to 
the deck, the whole center of the ship was a blazing inferno.
"So much for the boats," Gebshe said, philosophically. He looked to the west 
where land was just in view on the horizon. "Long swim," he said, taking off his 
coat and cutlass. "Last one there gets eaten." With that he dove over the side.
Martin was looking at the inferno and wondering what to do. It was, indeed, a 
long way to the coast. Too long for him; he was no great swimmer. But there were 
always options.
He pulled the communications cube out of his pocket and said: "Conner."
In a moment a projection appeared. Brother Conner apparently heard the crackling 
behind him and turned around.
"Fascinating," Conner said.
"Your report that the dragons had no offensive capability was, I hate to tell 
you, quite inaccurate," Martin said, pointing to where the dragon was lining up 
on another of the maneuvering ships. As he did the screams of the orcs below 
showed that the fire was getting to their quarters.
"Quite distressing, I admit," Conner said, cheerfully. "But important data that 
Chansa will, if not be pleased, appreciate knowing."
"Well, it also got the ship's boats," Martin said. "So I'd appreciate a lift 
out."
"Ah, well, sorry old friend," Conner said with a shrug. "But my power budget 
isn't quite up to a teleport. Other projects to support. Seems you're on your 
own."
"What? You little weasel?" Martin paused, furious with anger. "You bully me out 
onto the ass end of nowhere and then you're just going to dump me?"
"Seems like it," Conner said with another shrug. "Take care." And then he was 
gone.
"Conner?" Martin said, shaking the cube. "Conner. Damnit!" He looked at the 
rapidly approaching inferno and chucked the useless cube over the side. Then he 
took off his boots and shirt, sorrowfully. Both had been custom-made for him and 
he had grown attached to them, especially the boots. But needs must. He then cut 
the legs of his finely woven silk pants just below his crotch, in a circle, 
leaving him in short shorts and holding two tubes of fabric. He tightened his 
belt around his waist, tied one end of each tube, put his knife away and 
followed the captain over the side.


CHAPTER THIRTY
Back on the carrier, with Shep having the bolt removed from his thigh, Jerry 
watched nervously for any sign of Vickie. At his warning the carrier had 
continued into the wind, running far to the north, and he was afraid that it was 
too far. Koo was out there, as well, but both of them had faded over the horizon 
and Vickie should have been on her way back by now.
Finally there were two dots to be seen and the carrier prepared to recover 
dragons.
"Worked like a charm," Vickie said, hopping off of Yazov as the dragon was led 
below. "I got three for three. One of them was right up in the bow of the boat, 
though, and if they were fast they might have gotten it out. But it burned up 
their front sails before I turned back. There's only one ship that's unscathed, 
and the other three are sunk or were burning to the waterline when I turned 
back."
"Good job," the skipper said. "How are the dragons?"
Jerry looked at the sky and shrugged.
"Shep is out for today anyway," he said. "We can send one more sortie out if you 
want."
"Do it," the skipper said. "We're fair for launching now. As soon as they're in 
the air I'm going to turn around and head back downwind. Make sure there's 
nothing in my way when I get there."
Shep's bomb-rig was loaded onto Nebka and the two dragons took off, one after 
the other, climbing fast to the south.
"All hands wear ship," the skipper called. "Let's go chase some dragon."
It was late afternoon when the lookouts spotted the dragons, flapping wearily 
north against the wind. The captain actually sailed down past them before 
turning the ship about and came up to the LSO position for their landing. This 
time Nebka had a bolt in his leg and when he landed it crumpled under him. But a 
sling was put in place and the piteously wailing wyvern was lifted up and 
lowered into the stable area.
Koo had been thrown clear on the landing but stumbled to his feet and blearily 
saluted the skipper.
"They're all burned, sir," the rider said. "I went too low on my second pass. 
The one that Vickie winged had put out the fire and they were apparently a 
little upset about it. They were learning to maneuver, too. But we got both of 
them. I had one bomb left but I dumped it on the way back."
"Damn fine job," the skipper said, shaking his hand. "Now, get below and get 
some rest, we still have Vickie to recover."
Vickie made a perfect landing, but she was clearly tired.
"You know, I think landing is worse than fighting?" she said as she slid off her 
wyvern. "We got 'em all, though. How's Koo and Debka?"
"Debka's leg looked bad," Jerry said. "Worse than Shep. Right now, you've got 
the only hale dragon."
"Well, we won't need them for those guys," Vickie said. "Some of them were in 
boats headed for the islands. I suppose they'll be a problem for the islanders 
but we can always send some marines or Blood Lords down to fix that." She shook 
her head tiredly. "It really takes it out of you."
"So does the waiting," the skipper said. "And the wondering. This is a strange 
sea battle. You expect boarding actions, but this is all . . . at arm's length. 
It just feels . . . wrong."
"Not particularly heroic," Jerry said. "But I wonder . . ."
"What?"
"I wonder when they'll start having carriers of their own," he said, looking to 
the south.
"Now that will be something," Vickie admitted.
"And I wonder how the mer are doing," the skipper said.
* * *
It was near dusk when the weary group of mer and dragons reached Charzan Inlet. 
The broad, flat banks were visible through the entrance and warm, almost hot, 
water boiled out to the ocean on a descending tide.
Herzer reveled in it. As the day had progressed he had gotten colder and colder 
until by the late afternoon he was shivering uncontrollably and continuously. 
The warm water of the inlet was like a balm to the soul.
The mer quickly writhed their way over the sandbar at the entrance of the inlet, 
which on the falling tide had less than a meter of water covering it. They then 
clustered in the shallow waters, lying back and breathing in the warm salt.
"Up," Herzer said, wearily. He had dismounted from Chauncey and now waded 
through the thigh deep water, thumping the mer with his foot. "The delphinos 
need the space; you're for the land."
"Oh, God, Herzer," Elayna said, sitting up and blowing water from her lungs. "We 
can come on land, but it's not comfortable."
"I don't really give a rat's ass," Herzer said, tiredly. "Get your pretty little 
tail up on land and make room for Herman and his people."
Between Herzer, Edmund and what Herzer had come to think of as the 
mer-leaders—Jason, Pete, Antja and Bill—they got the mer up and out of the inlet 
as the delphinos started to fight their way over the bar.
They had far more trouble with it than the mer. The delphino bodies were ill 
suited for crossing the spit—they were purely marine creatures—and in the 
interval the tide had fallen still farther, making the water over the bar barely 
the depth of their bodies. But with some assistance from Herzer and Bast they 
all made it into the inlet. The water in the inlet was deep enough that they 
weren't going to have to support their weight, which was the important part. And 
if they and the mer had hard going getting into the inlet, so would the ixchitl 
and the orcas, if the latter ever showed up.
But even after getting everyone in the inlet the work wasn't done.
"Jason," Edmund said. "We're going to have to post sentries, about one person in 
four. They'll take two hour shifts. One of the command group is going to have to 
be awake at all times as well."
"Okay," Jason said, wearily. "I'll go start finding people."
"General," Herzer said, "I want to go check the back of the inlet."
"That's the banks back there, Herzer," Pete said. "None of the ixchitl can make 
it through the banks, even at high tide. And it won't start flooding for a 
couple of hours."
"Fine, Pete," Herzer said. "But you don't make assumptions. We need to watch 
that as well as the land. There's nothing saying that they won't have help from 
landsmen and if we get attacked by orcs we're all up shit's creek."
"Do it," Edmund said. "Joanna."
"General?" the dragon said. For the first time in Herzer's experience she 
actually looked ragged, her wings hanging slightly limp.
"Go hunt with the wyverns. Keep an eye out for enemies. Try to bring something 
back if you can find enough, but get yourselves fed."
Herzer walked to the back of the inlet as the dragons waded into the water to 
hunt. From the spit of land at the back of the inlet he could see far out over 
the banks in the dying light. The water on the north side was deeper than at the 
entrance but he could see that it shoaled out quickly and large areas of the 
banks were already exposed to the dropping tide. Ixchitl probably couldn't make 
their way through that, but better safe than sorry. He waded into the warm 
waters of the inlet, noting that the breeze was turning colder as the sun set, 
and hunted up Herman.
The leader of the delphinos was floating at the edge of his pod, dropping below 
the surface from time to time until his pectorals hit the bottom then floating 
back up to breathe.
"Herman," Herzer said as the leader resurfaced.
"Herzer man," the delphino squeaked. "Safe are?"
"I'd like a couple of delphinos awake in shifts, posted near the inlet on the 
north. Probably nothing can come across the banks, but we shouldn't take 
'probably' for an answer right now."
"Will," the delphino said, dropping below the surface and clicking his sonar. A 
couple of the delphino males, clicking irritably, moved to the north and 
stationed themselves by the entrance.
"I'll get someone to tell them when to find relief," Herzer said. "I'd suggest 
you get some sleep."
"Hungry," Herman replied. "Pod hungry."
"Hopefully the dragons will bring something back," was all Herzer said.
He waded wearily ashore and found that Bast had, somehow, gotten a fire started.
"Get some water," Edmund said, pointing at one of the barrels that had had its 
end opened. "No more than a liter; we need most of it for the dragons."
Herzer dipped out a cup of water and drank it carefully, avoiding slopping any 
despite his thirst. He had been in sun and salt water all day and his body felt 
like a drooping plant. The water seemed like the finest wine and he felt 
refreshed with just one cup but he carefully drained another; he knew he needed 
it.
"There's some mackerel left," Edmund said. "But until the dragons get back I 
don't want to share it out."
"I found some conch," Pete said. He had already extracted the snail from the 
shells and was now cutting the foot of the mollusc into slices. "Wish I had some 
lemon. It's pretty good marinated in lemon juice."
"I'll just toast mine if you don't mind," Herzer said, accepting one of the 
slices and going up into the brush to find a stick. He returned with four of 
them and managed to whittle a point that would penetrate the rock-hard flesh. He 
held it over the fire, turning it carefully, until the flesh became limp, then 
pulled it out, nibbling at it before it even cooled.
"Bleck," he said, struggling with the rubbery flesh. "I never thought I'd eat 
anything worse than monkey on a stick."
"I'm not sure I want to know," Antja said.
"Field rations," Edmund said, struggling with his own conch. "Dried and pressed 
meat, basically."
"But I'd kill for a handful of parched corn about now," Herzer added.
"Wine-baked venison," Bast said.
"Stalled ox," Edmund added with a chuckle. "With the meat red at the bone."
"Trigger fish in wine and cream sauce," Pete added. He hadn't bothered to cook 
his conch and it was already gone.
"How about grilled grouper?" Joanna said from the edge of the fire. The voice 
was muffled because she held one the size of Bast's torso in her mouth.
"Nothing that big should be able to move that quietly," Jason said as Chauncey 
dropped a smaller grouper by Herzer.
"We're going to have to share this with the delphinos," Herzer said as Edmund 
started to gut the fish.
"Donal is taking them the largest," Joanna said. "And I'm ready to collapse."
"Lie in the entrance, if you don't mind," Edmund said. "You're not going to get 
too cold?"
"No, I'm fine," the dragon said, then yawned hugely. "But ready to sleep. And 
when the time comes, you owe me one of those stalled oxen, barbecued. With 
sauce."
"Will do," Edmund chuckled.
"See ya," the dragon said, moving out of the firelight.
The wyverns had already backed up against the cliff and were nodding off to 
sleep. Herzer realized he could barely keep his eyes open but he waited for the 
fish to cook, nodding from time to time. Many of the mer hadn't had that much 
discipline, or hunger, Elayna included, and were sprawled on the sands asleep.
When the fish was cooked he took portions and went among the mer, waking them up 
and forcing them to eat. Many of them protested that they weren't hungry but he 
made sure that they all were eating before going back to his, small, portion.
"A liter of water and, what? Two hundred grams of grouper? This is like the 
Dying Time."
"No," Edmund said. "More water then." He popped his own morsel of grouper into 
his mouth and swallowed it nearly whole. "I'm for bed."
"I'll take first watch," Herzer said.
"No, I will," Bast said. "But you're going to lie down here beside me."
Herzer soon found himself in a pile of bodies as the mer and landsmen huddled 
together for warmth against the cold wind. Herzer, Edmund, Bast, Elayna, Antja, 
Jason and Pete were all there. He realized that it wasn't just warm, it was 
comfortably warm, and that was the last thing he remembered. Except a memory of 
gnawing hunger through the night.
He awoke to a bellow and was on his feet, sword drawn, before he realized that 
it was dawn, with the sun peeping over the horizon to the southeast.
He looked around for danger but then saw Joanna, stretching and yawning hugely 
in the dawn light.
"Sorry about that," Joanna said, yawning again, which came as a bellow from the 
belly of the immense beast. "Can't help it."
"Well, the good news is we're all awake," Edmund said. He, too, was on his feet 
but his sword was still sheathed.
"And how are you this morning, Commander Gramlich?" Herzer asked.
"Fine," the dragon replied, yawning again. "Except I had to keep waking up all 
night to let the water in and out."
It was apparent that the sand of the entrance had been gouged by water and 
dragon claws. It was also deeper than it had been on their entrance, with the 
water going out again. They had slept through the flood and high tide and now 
were in the ebb again.
"Dragons have to forage first," Edmund said, looking around at the mer, who were 
wiping at their eyes. "Landsmen and dragons get some water first. If the 
delphinos want to run some scouts out, I wouldn't mind. When the dragons get 
back, if they bring anything, we eat. Then we take off."
"We're going farther out this time," Joanna said. "We pretty much hunted out 
this area last night."
"Go," Edmund said. "Take as much time as you need, but no more."
"Will do, General," the dragon said with a grin. She rounded up the wyverns and 
between the three dragons they finished off the water barrel. Then they headed 
for the crest of the island to get some room for takeoff.
"I was supposed to take a watch last night," Herzer told Bast, who looked wide 
awake.
"I don't need that much sleep," Bast said. "And there were no threats. On that 
you may trust me, lover."
"I do," Herzer admitted. "And thanks."
"You can thank me properly later," she said with a grin. "There's been so little 
time!"
"Where the hell are the orcas?" Edmund growled. He was looking out to sea, 
frowning. "The ixchitl can be down in the sand. But the orcas have to surface 
some time or another. I expected them to be waiting right outside the entrance 
when we woke up."
But neither the orcas nor the ixchitl made their appearance even after the 
dragons returned with a fine haul of large fish.
"We saw some rays in the distance," Joanna said and burped hugely. "But I don't 
know if they were ixchitl; we didn't get that close. There's a really productive 
reef just down the coast; we could see all the fish on it as we flew over."
"This is great, Commander," Edmund said. The three dragons had returned with 
huge grouper and there was more than enough for everyone to, if not eat their 
fill, at least get a good portion.
"But we need to get on the move," Edmund said. The sun was already well up. 
"Dragons out, with riders, then the armed mer, then the delphinos, then the 
unarmed mer. We'll set up a perimeter until we can get the hemisphere reformed."
Herzer chuckled as he buckled the sailcloth halter on Chauncey, and Bast smiled 
at him as she climbed on Joanna's back.
"You see it, too," Bast said.
"Yep," Herzer replied, leading the dragon down to the water; it was nearly 
impossible to ride the dragons without their full harness until they were laid 
out in the water.
"What?" Edmund asked.
"You," Joanna said as she walked out into the water until she was deep enough to 
partially submerge. "Did you think about how to get out of this bay last night? 
Or did it emerge, full blown, from your forehead like Athena from Zeus?"
"I thought about it before we left Raven's Mill," Edmund replied. "It's a simple 
modification of the way that Roman Legions, or the Blood Lords for that matter, 
exited their camps."
"Except we don't have to take it down behind us," Herzer said with a nod. "I 
just hadn't thought that far ahead."
"You'll learn, Herzer," Edmund said, climbing on Donal when he lay down in the 
water. "You'll learn."
They weren't hit as they debouched from the inlet, or even after they reformed 
the hemisphere and started off down the coast.
"Where are they?" Herzer asked.
"Waiting in ambush," Edmund replied. "That's their way."
Herzer had taken the comment about thinking ahead to heart and used the time 
now. Something about the narrows that entered the channel through the banks had 
been bothering him for a while and how he had it.
"I think they're going to hit us at the entrance to the banks, sir," he said. 
They were traveling beneath the water, the dragons swimming for a while and then 
broaching like whales for a breath.
"That's my guess as well," Edmund replied.
"And there's only a few ways for them to do it," Herzer replied. "And . . . I 
think I have a way that we might be able to round up the whole set. But I'm 
afraid it might take too much coordination, that it's too complicated."
"If a plan is too complicated, the way to use it is to decomplicate it," Edmund 
replied. "So what's the plan?"
Herzer told him and he nodded.
"You're right," Edmund said after some thought. "That's too complicated. And you 
haven't allowed for it to go to hell in a handbasket. Let's see if we can 
decomplicate it and come up with a go-to-hell option."
They talked about it for a while, as, reinforcing their suspicions, the ixchitl 
failed to attack, until Edmund finally nodded.
"It doesn't take into account the orcas," Edmund said. "Or the kraken. But it 
will do. If one appears it still might work. If both appear we're on the 
go-to-hell-plan."
"Which is?" Herzer asked.
"The mer get on land, as far up as they can and the delphinos are on their own," 
Edmund said, brutally. "If there's an orc force, we just pull into the shallows 
and fight until we're all dead. That's why it's called a 'go-to-hell' plan. 
You're all going to hell, anyway, so you might as well take as large an honor 
guard as possible. Go brief the mer, I'll handle the delphinos."


CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Rather than follow the coastline all the way around, since it would be two 
longer edges of a triangle, they cut the chord across deeper water. This was one 
of the potential attack points, in Herzer's opinion, and he kept a careful eye 
on the blue depths. But as no attack materialized, he relaxed, only to realize 
that they were approaching the entrance to the banks.
A long, narrow passage cut through the banks from the deeps side to the Stream 
side which was their destination. Most of the passage was up to thirty meters 
deep and almost a klick across. But at the edge of the deeps it narrowed and 
shallowed to only a few meters and no more than fifty meters across. Yet, within 
less than a click from the entrance into the deeps the water had deepened to 
over two thousand meters.
The group had reached no more than a hundred meters from the entrance when the 
sandbar to the northeast erupted in ixchitl.
There were more of them than had survived the first ambush, at least forty, and 
they swept around the formation, disdaining their nematocysts to close with the 
spear-wielding mer-men.
Most of them disdained their nematocysts, that is, but others swept in, 
targeting the dragons in particular and Chauncey let out a bellow as a harpoon 
entered his back. He bellowed past the body of a dead ixchitl, however, and the 
poison did not seem to affect him as greatly as it did the humans. He turned on 
his side, wrapping his wings around his body and using the technique of the 
delphinos to wrap the cord of the harpoon about his body and bring the beast 
down to where his teeth could sink into it, turning the water around him bright 
scarlet with its blood.
But others were swarming on the wyverns and the lesser dragons had to break off 
to the south, pursued by at least twenty of the great rays. The rays were, in 
turn, pursued by Joanna.
The rest of the ixchitl gathered around the mer, trying to strike into the 
formation past the spears.
Herzer, Bast and Edmund had released the dragons at the first sign of attack and 
now formed a reinforcement team at the center of the hemisphere. But the group 
could not press past the ixchitl, without going under them and risking their 
nematocysts. By the same token, the ixchitl were finding it impossible to break 
the line of spears held by the mer-men. It seemed as if it was a stalemate until 
one of the delphinos squealed a distress cry, pounding his sonar to the 
southeast, into the deep. Rising out of the deep was a leviathan of tentacles 
and beak. The kraken had returned.
"Jason!" Edmund bellowed. "We're going to have to break low and proceed to the 
second phase. NOW."
The bottom of the mer burst open like a flower, sweeping up and under the 
ixchitl to the west, braving their toxic harpoons in the face of the greater 
threat. The delphinos burst through their formation, doing their best to catch 
the harpoons, with most of them hanging back by command.
The mer-women and older males dropped their burdens and broke under the mer-men, 
swimming as fast as they could for the entrance with the delphinos screening 
ahead of them, pounding the sand to check for a second ambush of the rays.
Herzer grabbed Herman as he went past, holding onto the big dolphin's dorsal fin 
with his prosthetic since there was no way that a landsman could keep up in this 
fast-paced underwater battle. He heard a scream from his side and looked over to 
see a harpoon pulsing poison into Elayna's arm.
His sword swept out without thought and slashed through the cord, then he 
grabbed one flailing arm and held on. The big dolphin had sensed his movement 
and slowed to allow him one moment to recover the girl but now accelerated 
hugely, heading as fast as he could for the shallows. Herzer felt as if both his 
arms were going to be torn from the sockets but he somehow retained his grip on 
sword, girl and delphino.
As the delphino came opposite the shallows on the near side of the entrance he 
turned to the side sharply and threw Herzer and his burden off into the 
shallows. Without a word he then sped to the west, following his pod.
The mer-men, in apparent panic, were now streaming through the entrance to 
escape the combination of the ixchitl and the kraken. In the same apparent panic 
they made the same wrong turn in the tricky shallows as the mer-women, and ended 
up in a small, landlocked bay on the southwest side of the entrance.
There was no escape. The sides were relatively steep and while they could climb 
out onto the land they could never struggle over the steep cliffs around them. 
And the ixchitl controlled the only entrance to the sea. Unless someone came to 
their succor, the kraken could easily enter the relatively shallow bay and pluck 
them from the sides.
All of the ixchitl had followed them into the bay, even the group that had been 
pursuing the dragons, and the kraken waited at the entrance to the narrows, 
apparently preferring the deeps to the shallows that might be dangerous to his 
depth-adjusted design.
Herzer dragged Elayna farther up the shore, far enough that the kraken could not 
pull her to her death, and looked across the narrow entrance to the bay. It was 
almost exactly as he'd remembered it from his reading of the maps and he waved 
at Edmund, on the far side of the entrance, as he pulled the heavy package off 
his back.
"We still lost too many," he called.
"No plan survives contact with the enemy," Edmund replied. "This one came damned 
close. At least, it will, if you'll hurry up."
Herzer unfurled the monomolecular net from his back and took a section of it, 
whirling it around his head until it had good speed, and hurled it across the 
entrance.
At the splash, some of the ixchitl turned towards the sole opening to the bay, 
but Edmund had already splashed out into thigh-deep water and was scrambling 
back to the far shore.
The heavily weighted net quickly sunk to the bottom as Herzer and Edmund pounded 
the ends into the ground with the stakes they carried.
The ixchitl began to swim back and forth in the bay, flashing their bellies at 
each other. One jumped into the air to cross the net but the water on the far 
side was shallow as well and Herzer waded thigh deep before he spitted it to the 
sand below with his sword. The adamantite cut through flesh and cartilage, 
ripping a huge gash in the ixchitl, which was reduced to thrashing in the 
shallow water.
Another got a run up and jumped the net into slightly deeper water just as a 
shadow passed over the pool and Chauncey landed on it with both talons. One bite 
tore through the head of the ray and it, too, was left quivering as Donal landed 
next to the feasting wyvern. The latest arrival turned to the bay of penned rays 
and spread his wings, hissing in hunger and clashing his jaws as if to catch one 
in the air.
The kraken, seeing the dragons in water that was just deep enough for it to 
maneuver, jetted forward but stopped as Joanna landed in the inlet in water that 
was over her back.
"Hi," Joanna said. "Wanna play? I like calamari."
The kraken seemed to consider this for a moment and then jetted backwards in a 
cloud of black ink.
"Oh, no you don't," Joanna shouted leaping to the land and then running forward 
to get up in the air. "I'm hungry, damn it!" she bellowed.
She pounded her wings, ascending like an elevator and then turned over, pointed 
at the kraken, which was still, apparently, visible. She folded her wings back 
and, still accelerating, arrowed into the water like a dart.
"Commander!" Edmund yelled, but the dragon had already submerged.
"Well," Herzer said, bending to Elayna, "I guess we get to answer the eternal 
question."
"What?" Elayna asked, wincing.
"In a fight between a sea serpent and a kraken," Herzer said, seriously, "which 
one wins?"
* * *
Joanna had timed the dive perfectly and even as she started to slow in the water 
her mouth closed over the body of the squid.
It was the foulest taste she had ever experienced, a combination of ammonia with 
a hint of long-dead fish. But she bore down and felt something pop in its 
vitals.
It wasn't a killing blow, though, and the great kraken writhed in her grip, 
wrapping a tentacle around her neck and others around her wings, body, its beak 
tearing at her, searching for something that wasn't invulnerable wing.
Joanna's eyes bugged at the pressure from the tentacle and she shifted her grip 
to its base, ripping it off after a long struggle with the rubbery tissue. She 
spat the still-writhing tentacle out and bit down again, looking for something 
vulnerable, ripping at it with her talons, as the jets of the beast churned and 
they shot into the depths. She could feel the water growing colder and the light 
change from light blue to dark and then the deepest twilight. The pressure on 
her lungs was building enormously as she struggled to rip with talon and teeth.
Commander Gramlich, she thought, her brain growing foggy with the pressure and 
cold, this was not the smartest thing you have ever done in your life. 
* * *
"I can't feel my arm," Elayna said, lifting it up from where it lay bonelessly 
on the sand.
"Daneh says it's only a paralysis agent," Herzer said. The bonelike harpoon was 
deeply embedded in her arm, though. "I think we should wait to try to get that 
out." He took his sword and cut the dangling cord off.
"Okay," she replied. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me," Herzer said. "We'd both be dead if it weren't for Herman."
"Where'd they go?" Elayna asked, sitting up.
"Down the passage," Herzer said. "They're faster than the ixchitl. It's the 
orcas that they're worried about, but the orcas weren't going to go into the 
shallows; they would have been out in the deeps somewhere."
"So now what?" Elayna asked.
"Now, we wait for the tide to go out," Herzer said, looking out to sea. "And we 
count the breakage."
The breakage had been heavy. Jackson the toolmaker was missing as well as a half 
a dozen of the mer-men who had given their lives to screen the retreating 
forces. Two of the mer-women were missing as well. Leaving Donal to hold the 
entrance, Herzer took Chauncey back into deep water to try to find them and 
Joanna, who hadn't returned.
He found one mangled body of a mer-woman, her identity a mystery, and another 
was found by one of the greatly daring delphino scouts that darted out of the 
entrance. But no further sign of the mer-folk, or of Joanna, was seen.
"I can't believe she's dead," Elayna said, when Herzer returned.
"She might be invulnerable to most harm," Herzer pointed out. "But she can't 
hold her breath forever."
"She said she can hold it a long time," Edmund pointed out.
"It's been nearly an hour," Herzer replied.
"We've got time," the general replied, looking up at the sun. "It's several more 
hours to low tide."
The ixchitl had apparently divined the plan and had been making more rushes at 
the entrance. But some of the armed mer-men had worked their way over the rocks 
to the entrance and the delphinos clustered there as well. One ixchitl that 
worked its way under the net was torn apart by the enraged delphinos even before 
the dragons could swarm on it. After that Herzer cut stakes and the net was 
staked all the way across the entrance.
Still they looked out to sea, hoping to see any sign of a sea serpent's head. 
The sun was descending in the west and they had virtually given up hope when 
Chauncey gave a startled cry and flapped his wings.
Herzer ran up to the shoulder of the ridge that formed the embayment and looked 
out to the darkening sea. Sure enough, there was a snakelike head slowly making 
its way back to shore.
Thirty minutes later Joanna dragged herself up onto shore. Her belly was ripped 
in numerous places and her back was covered with broad, red welts. But she was 
alive.
"Cristo," she muttered, collapsing in a heap. "Remind me not to do that again."
"So did you escape?" Edmund asked. "Or eat?"
"Neither," she answered, wearily. "I swear I died. But I know it did. And I 
didn't eat; have you started serving ixchitl yet?"
"No," Edmund said, looking at the rapidly shallowing water. "Soon."
"Good," she said, "wake me up when some's done. I'd like mine medium."
"The kraken is definitely dead," Edmund pursued.
"Cracked its brain case with my own teeth," Joanna said, her eyes closed. "Poke 
me if I lie."
"And you didn't eat it?" Herzer asked, aghast.
"Worst stuff I've ever tasted," she answered. "Now, if you please, I vunt to be 
alun." In moments she was snoring hugely.
It was after dark before the tide had gone out fully, but Herzer and Bast had 
gathered quantities of firewood and the water in the bay was lit with red when 
they and Edmund walked across the sandy bottom.
The ixchitl were crowded into the narrow stretch of remaining water, their wings 
flapping as they fought for the remaining breathable liquid, the firelight 
reflecting from madly churning wings, backs, eyes.
Herzer stopped as he raised the boarding pike and looked over at the general.
"Question, sir," he said, lowering the pike as one of the ixchitl rolled an eye 
upward at him, gill openings on its back flapping in distress. "Is this a 
violation of the laws of land warfare?"
"Good question," Edmund said, leaning on his own pike. "They're sentient beings, 
so they can't be treated like animals. On the other hand, they're not signatory 
to any agreements with us and they have all participated in their own 
illegalities. On the gripping hand, we're planning on feeding them to our 
dragons. And, honestly, I'm thinking of having a couple of wing-steaks myself. 
What's your feeling, Lieutenant?"
Herzer looked down at the flapping rays and raised his pike. He thought about 
the tail of a mer-child lying on the sand of Whale Point Drop. Of Bruce, Jackson 
and all the others, paralyzed and dying for a breath of water or air. Eaten 
alive.
"Kill them all, sir," the lieutenant growled, spearing downward and flipping the 
wounded ray out of the mass onto the hard, dry sand where it would die like a 
fish out of water. "God will surely know his own."
* * *
"It tastes like . . . scallop," Herzer muttered around a steak the size of a 
large Porterhouse.
The band of ixchitl had yielded enough food for the entire party to eat their 
fill. Cutting along the backbone and peeling back the skin of the wings revealed 
huge chunks of white, linear sections of meat separated by cartilaginous tissue. 
The dragons had simply torn into the ixchitl given to them, but Pete had shown 
how to separate out the steaks and these had been grilled over the fires, using 
the monomolecular net to keep them away from the flames. The produced meat was 
succulent and juicy, heavy in fat, and Herzer realized he'd eaten his steak 
without a pause.
"Back before replicators," Edmund said, "they would catch rays and chunk them 
up, selling the meat as scallop meat. When replicators were introduced they used 
that meat as the template rather than real scallops. Real scallops got called 
'bay' scallops. They're sweeter and less chewy."
"It's still good," Herzer said.
"You realize that this is cannibalism, right?" Pete said, chewing slowly.
"For you," Bast said. She had produced a fork from her apparently infinite pouch 
and was delicately cutting slices from her steak. "I'm an elf. It doesn't 
count."
"They're still sentient beings," Jason pointed out.
"I'm not telling you you have to eat it," Bast said. "In fact, if you're done . 
. ."
"No," Jason said, popping a piece into his mouth. "Just wanted to point it out."
"For me, it helps," Elayna said, chewing on a mouthful of the juicy meat. Her 
arm was tender and swollen around the harpoon still in it and had been bound up 
in a sling. But the other more than sufficed for current needs.
"Why?" Pete asked.
"The next time we have to fight them, I'll just be thinking about the barbecue 
afterwards," she said with a feral grin.
The barrels of water had been recovered but the island hosted a small spring and 
Herzer had had a chance to drink his fill and wash some of the salt off. All in 
all, he was feeling better than he had since the first attack on the town.
"Sentries are detailed, General," he said formally. "I've got the second watch, 
so I'm for bed."
The flood tide was making and there was enough room for most of the delphinos to 
fit in the bay again. The rest, mostly young males, hovered nervously at the 
dragon-covered entrance. But the two wyverns were posted by the water and if 
there was any attack they would be ready.
"I'd join you," Elayna said, "but out of the water I'm not much fun."
"If Herzer will carry you, feel free," Bast smiled. "I wouldn't mind a 
threesome."
"Oh, Lord, what have I done to deserve this?" Herzer asked, holding up his arms.
"Is that thanks or a plea?" Elayna laughed. "No, you two go. I'm going to stay 
here by the fire and finish off the rays."
"Do you want some help with that?" Pete asked.
"Yes, as a matter of fact," she replied, smiling at him. "I'd love some help."
"Come along, love," Bast said, pulling Herzer to his feet. "You got plenty of 
sleep last night."
Jason watched them as they walked up the hill and winked at Antja. "Care to try 
it on land?"
"Not on your life," she said. "General, what happens tomorrow?"
"I think the ixchitl, if there are any left, aren't going to be a problem 
anymore," Edmund said. "But the orcas are still unaccounted for."
"They're not going to go in the shallows," Jason pointed out. "They get beached 
too easily."
"So I don't think we have to worry about them until we reach the far side," 
Edmund replied. "But we shouldn't let our guard down. We're not safe until we're 
linked back up with the carrier and everyone is safely in your bay. Maybe not 
even then. I won't be happy until there's a serious guard force down here and a 
solid defense set up. Then we can start striking back."
"I look forward to the day," Jason said. "But I've got third watch, so I'm for 
bed."
"I'll snuggle with you, but that's all," Antja said, crawling into the darkness. 
"Understand?"
"Snuggle," Jason said with a grin. "Right."


CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
"Mr. Mayerle," Commander Mbeki said, "what are you doing?"
The engineer was in the process of attaching a small box to the mainmast. It had 
a brass dial on the front and a winding key on the side, which he proceeded to 
wind up.
"Gravitic anomaly detector, sir," the engineer replied. He had finished winding 
the key and headed for the rear of the ship. "It detects small changes in the 
gravity as the ship passes over. By taking the punch tapes in them, and 
comparing them to the course, I think I can figure out a back-up navigational 
system for when we're under cloudy skies. I thought of it when we were having 
all that trouble finding the shoals when we were clouded over."
"It wasn't finding the shoals we were interested in," the commander said with a 
chuckle. "It was avoiding them."
"As you say, sir," the engineer said, seriously. "I need to attach one by the 
captain's cabin. It will just be on the wall in the corridor. Is that okay?"
"That's fine, Mr. Mayerle," the commander replied. "Carry on."
* * *
Joel was back on night duty, the day watch steward having been put back on 
limited duty. So he was surprised to see the odd box on the wall when he walked 
down the corridor to the wardroom.
"What's that?" he asked the sentry on the general's door.
"Somebody said it was a gravity detector." The marine shrugged. "Something about 
navigation. Ask one of the officers."
Joel walked over and examined the box curiously. He could hear it faintly 
purring and at first feared that it might be some sort of trap or bomb. But 
without an explosive, it could only hold a small charge of fire-making material. 
Or, perhaps, poison.
"Who put it here?" Joel asked.
"How the fisk would I know?" the marine said, grumpily.
"Just asking," Joel replied, heading to the galley again.
If that was a gravity detector he was Paul Bowman. The question was, who had put 
it there and why.
By the end of the shift he had determined that it was the civilian engineer who 
had put them there and that there were three, one in the officer's corridor, one 
on the mainmast and one in the forecastle.
The question remained what their real purpose was. Or, maybe he was just being 
paranoid. But he knew enough of basic Newtonian physics to question that you 
couldn't get a reasonable reading of gravity using that small of a device. 
Especially without advanced technology. Now, that it was measuring something, 
was possible . . . 
Like avatar emissions. Bloody hell, that meant that someone else was stumbling 
around looking for the leak. He recalled, bitterly, what Sheida had said about 
"not stepping on each other's toes." At this point it had to be clear that there 
was someone passing information to New Destiny; three attacks, each right on 
their course, was just too much coincidence.
His only contact point was Duke Edmund. Admittedly, the duke's wife was Queen 
Sheida's sister, but that didn't mean she was a viable contact. He didn't go 
blabbing his missions to Dedra and Miriam.
He decided he'd wait until they rendezvoused with the duke and hope like hell 
that nobody did anything stupid until then. Let it be soon
* * *
The delphinos had had to quit the bay before dawn, as the tide sucked the water 
back out, but there was no attack from any quarter and the party, after 
finishing off the leftover rays, started down the passage to the west.
They overnighted in a small bay near the exit to the banks. There weren't 
islands around them, but the shoals on either side were shallow enough that no 
ixchitl or orca could pass over them. In the morning the dragons woke up hungry; 
there hadn't been anything for them to scavenge on the trip across the banks.
"Take them out feeding," Edmund told Joanna. "The deep water is just to the 
west. Keep an eye out for the carrier; the rendezvous is just to the north of 
the entrance."
"Will do," Joanna said, climbing up onto the shallows. The tide had come in and 
the shallows were ankle deep to the dragon but she and the wyverns were still 
able to get aloft.
"Where does all this sand come from?" Herzer asked, picking up a handful and 
letting it slide through his fingers. "On shore it's from runoff from eroded 
quartz. But this isn't quartz."
"It's mostly eroded coral," Jerry replied. "Which is calcium carbonate. I say 
'eroded' but much of it, believe it or not, comes from parrot fish . . . 
droppings. But it's also some pure carbonate. The banks are one of the few 
places in the world where the temperature is just right for carbon dioxide to 
form carbonate. It reacts with the calcium in the seawater to make it. Not so 
much on this section, but over on the far side of the deeps there's a huge bank 
that is constantly making."
"Which makes it a carbon sink," Edmund noted. "Back when there was hysteria 
about 'greenhouse effect' and global warming, all that people would talk about 
is how it was impossible to correct. Admittedly, cutting down ninety percent of 
the rainforests was silly, but the people who were hysterical about its effect 
were lousy atmospheric scientists. Tropical rainforests aren't any sort of 
carbon sink; they recycle too quickly. And they're actually a net oxygen 
consumer. Oxygen production, and carbon sinkage, occurred mostly in the 
temperate regions. And carbon sinks were everywhere that the hysteriacs weren't 
looking. In the banks, in industrial farmlands, in a huge current off the coast 
of Anarchia. In fact, Norau, which was considered the most wasteful country on 
earth at the time, was a net carbon consumer because of its plant coverage, 
despite being a heavy source of carbon dioxide and methane. But nobody 
particularly cared for truth. They just wanted Norau to quit producing carbon, 
not realizing that if they did half the sinkage would go away with it. Nor that 
the warming that was occurring was part of a natural cycle that had been 
repeatedly proven from historical research. Not that humans have changed that 
much or we wouldn't be in this war."
"But there was a man-made heat wave," Herzer said.
"In the twenty-third century," Edmund pointed out. "When you're producing 
sixteen to thirty terawatts of power, the heat efficiency gets very bad. But the 
carbon dioxide hysteria was just that, hysteria. As real as the Dutch Tulip 
Frenzy or the Beanie Baby Recession of the late twentieth century when the 
sudden drop in Tyco sales set off a market panic. Plenty of scientists, most of 
the atmospheric scientists, were saying it at the time, as well as pointing out 
ways to increase the rate of carbon deposition. But nobody wants to listen to 
the voice of reason when there's a good hysteria to be had. Humans are like 
that."
"Humans were evolution created," Bast said, sitting down in the shallow water. 
"Must have been evolutionary positive to hysteria in small groups. Whole tribe 
to pile upon the leopard, perhaps."
"Perhaps," Edmund said with a grin. "The history of the period is so funny at a 
distance. As deadly in its own way as the present war. The world was in a golden 
age, and no one would pay attention to it! It's maddening, like looking at the 
Inquisition histories and going 'Well, duh, why didn't you just try to get 
along?' Science, engineering, were both expanding, lifestyles, across the world, 
were improving. The environment was improving. More people were living longer 
and better lives, in the areas that had decent governments at least. But 
everyone was screaming that the world was coming to an end."
"Why?" Herzer asked.
"Why did Paul start this war?" Edmund replied with a sigh. "He saw the present 
trend, falling birthrates, and felt that the human race was on the edge of 
extinction. The people of the time took present trends, present methods of 
production, present resources, present population growth rates, carbon dioxide 
output, temperature increases, and created a straight line model, ignoring the 
fact that the historical models were anything but straight line. And every time 
that their doomsday pronouncements were disproved, they just shouted louder 
about some new looming catastrophe. Over a thirty year span, the same group of 
so-called 'scientists' first predicted a coming ice age, then that the polar ice 
caps would melt, then the ice age again! Instead, population growth fell off. 
Industries became more efficient. Every year a new, previously undiscovered, 
carbon sink was found. New energy sources were discovered, each of which created 
a new cry that a resource would be exhausted. People just seem to prefer that 
the world be a bad place, even when it's clearly not. For chicken little, the 
sky is always falling."
"Well, I wish I could grab a few of them and drag them into this world," Herzer 
growled. "Show them what bad really means."
"Nah," Edmund said with a grin. "Bad was the Dying Time. The war is just 
challenging. Herzer, you're sitting waist-deep in warm water. There's a 
beautiful elf maid by your side. The sun is shining. The wind is light. Take a 
look around for a second and tell me you're not in heaven."
"I'm hungry and I need to go to the bathroom," Herzer said, but he grinned as he 
said it. "Okay, point taken."
"The war will wait for us," Edmund said, sighing. "It's waiting for us right 
now, unless I'm much mistaken, just off the coast. But in the meantime, let's 
just enjoy the sun and water, okay? And not look for a reason for hysteria."
* * *
"Unfortunately, Miss Rachel, your father was right." Evan sighed. "There is a 
steady power source in the rear of the ship and another that comes and goes. I 
think, though, that I've traced one of them to your father's room."
"That I know about," Rachel said. "There's a datacube in there. It's also 
designed to protect the ship against a direct energy strike, assuming that Paul 
can free some up long enough to attack us."
"That makes one headache go away," he sighed. "Unfortunately, the other one is 
coming from the wardroom. And it's intermittent. There have been two surges in 
the last day. But I've been unable to determine who was in the room when they 
occurred."
"Damn," Daneh said. That narrowed it down to the officers and the stewards; 
nobody else used the room. And another thing. "I've never seen the rabbit in 
officers' country."
"Nor have I," Evan said. "It is possible that he's coming up with the reports 
and then giving them to a steward. But the stewards don't go in the wardroom 
unless there's an officer that needs something. Or, occasionally, to clean up 
when they're not there."
"I think I need to ask some more questions," she said, frowning. "I'll be back. 
Keep monitoring."
"I shall," the engineer said. "Be careful."
"I'll try."
* * *
Rachel had prowled most of the ship but for various reasons she hadn't been down 
to the marine quarters. For that matter she hadn't paid much attention to the 
marines; they were just ornaments as far as she could determine. But at the 
moment, they were going to have the information she needed.
She opened up the door to their bunkroom and then stepped back, closing her 
eyes.
"Sorry, miss," the marine said. "I've got my pants on, now."
"Not your fault," Rachel said, opening her eyes. There were a round dozen of the 
marines in the narrow room, most of them in their bunks since they were off 
duty. The half-dressed marine finished toweling, looking at her questioningly.
"I need to speak to your CO or the senior NCO," Rachel said.
"Gunny's off-shift," the marine said. "He was up most of the night. The CO's 
awake." The marine gestured with his chin to a door at the end of the corridor.
Rachel walked down the corridor and knocked this time, waiting for permission to 
enter.
"Yes, miss?" the marine captain asked. He was sitting at a small desk, working 
on paperwork.
"Captain, I need to ask some of your marines some questions," she said, pulling 
out a sheet of paper and proffering it. "This is my authority."
The captain frowned and glanced at the paper, stopping to read it more 
thoroughly.
"This is a pretty blanket authority, Mistress Ghorbani," the captain said, his 
lips pursed.
"Yes, it is," Rachel said. "And it gets worse. I need to ask them some questions 
and I need to do so privately. You cannot ask them what was said and you cannot 
report the questions to anyone on the ship. Is that clear?"
"Very clear," the marine said, his face hard. "Which means you have a problem 
with something on the ship that you can't even bring to the skipper."
"Not the skipper, not the naval officers, none of them," Rachel said. "Clear?"
"Clear, ma'am," the marine said, shaking his head. "Who do you need to see?"
"The marines that were on duty in the officers' corridor during last shift," she 
said. "One at a time. Now, where?"
"Here," the captain said, getting up and buckling on his tunic. "You can have my 
chair. Let me ask you a question; should I turn out the duty guard?"
"Not yet," Rachel said. "Hopefully it won't come to that. Hopefully this is 
nothing."
* * *
"Nothing," Joanna said as she landed. "Fish, yes. Orcas, ixchitl, the carrier, 
no."
"The orcas could have just given up," Jason said.
"Not Shanol," Herzer replied. "Not with one eye gone. He's got it in for me, 
bad."
"They might not know where we're going," Elayna interjected. "I mean, there are 
lots of places we could go."
"Their intelligence has been too good," Edmund replied. "They've known our 
movements all along. I doubt that whoever is feeding them intelligence is 
unaware of our destination, route or rendezvous."
"You mean there's a spy?" Jason said. "Who?"
"I don't know," Edmund said. "I suspect more than one. But I notice that Mosur 
has been missing since the first attack. And I didn't see him in the square when 
the ixchitl attacked."
"But he was around for a while after," Antja said, looking unhappy. "He talked 
to me. He wanted me to leave with him."
"Why didn't you tell me that?" Jason asked, angrily.
"Why do you think?" Antja said. "He's been hanging around a lot lately. I didn't 
tell you because I could handle it."
"He said something like that to me, too," Elayna said. "But it was before the 
attack. He said that he thought that you guys," she pointed at Herzer and 
Edmund, "would bring trouble and he had a place to hide. I just laughed at him 
and told him to get lost. After the attack I was around people too much, I 
guess. He probably didn't feel safe coming near me."
"But he would know where we were going," Jason said. "Everyone had been told."
"So we can assume, I think, that the orcas know," Edmund said. "Don't let your 
guard down."
* * *
"Have a seat on the sea locker," Rachel said to the young marine. She vaguely 
recognized him as one of the marines who had guarded her father's quarters. "I 
need to ask you some questions. You're not to tell anyone what I asked. Anyone, 
is that clear?"
"Yes, miss," the marine said, swallowing nervously. "The captain said the same."
"Not even the other marines I'm questioning," she said. "Don't go comparing 
notes. Understood?"
"Yes, miss."
* * *
Rachel was on the sea locker now, with her mother pacing nervously in the 
captain's office and the marine CO sitting back behind his desk.
"All three of the guards, independently, stated that the only person to be in 
the wardroom alone during their shift was Commander Mbeki," Rachel said, 
glancing at her notes. "The CO was in his quarters most of the time. He left, 
but only to go to the quarterdeck. The navigator and the three lieutenants were 
never in the corridor. One steward was in there, but only while Commander Mbeki 
was present."
"Okay," Daneh said. "Damn. Mbeki?"
"Can I ask, now, what is going on?" the marine asked.
"Not yet, Captain," Daneh said. "But on my husband's authority, get your guard 
ready and armored up. Rachel and I need to go see the CO."
* * *
The skipper tossed the letter onto his desk and looked up angrily.
"It is not normal, nor wise, to turn over full military authority to a civilian, 
Mistress Daneh," the skipper said, his mouth pursed. "Can I ask the reason for 
this extraordinary document?"
"Let me ask you a question first," Daneh said. "Have you noticed anything about 
the New Destiny attacks?"
"Other than they have been inept?" the captain asked sarcastically.
"Have they?" Daneh asked, pacing up and down. "The first attack they were beaten 
off by using the rabbit, an attack that no one could have anticipated who wasn't 
aware of his full capabilities, not to mention the deal he had set up with Evan, 
correct?"
"I suppose," Chang said.
"The caravel would have carried fifty or sixty Changed warriors. Despite the 
valor of your crew, between them and the ballista, it is likely that they would 
have captured or destroyed your ship, unless you ran. And you couldn't really 
run, could you?"
"Not without losing days in the voyage, no," the skipper admitted. "Effectively 
we had to fight our way through. On that Commander Mbeki and I agreed."
"The second attack was by five ships. Even if the rabbit could have been induced 
to help you, again, there wasn't much you could have done, was there?"
"No," the skipper said. "Thanks for pointing that out."
"But, again, Evan had a device that he had concocted, more or less without 
anyone knowing."
"I knew," the colonel said. "Nobody gets on my ship with sodium, gasoline and 
all the rest without my knowledge."
"The kraken is another example," Rachel said.
"The point is that at each attack, they knew your location and thought they knew 
your capabilities," Daneh said, stopping her pacing to face the skipper.
"You suspect a spy," the skipper sighed.
"Edmund suspected that New Destiny had an agent on board," Daneh said. "But he 
didn't know who it was. There were, however, some clues."
"It had to be someone who knew our course and plans," the skipper said with 
another sigh. "Which means it could have been me. It's not; I'd know," he added 
with a grimace.
"But that does explain the orders," Daneh said, gesturing at the paper. "The 
agent had to be communicating. We have managed to track the communications to 
the wardroom."
"How?" Chang snapped.
"I'm . . . going to decline to answer that," Daneh said. "I'm not sure I want 
the knowledge getting around. Sorry."
"Don't be," the skipper said. "And who used the wardroom during the period? I 
guess it wasn't me or we wouldn't be having this extraordinary conversation."
"Sadly, only Commander Mbeki," Daneh said.
"Owen?" Chang said. "I've known Owen Mbeki for years. He's the most trustworthy 
man I know. There's no way that he's a spy for New Destiny!"
"Unfortunately, skipper, that's who it points to," Daneh replied. "And the 
evidence, while slim, is going to be more than enough for Edmund."
"It won't be for a court-martial," the skipper replied, his face hard. "And that 
is what this is going to come to. You'll have to reveal your methods for that at 
least."
"Not if we catch him in the act," Rachel said, frowning.
"How do we do that?" the skipper asked.
"We can't if we don't all act normal," Rachel replied. "It's gonna have to be a 
surprise . . ."


CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The squeal of a delphino scout was all the warning that they had and then the 
orcas were on them, coming up from behind where there wasn't a dragon guard.
The group had nearly reached Hope Harbor. It was late afternoon and the 
formation had started to get ragged. Herzer had had to, more than once, shove 
one of the mer-warriors back into the hemisphere as their excitement and 
nervousness got the best of them. Everyone was worried because they had expected 
the carrier to beat them to the harbor, but so far there was no sign of it or 
the mer-women and children that it carried. The mer tended to stick their heads 
up out of the water, hoping for a glimpse of the elusive ship.
So it was in a gaggle more than a disciplined formation that they were hit by 
the orcas exploding off the bottom.
Their black bodies had blended into the shadows of the reef and they had 
apparently created a sonar image that hid them from the oncoming delphinos. 
Furthermore, they seemed to care nothing for the ring of spears, slashing 
through them to get to the interior.
Herzer was ripped from his seat as Chauncey turned hard right to attack into the 
formation. As the two wyverns slashed into the group it exploded outward with a 
swirl of orcas, mer-women and confused spear-wielders.
Herzer dove deep and came up from below the formation, slashing his sword 
through the belly of an orca that had just caught one of the mer. The cut was 
too late, though; the orca's jaws crushed the mer-girl before he even realized 
his guts were trailing in the water.
"Form a globe around them," Edmund yelled, "women to the outside."
But as fast as the mer tried to regroup, the orcas were faster. Their powerful 
flukes smashed any attempt at formation and after their first attack on the 
women and older men they turned on the broken formation of spear-wielders and 
attacked them.
Herzer saw Pete caught that way, one of the orca catching him by his tail and 
tossing him up and out of the water like a play toy. Jason was fighting a 
desperate action against another, jabbing with his sword to keep the orca at 
bay.
It was the dragons, and Bast, that saved the day.
Herzer thought that the orcas were fast until he saw Bast. Her fins blurred like 
the tail of a tuna as she cut through the water like a shark. Her saber wasn't 
well suited for killing the big whales, but where she went orcas were left 
bleeding with huge gashes in their side, back, stomach, guts hanging out and 
fins cut away so they had to swim lopsidededly.
Donal had a nasty bite in his side but he still drove through the pod of orcas 
like a killing machine, tearing huge chunks out of their sides, catching fins 
and flukes and ripping them off to stain the water with crimson.
Chauncey was more methodical. He had caught one of the orcas with both claws and 
tore at it as it struggled. He didn't let go until the orca went limp and 
floated up to the surface, dead or so injured that it could struggle no more.
Joanna was more like Donal, her snakelike head darting through the formation and 
slashing at any orca that was stupid enough to get in range. One managed to get 
its teeth in her tail only to find out how well sprung it was; the two-ton orca 
was spun through the water, raising a wave on the surface for a moment, until he 
was brought in range of those killer teeth and when they closed the orca fought 
no more.
As fast as the attack started it was over and the water was filled with dead and 
dying orcas and mer.
"Oh, God," Jason said, looking around.
Bill and three of the other mer-warriors were clearly dead, horrible jaw marks 
on their chests and abdomens, their entrails drifting in the current. Pete was 
floating at the surface, his tail bitten half-way through. Herzer wasn't sure 
that he'd live, even if Daneh had been there. Several of the mer-women were dead 
as well and others were badly injured.
"Get to land," Edmund said. "Get them up in the shallows. The ones that are 
whole all the way out of the water. We'll . . . see what we can do for the 
rest."
"Grace is all we can give most," Bast said, wiping her sword on the flank of one 
of the still-twitching orcas.
"We'll see," Edmund replied.
Herzer floated up to one of the injured mer-warriors and grabbed him by the 
wrist, towing him towards shore. Everyone was dragged shoreward, the injured and 
the dead. None would be left for the sharks, as the bodies of the orcas were 
being left.
The sharks and the dragons. Chauncey grabbed the tail of the one he had killed 
and dragged it along as Donal grabbed another. Joanna got two.
"You're not going to eat them, too, are you?" Jason asked.
"Why not?" Joanna replied. "They'd eat me if they got a chance."
"They didn't eat any of us," Herzer replied. "We're all here."
"Are we?" Edmund said. "That's a damned good question. Jason?"
"Anyone notice anyone not here?" Jason said. "I never bothered to really get a 
list." He looked around and blanched white. "Antja?"
"Elayna," Bast hissed. "Where's Elayna?"
By the time they reached the shore it was clear that the two mer-girls were 
missing.
"Where could they have gone?" Herzer asked. "They would have come out if they 
hid in the reef."
"That was why they went for the women, first," Edmund said. "I thought it was a 
brilliant tactic. But I bet that they made off with them while we were still 
fighting, come and gone before anyone noticed."
"Herman," Herzer said, ducking under the water. "Did you see Antja or Elayna 
taken?"
"No," the delphino responded. "Too fast. None of ours injured."
"They ignored the delphinos," Edmund said, shaking his head. "They went for the 
girls and ignored the delphinos."
"Why?" Jason shouted. "Why them?"
"Tender mer-girl snacks?" Joanna asked, craning her head up to look around. "I 
can find them."
"Me too," Herzer said, climbing on Chauncey who had just started to rip into his 
lunch. The wyvern snarled at being kept from his meal but turned to look at 
Joanna.
"I'm coming," Bast said, climbing on Joanna. "At least seven whales. Two 
dragons; Donal's too hurt to fly. We'll do."
"Herzer?" Jason said, looking up at him.
"You take care of your people," Herzer ground out. "Time for this to end."
"Oh, we'll end it," Joanna replied. "They're not getting away from me this 
time."
* * *
The marine sentry at the skipper's door shook his head as the telltale on the 
box next to him sprung up.
He didn't bother to turn, simply knocked quietly on the door behind him.
"Yes," the skipper said, sticking his head out.
The sentry pointed at the telltale and motioned to the door of the general's 
quarters. The marine there was looking at them with a raised eyebrow.
The skipper nodded and walked swiftly and silently down the corridor as a group 
of marines in armor exited Talbot's quarters. Moving the marines around without, 
it was hoped, anyone noticing had been difficult. But with any chance it was 
about to pay off.
Daneh and Rachel trailed the group. They knew their place and in the front of 
battle, if it came to battle, was not it.
The skipper started to open the door to the wardroom and then stepped back, 
letting the marine corporal in charge of the group enter first.
The corporal drew his sword silently and then threw open the door, entering the 
wardroom and moving to the side to let the rest of the marines in.
Commander Mbeki was at the far end of the room, looking up at a projection of a 
tall, fair man with black hair. The projection turned to look at the group and 
snarled, tossing up his hand and throwing a red bolt of power at the skipper in 
the doorway.
The bolt, however, stopped in midair and faded as the datacube protecting the 
ship was activated.
"Well," the projection said, turning to look at Mbeki. "It would seem that your 
utility is at an end." He reached out and his hand entered the commander's 
chest.
The skipper bellowed in anger, rushing forward and throwing the commander to the 
ground as the marine threw himself on the projection. But it was nothing but a 
hologram that faded with a mocking laugh.
Commander Mbeki was already turning blue at whatever the projection had done to 
him. He grabbed the skipper's arm and shook his head.
"Why?" Chang ground out. "You were my friend."
"Wife," Mbeki said. "Sharon. Ropasa. Bastards . . ." His eyes widened in pain 
and then his head rolled back.
"I'd guess that the projection crushed his aorta," Daneh said, clinically. "Blue 
tongue and fingertips. Maybe introduced cyanide but why do that when you can 
just give him a heart attack."
"He'd always wondered what happened to Sharon, after the Fall," Chang said, 
lowering the body of the XO to the deck. "She was in Italia visiting the museums 
when the Fall hit. He'd hoped . . . Damn them."
"Yes," Daneh said, thinking her own thoughts, of her own memories. And 
nightmares. "Damn them all to hell."
"What now?" Rachel asked.
"Find the mer," Chang said. "Keep fighting. Until New Destiny is destroyed or we 
are."
* * *
Antja had discovered that punching was useless against the orca and that the 
grip of his pectoral fins was impossible to break. So she had spent the entire 
wild ride alternately fuming and terrified.
Shanol and one of the other orca males had left the fight almost immediately. 
Antja couldn't believe that they had attacked the group just to steal two 
mer-girls, but it was starting to look as if that was exactly what had happened.
"Okay, I give up," Elayna said. "Why are we here?"
"I don't answer existential questions," Shanol said with a ping of mocking 
laughter.
"Okay, to be more precise, why have you kidnapped us?" Antja snarled.
"I didn't think we could win," Shanol answered, truthfully. "So I had to ask 
myself, what was the worst thing I could do to Herzer and Jason, who are the two 
people I've come to hate the most in this world."
"And kidnapping us is the answer?" Antja asked.
"Oh, it's more complex than that," the orca said. "You're Jason's girlfriend and 
Elayna is Herzer's."
"I'm not Herzer's girlfriend you freak," Elayna shot back. "I'm his girl in the 
local port. Bast is his girlfriend. And when she's done with you, there won't be 
big enough pieces to interest the sharks!"
"I thought at first of just eating you," the orca continued, "and sending back 
your heads. Or maybe the tail; there's good eating in brains."
"You are sick," Elayna said with a quaver in her voice.
"But then I thought, 'is there anything better?' " Shanol continued, ignoring 
her. "And I'd heard that there were some interesting crosses happening with 
Changed on land."
"You've got to be joking," Antja said, deadly serious.
"Why? I have to wonder, what do you get when you cross an orca with a mer?" the 
orca said, slowing. "And I think we've come far enough to find out."
"An intelligent orca?" Antja said, slapping at him with her tail. "A mer with no 
morals? I don't think so. Let me go!"
"You know this is how orcas and dolphins mate," Shanol said, pinging her with 
laughter again. "And the difference between consensual mating and rape is hard 
to tell with us. Me for you and Shedol for Elayna."
Antja flailed against him with her tail and writhed in his grip, but she could 
feel his member sliding out of its protective slit even as she did so. Most 
cetacean males were designed for nonconsensual sex, and she was discovering just 
how well designed.
Elayna was flailing in the grip of her own captor and Antja had just about given 
up from exhaustion when the water above the orca exploded.
* * *
"Never ride a dragon bareback," Herzer groaned as Chauncey finally made it into 
the air. Staying on one with saddle and grip straps was hard when it took off on 
level ground. As for staying on bareback, the only reason he'd retained his grip 
on the strip around Chauncey's neck was his prosthetic. He was bruised across 
half his body. And he didn't even want to think about how his balls were 
feeling.
"Quit to complain," Bast said. "Look around."
"There's a pod of five headed out to sea," Joanna said. "Ones from fight; lots 
of blood trail. Sharks on their tail, too."
"I don't think that whoever took them stayed around to fight," Herzer said, 
sitting up slightly and regretting it immediately; without the straps his seat 
on the dragon was not stable and it was a long way to fall. Not to mention the . 
. . discomfort. "Bast, I may not be too good for you for a couple of days."
"Bast has remarkable curative powers," she laughed. "There, to the south. Two 
spouts!"
"Orcas," Joanna said, zooming her eyes. "Which group do we follow?"
"South," Herzer and Bast said together.
"Shanol?" Herzer asked.
"Elayna and Antja," Bast replied. "It is good that we did not bring Rachel."
"Yeah," Herzer growled, kicking Chauncey in the back. "Go!"
The dragons drove their wings as hard as they could and quickly overtook the 
orcas, who had slowed. They seemed to be struggling with the two mer-women.
"Is that what it looks like?" Joanna said, circling the pair. "Because if it's 
not, it's something very strange."
"Yes," Herzer shouted, pulling at the throat-piece of the wyvern and pushing him 
over into a stoop.
Chauncey had watched Joanna and he threw his wings back in a v, aiming at the 
right orca with minor corrections of his wingtips.
The stoop had started from over a hundred meters up and Herzer realized that he 
had just done a very stupid thing. Water, as he had learned as a lad jumping off 
a cliff on a dare, gets very hard when you hit it at high speed.
"Oh, shit!" he yelled, jumping off the dragon and pointing his feet at the 
onrushing ocean. As the water came up he pulled his arms into his head, pointed 
his feet, pinched his nose and mentally kissed his ass goodbye.
* * *
Antja was slammed downward by the orca and wondered what he had done to manage 
that. But at the same time, he let go his grip and his member retracted so she 
was thankful for small favors. She wriggled out from between the pectorals and 
headed in towards shore. There was always a reef somewhere around here, and once 
she got into one of the crevices he could be buggered for all she was coming 
out.
But she stopped and turned back, remembering Elayna. The younger mer-girl, 
however, was right behind her. And behind Elayna was a battle royale.
Chauncey had gripped Shedol on the back and was now tearing at the orca for all 
he was worth, with Bast sliding in and out, her sword flickering like lightning.
Shanol, bleeding from a dozen wounds, had somehow managed to escape from Joanna 
and was heading for the depths, with the dragon in hot pursuit. Herzer was 
holding onto Joanna's tail and working his way up her back, hand over hand.
"Herzer, where do you think you're going?" Antja said, as loudly as the bone in 
her forehead would let her.
"Down," the boy replied, getting a grip on one of Joanna's spineridges. In a 
moment they were both lost in the gloom.
* * *
Shanol could hear the dragon behind him. He should have been faster in the water 
than the damned lizard but despite everything it was gaining on him.
"Shanol . . ." he heard Herzer calling behind him. "She followed the kraken into 
the depths and killed it. You can't run. And she can fly above you, so you can't 
hide either. Just give up." The voice was eerie, distorted by the depth. 
Suddenly a cry rang out behind him and he shuddered. It wasn't the hunting cry 
of an orca but something weirder, bass and deadly. He realized it was the 
dragon. He didn't know it could do that.
What else didn't he know about them?
Desperately he dove deeper.
* * *
"Joanna," Herzer croaked. "I can't breathe."
There was a rumble under him and he realized that despite the underwater roar 
she had let out, the dragon couldn't exactly talk.
"I think it's the mask," Herzer said. His vision was going funny. On the other 
hand, it was getting darker as they went deeper, so maybe it was just that. But 
the purple spots weren't part of the light change from the depth, he was pretty 
sure.
"You may be able to do this, but I don't think I can," he muttered. But for some 
reason he kept his grip on the dragon's spine. The ridges flattened out along 
the back and he could only make it as far as the rear legs. That was going to 
have to be good enough. But he was getting very tired. And it was getting really 
cold.
The mask wasn't giving him air. He didn't know why and he wasn't sure that even 
if he let go he could make it to the surface anymore. He realized that he'd just 
killed himself, but that seemed a small price to pay if he could watch Shanol's 
end. He'd always realized there was a bone-deep vengeful streak in him, but he'd 
never realized it was going to kill him.
Oxygen, that was it. Too much oxygen was deadly. The mask was trying to keep 
from killing him by giving him too much oxygen. But there weren't enough other 
gases in the area for it to mix something else in. At that point, his limited 
knowledge failed. And he really didn't care anymore. He could see the orca ahead 
of him and just as he was sure he was going to pass out, it turned towards the 
surface. Probably as desperate for air as he was; it hadn't breached since 
before the last fight. Then Herzer saw the bottom of the ocean flash by. He had 
no idea what the depth was around here, but he was pretty sure this mask was not 
rated for it.
Joanna, on the other hand, seemed to have a limitless lung capacity. She held 
onto the trail of the orca, her sinuous glide getting her nearer and nearer with 
each passing second.
Shanol didn't seem to care anymore. He was just trying to make it to the 
surface.
As they got into shallower water, the light going from deep, dark blue to a 
lighter translucence, the mask started to feed Herzer air again and he sucked it 
in as fast as he could get it. Joanna's side-to-side motion was particularly bad 
by her rear legs, so he started working his way up her back, getting minor 
purchase in her immense scales. His prosthetic was particularly useful and he 
was afraid he was pinching her, but he wasn't going to be riding at the back the 
whole time.
"Give it up, Shanol," he called, as soon as he had a lungful of air to speak. 
"She's not going to."
"Fisk you, landsman," the orca pulsed. But it had a tinny quality, as if he was 
panting or on the ragged edge of exhaustion. "I'm the greatest predator in the 
ocean. I'm not going to die to any damned flying lizard."
"This flying lizard eats sharks," Herzer said. He'd almost made it up to the 
collar around Joanna's neck. He finally got a hand on it, then his prosthetic, 
and gripped like there was no tomorrow. "And she's going to eat you."
"Not if I can make it to the surface," the orca panted.
"Gob ya," Joanna said as she bit down on his flailing fluke.
The orca screamed, no more than ten meters from the air he so desperately 
needed, but Joanna wasn't letting go. She pulled the thrashing body back and got 
a talon around his tail, then swam to the surface, hauling him up behind her. 
She stuck her head out of the water and breathed deeply and rapidly, holding the 
thrashing orca down.
"Let me go!" the orca pulsed, blowing air frantically. "Let me get a breath!"
"Don't think so," Joanna said, turning towards the shore, dragging him 
backwards. "Sometimes you eat. Sometimes you get et."
The orca continued to thrash and pulse wildly until, finally, he was still.


CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
"Now that's just wrong," Antja said.
Herzer had dragged himself out of the water and ripped the mask off, swearing 
that he was never, ever going to wear one of the damned things again. Bast, 
Elayna and Antja were waiting for him on the shore, sitting on a projection of 
reef that was just above the tideline.
To one side, Chauncey was ripping huge chunks out of Shedol, holding the body of 
the orca down with one talon and then lifting the meat skyward to bolt the flesh 
down his gullet.
"The ixchitl were Changed humans as well," Bast said.
"I know, but that's just wrong," Antja exclaimed again.
"Well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn't," Herzer replied. He was lying with his 
head in Bast's lap but he lifted up to look at Chauncey, then over to where 
Joanna was starting to feed on Shanol.
"But if you really think so, you try to get them to stop."
And he passed out to Bast's delighted chuckle.
* * *
"Hi, Daneh," Edmund said, tiredly, as he climbed over the side of the carrier. 
"You've got some work ahead of you."
The wounded mer were being hoisted over the side and carried down to the sickbay 
but Daneh walked to her lover first.
"You look . . . worn," she said.
"I am that," Edmund replied. "Any luck?"
"Mbeki," she said, shaking her head. "Long, sad story. Later."
"Do we have enough evidence to convict?" he asked.
"He's dead," she replied, shaking her head. "Talk to the skipper, I have to get 
to work."
* * *
Joel seriously considered breaking cover to "discuss" some ramifications of his 
family's "handling" of Commander Mbeki. Not just that a potential double agent 
was dead. Not just that his family was now in unnecessary danger. But that in 
the future, doubling agents was going to be that much harder.
Bottom line, Duke Talbot was a fine soldier but he didn't know shit about 
intelligence matters. It irked him to realize that this was the case of almost 
everyone around Sheida. A bigger bunch of Boy Scouts was hard to find.
He was going to have to have a serious talk with Sheida when he got back.
In the meantime, one of the officers who had interrogated survivors from the 
ships let slip that some of the commanders had tried to make it to the nearest 
island. Rounding them up was a high priority; he might as well get some 
information out of this debacle.
Time for another cover to go away. And probably for one Joel Annibale to go, 
officially, AWOL.
* * *
"You took your time getting back, Lieutenant," Edmund said as Herzer climbed 
over the side of the ship. The general had had time to wash up and change into 
uniform and it was well after dark. "I thought you'd gone AWOL."
"I came back on the surface," Herzer admitted. "If I never put one of those 
masks on again, or see emerald water again, it will be too soon. Dragons belong 
in the air."
"Speak for yourself," Joanna replied, hoisting herself over the side to the now 
familiar heeling of the ship. "I kind of like it down here. Any chance of a 
permanent posting?"
"Maybe semipermanent," Edmund replied. "What with the Fleet base, there's no 
reason that there shouldn't be a dragon weyr as well. But don't get settled in; 
the main brawl is going to be up north, not down here."
"Understood, General," the dragon replied with a grin.
"Antja and Elayna?" he asked.
"Back with the mer," Herzer replied. "And happy to be there. Shanol and his 
second in command are well and truly dead."
"Vickie saw," Edmund replied. "And apparently threw up all over her dragon."
"And the last five surviving orcas were last seen headed out to sea, trailing 
blood, and hotly pursued by a group of sharks," Herzer added. "I'd say we won 
this one, boss."
"Yes," Edmund said, somberly. "But at a hell of a price. On the other hand, 
groups of mer from all over the islands are flocking this way, from reports. We 
always knew that there were more than just the mer at Bruce's village. 
Apparently having seen, and heard through the delphinos, about the attacks, 
they've decided that they have to choose sides. And most of them are choosing 
ours."
"Mission accomplished," Herzer said, looking out at the blue waters of the 
Stream. "As to the breakage, that's why they call it war, sir."
"Herzer, sometimes you are too bloody-minded even for me," Edmund replied. "I 
understand that there is some medicinal rum aboard. I'm going to go raid the 
stores. Why don't you wash up and join me in my cabin for some medicating."
"Sounds good," Herzer replied. "But I'm also going to go find where they hide 
those captain's crackers. Anything with some damned carbohydrates. A pure fish 
and fruit diet gets old."
"Don't tell me," Edmund laughed. "What you'd really kill for is a cheeseburger."
"Sounds good," Herzer said with a lifted eyebrow. "Why?"
"Another song I'll have to teach you," Edmund replied. "Probably on our fifth or 
sixth glass. I've got some bad news, though."
"What?" Herzer said. "The ixchitl and orcas are dealt with, the mer are safe and 
part of the Coalition. Rachel is okay?"
"Rachel's fine," the general replied. "But a dispatch sloop arrived. The bad 
news is from back home. Harzburg has flipped to New Destiny. The little army you 
trained is now on the other side."
"Son of a bitch," Herzer muttered. "Son of a fisking bitch. Those bastards."
"Yep," Edmund said, shrugging. "I think they're going to get a sharp lesson in 
why you don't piss off the Blood Lords. Especially with fire-dropping dragons 
backing them up. Especially since they're pressuring Balmoran, militarily, to 
switch sides as well. Balmoran has, officially, requested Federal support. So . 
. . pack your bags."
"Well," Herzer said, tossing the mask to the deck and looking around at the ship 
and thinking about the last few days. "At least I got my Caribbean vacation. 
Sun, surf, hot women. And, okay, some emerald seas. It'll have to do. Now, you 
said something about rum?"


EPILOGUE
Martin waved the remnants of his pants back and forth on the stick, trying to 
attract the attention of the passing boat. It was a small craft, no more than 
three or four meters in length, with a dirty, patched triangular sail. The man 
at the tiller had been looking shoreward and turned the boat inshore in a 
controlled jibe, bringing the boom in and then turning to bring the north wind 
across the rear of the boat.
Martin had been subsisting for the last two weeks on brackish water found in 
pools and whatever looked mildly edible along the shoreline. He'd managed to 
make it to land with his knife, his sorely depleted money pouch, a tinderbox and 
his clothes. Over the time he had gotten first burnt and then blackened by the 
sun.
The islander was, if anything, darker, almost a true negro black for all his 
features were the motley polyglot that was common these days. He was tall and 
had a fair growth of beard, although it looked like a new addition.
"Hello," Martin called as the skiff ran up on the shore. He seized the bow and 
pulled it farther in as the islander sat in the stern and looked at him.
"Didn' need to do that, mon," the man called. "Push ee back off. I'd guess you 
want to be get someplace else and I've fishing to do."
"Okay," Martin said, pushing the boat back into deeper water and scrambling 
aboard. The fisherman expertly brought the stern around and set the sail and the 
boat skipped back towards the distant reef.
"Man, am I glad you came along," Martin explained. "Got any water?"
"Jug at your feet, mon," the islander said. "The rounder gourd dere. The tall 
one's me rum. Thomas don't be sharing his rum wit' any old castaway."
The bottom of the boat was half full of empty baskets made of woven palm fronds. 
But by the mast were two stoppered gourds, one of them much rounder than the 
other.
"Well, thank you for the water, Thomas," Martin said, taking a solid slug but 
leaving plenty in the jug. "The packet I was traveling on sank off-shore four 
weeks ago. I've been trying to signal someone to stop ever since."
"Don't many be coming this far south," Thomas replied easily. "Plenty of fishing 
up thee coast. But Thomas he likes it down here. Plenty of good big fish, plenty 
of hogfish on the reef. Thomas, he like hogfish."
"Never had it," Martin replied, leaning back against the side of the boat. The 
sun was beating down and it was positively hot. Of course, a couple of times in 
the last week the wind had been downright vicious at night. He'd made a 
miserable job of weaving some palm fronds for cover, but they weren't much 
against the wind. He'd take the heat.
"Be grabbin' the boat hook, mon," Thomas said after about a half an hour. "Be 
pickin' up the gourd in the water."
Martin found what was probably the boat hook, a solid pole of wood with a withy 
on the end bound into a crook by what looked like tree bark. The boat was 
rapidly approaching a floating gourd and Martin, after an initial hook that 
missed, pulled it over the side. The gourd had a rope tied around its narrow end 
and Thomas came forward, dropping the sail onto the deck with an expert twist of 
the halyard and grabbing the rope.
"Thomas will pull," Thomas said, pulling in the rope hand over hand. "You be 
yankin' out the fish."
As the rope ascended it was clear it was attached to a net. As soon as the net 
cleared the bulwark Martin saw his first fish. The fish, about twice as long as 
his hand, had a whitish body with a blue stripe and a bright yellow tail. Its 
head was caught in the openings of the net by the gills. Martin grabbed it and 
tried to pull it out backwards but the gills were firmly caught. The whole time 
he was wrestling with it, Thomas continued to pull in the net.
"Pull it through, mon," Thomas said, somewhat angrily. "It small enough."
Over the next hour, or so it seemed, Martin pulled one fish after another out of 
the gill net. Thomas slowly told him what they were; the yellow-tailed ones were 
snapper as was a red-colored one. Hogfish had three tall spines on their back. 
There were at least three kinds of grouper. Scamp, bar jack, after a while he 
stopped trying to memorize them.
Finally they were done with the net, the fish in one of the baskets and the net 
piled untidily in the bottom.
"Thomas could have done it nearly as fast without help," the sailor grumped, 
raising the sail and setting the boat into motion.
"Hey," Martin said, slumping in the bottom of the boat and looking at the 
direction they were going. "Isn't that north?" He pointed to the rear.
"Thomas don't have just one net, mon," the captain chuckled.
Thomas, in fact, had five nets out, and it was very near dark before they turned 
to the north. Martin was exhausted, and all he had done was pull the fish out. 
His hands were covered in fish slime, and no matter how many times he washed 
them over the side they didn't seem to come clean. For that matter, most of his 
body was covered in one sort of filth or another. And he had been badly stung by 
some sort of jellyfish.
This was for the birds. He loved work, he could watch it all day, but this was 
just ridiculous.
The sun set fast and the tropical night was as black as pitch. The stars 
overhead shone down clearly, but at the surface of the sea it was like being in 
a cave. But the wake of the boat was filled with green phosphorescence. It was 
so bright, Martin swore he could see by it.
The captain was a barely glimpsed figure at the rear of the skiff and Martin 
couldn't for the life of him figure out how he could see.
"You know where you're going?" Martin asked.
"Oh, yeah, mon," Thomas replied. "You just be lying back. Thomas get us home 
safe and sound."
He had enough in his pouch to pay his way to the mainland. Once he was there, 
well, something would come up. It always did. With that thought, Martin lay back 
and looked at the stars until he fell asleep.
The change in motion of the boat woke him and he rolled over, stiff from lying 
on the bottom of the skiff. They were entering a harbor that could be dimly 
glimpsed by the light of occasional torches and lanterns. There was a rough 
stone dock but the boat headed for a low shoreline. As it grounded, Martin got 
out stiffly and grabbed a painter, pulling the boat up onto the shore as far as 
he could go.
"How did it go?" a voice said from out of the darkness.
"Rather well."
"Thomas" replied in a much more cultured tone. "Duke Edmund Talbot, meet John 
James the Third, aka Martin Johns, aka Martin St. John, aka . . . well I won't 
do the whole list."
Martin darted away from the voice on the shore and into the darkness. He had 
covered three steps when he ran into a metal-covered mass that picked him up by 
his hair until his feet dangled off the ground. His eyes immediately filled with 
tears of pain and he found himself still trying to run in place. It had been a 
really bad day.
"What you want I should do with him, boss?" the metal-clad figure asked grimly. 
The muscle-bound moron was apparently supporting Martin's full weight with one 
extended arm. Effortlessly. At that, Martin quit trying to run. Fighting had 
been out of the question all along.
"Oh, don't harm him, Herzer," Talbot chuckled out of the darkness. "There are so 
many things we want to ask him."


Author's Afterword
I've gotten into the habit of these; I really need to start breaking it. But I 
thought that a few items in this book needed attention.
I had too much fun writing this novel, in case it's not clear. My normal 
"output" is something on the order of a thousand words a day, when I'm 
"cooking." At times I was writing ten or, once, eighteen thousand a day on this 
novel. The underwater sequences, in particular, practically wrote themselves. 
Eight hundred hours of "down time" (last time I bothered to update my log, which 
was in the early '90s) will do that for you; blood really is emerald green at 
about sixty feet and turns black as you go deeper. And the Blackbeard trip to 
the Bahamas last January certainly didn't hurt. Indeed, it was on the deck of 
the sloop that the basic outline of the book came together. Then there are the 
dragons.
I've never really been interested in dragons; I'm certainly not one of those 
people who go around with an online persona of one. In fact, to the extent that 
I have an online persona it is "DaGiN" which stands for "Da Guy in Nomex." I 
have to wear Nomex because I like to bait the online dragons. (And, yes, that's 
what the rabbit was wearing. Asbestos, actually.)
But I'd evolved the idea of what was first called "The Caves of the Mer-folk" 
and as it developed in the back of my mind, dragons became more and more 
integral to the story. I've had many problems with fantasy dragons over the 
years and it gave me a chance to point out some of the unlikelihoods. At the 
same time, I'm of the opinion that almost nothing is unbuildable that mankind 
can envision. And, someday, someone is going to genegineer a dragon. Count on 
it. And it'll probably be Disney. Take a close look at the pictures around their 
"Safari" attraction if you don't believe me. Disney thinks big.
But they are still going to be constrained by the problems of aerodynamics and 
biology. Birds of prey are the closest current analogue to dragons (indeed, they 
will probably be the template for them when they are created, as they were for 
the wyverns in this book) and birds of prey have to eat an enormous amount of 
food, relative to their body weight. Given the much greater size of flying 
dragons, they are going to be a logistic nightmare if used militarily and I 
strongly doubt that they would be able to survive in the wild. Not to mention 
that muscle and bone will not permit the stresses involved in normal flight for 
such enormous wings. Build up the bone too much and the wing is too heavy. Etc. 
So they'll have to have some very artificial materials involved, such as the 
"biologically extruded carbon nanotube." And if you can figure out how that 
works, call Dupont and they'll make you a billionaire.
Still, I had this image, glorious and terrible, of dragons fighting orcas (go 
watch Blue Planet: The Open Oceans to see where that came from) and I had to get 
them to where the book was based. The world did not permit a base in south 
Florida (yes, this all takes place on Earth in the far future) so they had to be 
transported there by ship. But . . . why not have it be a ship that they could 
take off and land upon?
You begin to see the ugly truth of how stories are created, at least by me. Kind 
of like legislation and sausage.
Thus was created the dragon-carrier. And that's when I really got carried away.
I grew up on tales of naval aviation; my late uncle was a Navy fighter pilot in 
WWII. And while I'd never care to be a crewmember on one, much less a pilot (a 
bigger bunch of suicidal adrenaline junkies cannot be found), carriers are 
fascinating.
Carriers are the most complex system ever created by man and it is only with 
enormous difficulty that they function at all. (As the French, Chinese and 
Russians all have learned to their dismay.) Packing all the planes; people, fuel 
and parts to support the planes into a ship—much less having it all arrive where 
and when it is needed in a carefully choreographed dance—has taken the U.S. Navy 
generations to perfect. Just so that airplanes the size of WWII bombers can leap 
into the air and return to decks not much larger than WWII carriers with 
regularity. It's an amazing feat and makes me proud of my country and my 
countrymen. Yes, even the Airedales. (Slang term for Navy pilots.)
So it is with the dragon-carrier that I have taken the greatest liberties. Many 
of the items in this book were not invented until late in the development of 
carriers. Yet all of them were imagined and then engineered by the bright 
characters in my book in the space of a few short weeks. I'd considered having 
the different groups of carrier operations personnel wear different colored 
uniforms, but I felt that was pushing it.
I also played fast and loose with many of the seascapes. There are no specific 
inlets as described, but there are places very like them in the Berry Islands. 
Big Greenie is real, but it's by Bimini, not in the Berrys. Nor is the entrance 
to the Bahamas Banks on the east side exactly as described, but it is very 
close. And, who knows, in a few thousand years it might be exactly as described; 
hurricanes, erosion and the continuous build-up of the Bahamas Banks change 
things drastically in decades much less millennia. Whale Point Drop, however, is 
real, and much as I described, minus the spring and the cave. If you don't 
believe me, go check. The lighthouse, however, is private property. I wish it 
was my private property, but I haven't sold that many books yet.
So, permit me the liberties that I take, and I hope you enjoyed the book. 
That's, really, all that matters.
As usual, I'd like to thank the people who aided me in this book, either through 
information or by providing the characters that make it so rich.
Evan Mayerle, who is indeed a very inventive aviation engineer.
Bast, who, while not quite the character in the book, can see it on a clear day.
Hank Reinhardt for chopping pork shoulders so artistically.
Chief Robin Brooks, the best damned chief in the Navy.
Elayna for heroic baby-sitting beyond the call of duty.
Pete Abrams for the rabbit. If you want to know where the rabbit came from, 
google "Bun-bun" and prepare to lose two weeks of productivity. Start at the 
beginning, read the first month, and then prepare to laugh yourself sick, 
probably at work with your boss watching.
And, most especially, I'd like to thank the crew of the Blackbeard Cruise Ship, 
Pirate's Lady: Antja the Deck Wench, Jason the Divemaster, Jackson the engineer, 
Pete the cook, Bill the mate, and, yes, Bruce the captain, owner of Blackbeard 
Cruises. All of whom put up with such truly insane questions as "If you were a 
mer-man, where would you live?"
If you're a diver and stout of spirit, I recommend the Blackbeard Cruises for 
the fun, price and the rum punch. Especially if my brother is directing the 
ratio of rum to punch. Although, sorry Bruce, not in January. Yes, the 
hypothermia was from experience. As was the seasickness. Including the thyme. On 
the other hand, if you're a Canuck, go for it. Scopolamine patches are 
over-the-counter in Canada and sixty-four-degree water is, apparently, 
positively balmy to our northern neighbors.
Thanks for reading my books and I hope to bring you more adventures with Herzer, 
Edmund, Bast and Daneh in the near future.
Who knows, maybe even the homicidal rabbit.


John Ringo
Commerce, Georgia
July 2003
Abn1508@mindspring.com


WARNING: ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE!
The following story, while not pornographic, does contain erotica. If it were a 
movie it would probably be rated NC-17, possibly X. Since as an author I'm best 
known for my combat science fiction and "closing the bedroom door," I thought 
this warning in order. The erotica, for reasons that should be obvious in the 
story, is necessary and central to the development of both characters and plot. 
I've previously posted "Megan's Tale (The Harem Girl's Story)" so that a large 
group of fans could comment. (On Baen's Bar which can be accessed via the Baen 
website, www.baen.com. I'm there pretty much every day in Ringo's Tavern. Trolls 
will be ejected at waist height.) Their comments ranged from "this was a bit 
much for me" to "flesh it out." (Pun intended.)
Megan is an important character whose experiences in this story will shape her, 
and the world of the Council, for some time to come. I think that the majority 
of my readers are mature enough to not have a problem with the following story. 
I don't exactly read these things as bedtime tales to my own kids. To those of 
you who do, my apologies and be glad for the warning.
PROLOGUE
In a Time of Darkness (Megan's Tale)
The girl washing clothes by the side of the rushing stream might once have been 
pretty. Now, with the exception of her forearms, she was filthy and skinny, her 
long, brown hair hanging in tendrils around her face. She wore the remains of a 
fine, blue cosilk tunic, which had been tied up in the heat, and matching pants 
that had been cut off at midthigh. She was barefoot and her feet were heavily 
calloused.
Less than a year before Megan Samantha Travante, like all the humans of her 
time, had lived the life of a god. Before the Fall, with the omnipresent Net to 
care for every need, humans wallowed in almost inexhaustible luxury. A person 
could live anywhere, even under the sea or in the photosphere of the sun, Change 
themselves into almost any form. Food was available with a word, replicated in 
any form. Safety was guaranteed by personal protection fields capable of 
surviving in any possible conditions.
Megan's life had been slightly different from the norm. Her father was one of 
the few remaining "police" of the era, a man who tracked the limited criminal 
element that sprung up even with enormous luxury. And he was very good at his 
job. Good enough that he had pressed his only daughter into studying more than 
was normal for the period and developing a high degree of personal paranoia, not 
to mention defensive capabilities, which made her strange to many of her 
friends. Joel Travante knew that even in Paradise the serpent always lurked in 
the human breast, and he was sure that his daughter knew it as well.
With pressure from her father, and her mother who was an expert on preindustrial 
art, Megan had used the resources of the Net to develop herself in ways strange 
to many of her peers. She attended few of the innumerable parties; she, in fact, 
had very little social life. Her life had been dedicated from an early age to 
intensive mental and physical training. Teaching methods had advanced along with 
every other art and science. Besides audio-visual systems that practically 
hammered knowledge into the young mind there were direct input methods 
available. Between the two, no realm of knowledge was closed to even the 
youngest. At first under her parent's pressure, and then on her own for the 
acorn does not fall far from the oak, Megan had used them to amass an education 
that would have astounded most professors of previous eras.
The Fall, though, had caught almost everyone by surprise. The Net was managed by 
the Council of Key-holders, thirteen people who between them held the keys to 
the program that managed the Net. They had fallen out, the reasons given ranged 
from their own statements to wild rumors, and started a civil war that had 
drained the power from the Net and thrown the world into a state of instant 
barbarism.
Megan had been seventeen at the time of the Fall, not yet officially "released" 
by her parents, but free to wander at will. She had been visiting a friend in 
Ropasa when the Fall came while her mother was, presumably, home in the Briton 
Isles and her father on assignment "somewhere" in the world. Thus she had been 
left to her own devices. She had managed, through the smarts and paranoia that 
her father had inculcated, to avoid the worst aftereffects of the Fall. She 
hadn't been raped, unlike some of her friends, and she hadn't been one of the 
women chosen as "consorts" to the Changed legions of New Destiny. But it hadn't 
been easy to avoid either. Finally, she had found work as a washing girl and 
general servant for one of the elders of the local town. It wasn't a great job, 
but she had plans. She had skills that were rare in the post-Fall world. Most of 
those skills required an industrial base that was sorely lacking in the small 
town she had stumbled into. So she bided her time, watched for opportunities and 
kept her head down. In time, she'd work her way out of squalor.
In the meantime, she had clothes to wash.
"Excuse me, young lady," a quavering male voice said behind her and she sprung 
up, holding the stick she had been beating the laundry with as if it were a 
club.
But the voice had come from an old man who was leaning, wearily, on a stick. 
Even with the stick, he was no threat.
"Excuse me for startling you," the old man said. He was dressed in rags and his 
feet were as worn as her own. "I was hoping that you might help me across the 
ford."
The girl cocked her head at him and, keeping her hand on the stick, walked to 
support his off-side.
"This is very kind of you," the old man said. "There is not much kindness to be 
had in this Fallen world."
"It's okay," the girl replied as they entered the stream. "I'm surprised you're 
able to survive."
"Well, I make my way, you know," the old man replied. He was skinny and his long 
hair hung in greasy locks over his face and he stumbled on the round stones of 
the knee-deep ford. "Food is where you find it and I can work, sometimes. Not 
much to steal from old Paul so no trouble from bandits. I could wish that that 
damned Sheida hadn't caused all this trouble, though."
"I wish all the Council were damned to hell," the girl snarled. "I wish . . . 
oh, I wish too much."
"Sometimes we feel we are," the old man muttered. "And tell me your wishes, 
young lady."
"Just the usual," she laughed, bitterly. "To be home. To be fed. To not have to 
worry about the cold or having to dodge gangs of men."
"Where do you live?" the old man asked as they reached the far side of the ford. 
He stumbled over the slight bank and then sat down, resting his feet in the 
water.
"With a couple in town," the girl replied, sitting down next to him. "They took 
me in after the Fall. I . . . well I do their cleaning and laundry and stuff. 
The man is one of the town elders and it's a good enough life. They protect me, 
at least."
"Do you . . . perform other services for him?" the old man asked, delicately.
"No, he's never even asked," the girl replied. "I don't exactly dress up around 
them, though. I . . . don't know what I would do if he made it a condition of 
staying. But I think Master Jean's wife would have something to say about it if 
he did. He lives in fear of her."
"Yes, yes," the old man said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. "Not 
the most idyllic life, though." He peered at her and then nodded. "Good genes, 
good phenotype. I think you'd clean up well. Yes, you'll do. You'll most 
definitely do."
"What?" the girl said, suspiciously, getting to her feet. She held the laundry 
club protectively in front of her and looked around, afraid that the old man was 
a scout for some group of thugs. "I'll do for what?"
"As it happens, I can make your dreams come true," the man said, suddenly 
standing without the club and holding out his hand. "I can make it all better."
The girl felt the world swirl around her and she lost consciousness.
In a moment, the two were gone.


CHAPTER ONE
When the girl awoke it was in a stone chamber. She lay on a soft bed covered in 
a fine cosilk coverlet. Her filthy clothes were gone and she wore a robe of 
light yellow silk, or something so like it she couldn't tell the difference. The 
room had a desk, on which sat a fine silver vase and a washing basin. There was 
only one door and a barred window high on the wall.
She got up and walked to the door, expecting it to be locked, but it opened 
easily. On the other side was a corridor lined with other doors. One end ended 
in a blank wall, but there was light and an open area at the other end. And 
female voices.
She walked down the corridor uneasily but was surprised at the sight that 
greeted her. There was a high-ceilinged chamber at the end, with slits near the 
roof to let in light and several corridors leading off of it. There were several 
women in the chamber, lounging on pillows strewn around on the floor. Some of 
them were sewing but most were simply sitting, talking in low tones, or playing 
board games. Some of them were just . . . sitting. They seemed vacant. They 
smiled happily all the time, but didn't talk or play the games. They just sat 
and stared at space, as if fascinated by the walls.
All of the women were dressed . . . scantily. Most wore robes like the one she 
was wearing, their legs slipping out revealingly at the open bottoms, while a 
few were wearing camisoles and panties or even lighter lingerie. All of them 
were more well-fed and healthy looking than any but the most successful of the 
post-Fall women that she had known. They were all also, even by the standards of 
the time, very good looking.
"Ah, our sleeper awakes," one of the women said, getting to her feet. She was a 
tall, thin brunette wearing a camisole outfit and high-heeled strap-sandals.
"Where am I?" the girl demanded. "What . . . what is this place?" She had a 
sinking feeling that the answer was evident.
"Well, food and a bath first," the woman replied. "I'm Christel Meazell, by the 
way. And you are?"
"Megan," the girl said. "And I want some answers."
"As I said," Christel answered, smiling brightly but clearly in no mood for back 
talk. "First some food and a bath. I suspect you're starved and you definitely 
need a bath."
Christel led her down one of the corridors and into a long room with a table 
occupying most of it. Christel clapped her hands imperiously and in no more than 
ten seconds a woman came in bearing a platter heaped with food. The woman, who 
was much older than those in the chamber and not nearly as good looking, slid 
the platter dexterously onto the table and laid out the plates and cups she had 
carried.
There was roast pork, hot from the oven. Mashed potatoes. Hot loaves of bread. 
Butter. A huge bowl of steaming broccoli. Gravy. Spring carrots. Megan's mouth 
watered at the sight.
"Sit," Christel said. "Eat."
Megan started to sit down and then looked at her still dirty hands.
"I hate to eat this as filthy as I am," she admitted.
"Eat first, then a bath," Christel said. "I'll be back in a few minutes. Don't 
gorge yourself and then throw it all up."
"I won't," Megan said as both of the other women retired from the room.
She carefully served herself small portions of everything. The bread was 
succulent. The carrots were heaven. The broccoli was ambrosia.
None of this kept her from scoping out her surroundings. The door at the end of 
the room clearly led to the kitchen. One of the other corridors, at least, was 
going to lead out of what was clearly a prison. On the other hand, she was being 
fed and there was the promise of a bath. She also suspected that there was more 
than one layer she would have to penetrate. And she had no idea where she was. 
The "old man" had clearly used power to knock her out and then ported her here. 
Wherever "here" was; it could be anywhere on earth. Whoever the "old man" was, 
he had power. Which meant he was either a member of the Council or in their 
employ. Which meant escape, if even possible, would be problematic at best.
Better to reconnoiter the territory rather than make a break and fail. Gather 
information. Interrogate, carefully. Get the lay of the land.
Lay of the land. That had a bad ring to it because if this wasn't a harem, she 
was a kraken. Thus far, even given the Fall, she'd managed to avoid spreading 
her legs for anyone, much less someone not of her own choosing. It looked like 
her luck had run out.
Even though she'd eaten hardly any of the food she was full and knew that if she 
ate more she probably was going to spew everywhere. Especially given that last 
thought. So she took a sip of the wine that had been brought with the food and 
went back to the main chamber to find Christel.
"Bath next," Megan said. "Then you'll answer my questions."
"You're fitting right in," Christel said, getting to her feet. She led Megan 
down the same corridor and opened a door on the opposite side from the dining 
room.
The "bath" was sumptuous and occupied most of the wing. There was a long, deep 
pool, with water running into it in a waterfall and then spilling out the far 
end. There were showers along one wall. Heaped towels. Soft soaps. A vanity with 
various ointments and cosmetics. And more of the light, silk robes in various 
colors.
"Dive in," Christel said. "Shower first, then the bath. Wash thoroughly."
"What about . . . feminine needs," Megan asked, insulted. Did she think she 
wasn't going to wash her butt or something? Then she realized that the older 
woman recognized the dirt as a mask and was warning her not to try to use it 
here.
"It's not your time of the month," Christel replied. "I checked."
"You checked!" Megan said, angrily.
"It's my job," Christel said, coldly. "Now take a bath and we'll discuss the 
rest when you're done."
As soon as the woman was gone Megan stripped out of the robe, dropping it in a 
hamper, and turned on one of the showers. The water ran hot quickly and she 
gratefully started working off the grime of months. She washed her hair three 
times before it finally felt clean. When she was done she glanced at the baths 
and then shrugged. There was no need for them after the shower and she wanted 
answers. But she knew that she had better pretty up so she sat down at the 
vanity. Her hair had gotten long since the Fall—it was easier to just let it 
grow—and dropped nearly to her butt. This was the first time she'd seen a mirror 
in a long time and she was surprised, and shocked, at how much weight she had 
lost. Even her breasts had shrunk.
She had never gone for the standard "look" pre-Fall, which had been for a 
skinny, buttless, breastless, waiflike body that was more boyish than anything. 
She had a natural hourglass shape, with rounded buttocks and high, firm breasts. 
Which, it appeared, had just led her into serious trouble.
"Good news," she muttered at the stranger in the mirror. "You're fed, you're 
bathed, and you have clean clothes to wear. Bad news. It's because you're about 
to be raped." She flexed her jaw and for just a moment saw an echo of a parent 
in her blue eyes.
"So, what would Daddy do in this situation?" she asked, then paused. First of 
all, he wouldn't say something like that aloud; there was every likelihood that 
there was at least intermittent monitoring of the harem. And what he would do 
was gather information and then when he had a good plan, escape. He'd stay 
alive, whatever that took. Her eyes teared for just a moment and then she shook 
her head. What he wouldn't do was start crying because he was afraid he'd never 
see her again. He'd just go on. And hope for the best, planning for the worst.
She shook her head again and then stood up, donning one of the robes and 
wondering if there was some way to at least get panties for God's sake.
"Time for the briefing," she said. "Let's get out there and slay 'em."
* * *
"You clean up quite well," Christel said.
She had taken Megan to a small chamber off the main room. The chamber had a low 
desk, designed for a person sitting on the floor or, as Christel was, on a 
cushion. And it had more of the ubiquitous cushions found in the main room. 
Megan had taken one of these and was sitting cross-legged with her back against 
the stone wall.
"Thank you," Megan replied, coldly. "Okay, where am I? I can guess what this is. 
Given the way the world is run these days I won't ask 'by what right' but I will 
ask 'what council member keeps this harem?' "
"Smart and pretty," Christel said, smiling thinly. "Don't be too smart for your 
own good. Did you notice the young lady out there that didn't seem to care if it 
was night or day?"
"Yes."
"She was . . . too smart for her own good," Christel said, giving that thin, 
humorless smile again. "This is the . . . seraglio of Paul Bowman."
" 'We feel the same way,' " Megan said, nodding. "And he even called himself 
Paul."
"It is not just for his idle amusement," Christel added. "I was one of Paul's . 
. . biological consorts prior to the Fall. We made a child together, using 
replicators of course. After the Fall he ensured that I and Jean, who is a grown 
man now, were provided for. As he did with his other four consorts." She paused 
and looked up as if bringing some rehearsed speech to mind and then nodded.
"Paul's purpose in trying to bring a new age to this fallen world is just," 
Christel said, primly. "He was terrified that, given current trends and the way 
that the world was slipping into lotus eating, that the human race would simply 
wither away. Since the Fall he has worked incredibly hard to ease the suffering 
of his people. But he feels it important that there not only be breeding, but 
good breeding. And therefore he has established this retreat for the purposes of 
breeding a finer quality of human. You are here to be one of his consorts. Your 
purpose, from his point of view, is to breed good children. When you become 
pregnant you will be moved to another area where you will be pampered and cared 
for carefully until the birth of the baby. You will then move to the creche for 
two years so that your baby will develop a good early infancy bonding. At the 
end of the two years you will return here."
"And never see them again?" Megan said, perhaps more aghast at that than the 
rest of the litany.
"No, you will visit them from time to time; they will be well cared for, I 
guarantee it. And when they reach an age where they are amenable they may visit 
the seraglio from time to time. When Paul is not here. He . . . believes in the 
importance of children but . . . does not care for them as children."
"Oh, that's just great," Megan snapped. "He wants babies bred but doesn't want 
to be bothered with them himself. Some leader. Some visionary. What a 
hypocrite."
"Watch your tone," Christel said, dangerously. "We are here for Paul's pleasure 
and needs, not the other way around. He is a very important man, to the world 
and to us. Keep that in mind. I will add that Paul works very hard. And the 
other purpose of this group is to make him happy when he has the time to visit 
us. If you find it impossible to make him happy, steps will be taken."
"Such as a mind-wipe?" Megan said, coldly.
"There are preliminaries," Christel replied. She held out her hand languidly and 
mouthed a series of syllables.
Megan's whole body was suddenly seized by pain and she couldn't even gasp, much 
less scream at the agony. In a moment the pain stopped and she was left panting 
and sweating in reaction. There was no side effect except a lingering memory, 
but she felt as if she was going to throw up her good supper.
"Paul has given me access to a small amount of power and a few programs," 
Christel said, smiling thinly. "I use the power sparingly. Don't make me use it 
on you."
"I won't," Megan said, trying to act meek.
"Why do I suspect you're lying?" Christel said. "Megan who watches everything as 
if she were the predator rather than the prey. But you'll learn your place. 
Everyone does eventually. One way or another."
* * *
Megan stumbled out into the main room still feeling the tingling aftereffects of 
the pain lash. Most of the girls ignored her quite pointedly but one, who was 
sitting beside one of the mind-wiped, smiled at Megan and patted a pillow next 
to her.
"Isn't she just dreadful?" the girl whispered when Megan collapsed on the 
pillow.
"It wasn't fun," Megan admitted.
"I'm Shanea," the girl said. She was a short, heavy-breasted blonde with a happy 
but vacuous expression. "Shanea Burgey."
"Megan Sung," Megan replied, holding out her hand. "Your name is actually 
Shanea?" Megan continued.
"Yes," Shanea said, looking at her sideways. "Why?"
"Your parents gave you that name?" Megan asked with a faint smile. "Did you kill 
them in their sleep?"
"No, silly," Shanea said, smiling. "I like it. This is Amber," Shanea continued, 
turning to the girl next to her. "Say hello, Amber."
"Hello," the girl said, softly. Amber was a tall, absolutely exquisite brunette 
with slender hips and waist but very firm, large breasts. Megan had already 
noticed that Paul seemed to be eclectic in his taste for women except on the 
order of breasts. Amber continued looking off into the distance while her hands 
worked at the knitting in her lap. It didn't seem to be intended to be anything; 
she was just making a long piece about as wide as the knitting needle was long. 
The wool was lovely, a light gray shade that looked as soft as silk. From time 
to time the girl would stop knitting and stroke the fabric, a look of pleasure 
crossing her perfect features.
"Her real name is Meredith," Shanea said. "But she likes to be called Amber. She 
doesn't talk much. She . . . had some problems adjusting."
"I can imagine," Megan said. She wondered what the girl had been like before. In 
a way she'd rather be dead than mind-wiped. And most mind-wipes didn't leave the 
person a relative vegetable as Amber seemed to be.
"Really, it's not that bad," Shanea said, earnestly. "Paul's actually rather 
sweet in his own way and we don't have to worry about . . . other men. It's much 
worse on the outside."
"I'd love some more clothes," Megan replied. "Even panties for God's sake."
"You can make them," Shanea said, perkily. "Come on."
She led Megan down one of the corridors to a side door and opened it up to 
reveal a small storeroom just about crammed with fabrics. There were bolts of 
lace and silk, some of them woven so sheer as to be transparent.
"And, look," Shanea said, opening up a basket, "there's all sorts of needles and 
things."
"I've never . . . done any sewing," Megan said, looking at the room and thinking 
in terms of rope ladders. Silk could be awfully strong, especially if you 
braided a section of cloth. She also didn't know much about braiding, but 
somebody in the harem probably did. Not that a rope was going to do her much 
good if she couldn't even find a window she could fit through.
"I'm not that great but I'm learning," Shanea said happily. "Come on, we'll work 
on some shorts for you."
"Not pants?" Megan said. "A shirt? Maybe a dress?"
"No, not pants," Shanea said, for the first time with a serious tone. "Megan, 
please don't say things that don't make sense, okay? Did you see anyone wearing 
pants?"
"No," Megan said, slowly. "I guess that was pretty stupid, huh? I guess, maybe, 
a halter top? Short shorts? What was that thing they used to wear, I've seen it 
sometimes. Oh, yeah, a miniskirt?"
"What's that?"
"Think 'school-girl look.' "
"Oh, is that what they used to wear in schools?" Shanea said, her eyes widening. 
"Were they harems, too?"
"Sometimes you have to wonder," Megan frowned. "Sewing. Bleck."


CHAPTER TWO
There had been a pair of cutting scissors in the room, chained to the shelves. 
Other than that they had small cutting blades about the size of her thumbnail to 
section the cloth. Megan noticed that she hadn't seen anything resembling a 
knife or any serious bladed weapon in the whole harem. They had cut sections of 
cloth and headed back to their seat by Amber.
"What are you going to make?" Shanea asked.
Megan looked around at the other girls. Most of them simply wore the light robes 
that were provided, but a few had other items. One girl had a lovely blue pair 
of panties and bra with lace on the edges. But Megan knew that was far beyond 
her ability, even if she felt "right" wearing nothing but panties and a bra in 
public.
But she really wanted some support for her breasts. And something down lower 
would be good as well.
"I think . . . something to go around my top and bottom," Megan said, then shook 
her head at Shanea's incipient worried frown. "Nothing too . . . covering, 
damnit. Something that just covers the breasts, maybe buttoned. Just a few 
buttons. And pretty much the same thing on the bottom. If I can use those to 
figure out how to sew, I'll look at making things like bras and panties."
"Oh, those are hard," Shanea said, sadly. "Mine always look terrible. Only Mirta 
is that good. She's so good nobody picks on her even if she isn't one of Ashly's 
friends."
"Ashly?" Megan asked, picking up a length of heavy blue silk that rippled like 
water in her hands. "What about this?" she said, wrapping it around her breasts 
over the robe.
"Shorter," Shanea said, darkly. "Narrower, whatever."
"Great," Megan snorted, folding the cloth almost in half. "They're going to hang 
out the bottom if I go this narrow."
"Trust me, go with narrow," Shanea said. "If Christel thinks you're trying to 
'cover up' too much you're not going to like it."
"Got it." Megan frowned. "Shorter. Now, Ashly," she said, setting the cloth down 
and trying to figure out what to cut off. And how; the narrow cutters were hard 
to figure out.
"She's the one playing backgammon," Shanea whispered, gesturing carefully to the 
far side of the room where a tall, heavily built blonde was lying on her stomach 
looking at the board, one foot raised in the air and lazily waving back and 
forth.
"What about her?" Megan asked. She was trying to cut a straight line in the 
cloth and failing miserably despite going with the weave. The cutters were 
wooden crescents with two small blades embedded in them. When pressed into the 
edge of the fabric they would start a triangular cut and they maintained it 
well, as long as the fabric was kept taut. But when she'd stop to tighten the 
fabric the cut would waver. And it wasn't particularly straight to begin with. 
She suspected her first effort was not going to be useable in public.
"She's next after Christel," Shanea said. "Christel doesn't say that, but Ashly 
does, and she's really mean. She's the one that turned in Amber for talking 
about escaping. And she's got some friends that help her. She'll hurt you; she 
likes to hurt people."
"Some people are like that," Megan replied. I'm one of them. At least when I'm 
this angry. "So does she hurt you?"
"Not so much anymore," Shanea said, sadly. "I just try to keep my head down and 
not bother anybody. Most of the time they don't bother me. Mostly."
Imprisonment experiments. Dad had talked about that one time, too. Take any 
random group of people. Make one side the "guards" and the other side the 
"prisoners." Within weeks the guards are sadistic to the prisoners and the 
prisoners have separated into packs for mutual protection.
Something else about prison society. "It's human society with all the stops off, 
honey. You have to establish that you're not the bottom of the pecking order. 
And you have to establish that fast."
Prisons were as much a part of the past as . . . well, war, come to think of it. 
But her father, it seemed sometimes, knew everything. And a lot of it he had 
passed on.
"Sometimes they want me to have sex with them," Shanea continued. She had cut 
out a triangle of cloth and was contemplating it idly, as if thinking about 
something in the past. "It's . . . sometimes it's not so bad."
"Shanea?" Megan said, gently.
"Yes?"
"Let me handle Ashly and her friends," Megan said, then smiled, nicely.
"Don't try to fight them," Shanea said. "Christel doesn't like fighting."
"I'm sure it won't get that far," Megan replied. "Leave it to me." She looked at 
the strip of cloth, then folded in an edge and wrapped it around her top again. 
"What do you think?"
"Narrower."
"It will be when I'm done." Megan sighed. She measured where it met in the front 
and then cut it off with some extra cloth in case she messed it up. Then she 
folded over one edge, which immediately unfolded.
"Pins," Shanea said, handing her a handful. "Fold the edges and then pin them."
"This is a pain," Megan snapped.
"It passes the time." Shanea shrugged. "There's sewing, talking, bathing and 
playing board games. Except when Paul is here."
"And then there's getting raped," Megan said, darkly.
"It's really not that bad," Shanea said. "Really. There's nothing you can do to 
stop it, so just have as much fun as you can. Think of your boyfriend or 
something. Or girlfriend if you go that way."
"Which is it for you?" Megan asked.
"Oh, I dunno," Shanea smiled. "I think for fun, guys. For comfort, mostly 
girls."
"And the only 'guy' is Paul," Megan said.
"Yep."
"What's he like?" Megan asked, almost against her will. She told herself she was 
just gathering information about the enemy, but she knew she was lying. If she 
was going to spend the rest of her life "servicing" some guy, it made sense to 
recon the territory as well as possible.
"Not too big, thank goodness," Shanea said with a shrug. "I kind of have to 
clamp down on him. Too quick. He really seems to think it's just a duty."
"Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am." Megan said, thinking that if it was "just a duty" 
a test tube and artificial insemination would work as well. Although, somewhere, 
she'd heard the term "live cover" which supposedly worked better. She shuddered 
at the thought. I'm a brood mare. 
"Yep. 'Oops, I gotta go now.' And he switches around, too. I haven't been with 
him in . . . a while. I mean, I don't know how long. No way to tell time in 
here."
"Does he just . . . arrive, do one of the girls and then leave?"
"Usually. Sometimes he stays for a while talking and then chooses another."
"Just one of his myriad 'duties,' " Megan snorted.
"I guess. And he's looking worse and worse, too."
"What do you mean?" Megan had gotten the edges pinned and took up one of the 
fine needles. Shanea had insisted on little needles for the silk and Megan found 
herself squinting at the hole, trying to get the incredibly fine thread to fit 
the even finer hole in the needle.
"Well you saw him," Shanea said. She was apparently working on one breast piece 
of a bra and her movements were far defter than Megan's.
"He looked old and worn out," Megan said. "From the little I saw. But I thought 
that was a disguise?"
"The old might be," Shanea said, picking up one of the needles and trying to 
thread it as well. After only a few tries she got the thread through. "Try 
licking it."
"What?" Megan said, aghast at the apparent non sequitur.
"The thread, silly," Shanea said with a grin. "Try licking it. It makes the end 
a little smaller, it slides in better and it stays . . . firmer." She grinned 
again.
"Harem humor," Megan snorted. "Great." She tried licking the thread though and 
it was easier. It still seemed to take her forever to get it though the needle.
"See? Lick it and it goes in easier," Shanea grinned.
"Shanea?"
"Yeah?"
"Once is funny; twice is annoying."
"Okay."
"You were saying Paul is looking worse?" Megan said after an overlong silence.
"Yeah," Shanea replied after a moment. "He just keeps getting thinner and 
weaker-looking. Like he's sick or something."
"Or wondering if destroying the world is a really good idea?" Megan muttered.
"No. He's really worried about people, though," Shanea said. "It's really all he 
talks about, how hard it is for the people."
"Maybe he should have thought about that before he tried to overthrow the 
Council," Megan replied quietly.
"Well if Sheida hadn't fought back . . ." Shanea said, hotly.
"Shanea, let's not argue about that, okay?" Megan smiled. "You're the closest 
thing that I've got to a friend in here. I won't say anything else bad about 
Paul, okay?"
"Okay," Shanea replied, shrugging. "I mean, I wish it hadn't happened, too. But 
if Sheida had just seen what he was trying to do . . ."
"I'm sure she did," Megan said, as placatingly as she could. "But, really, let's 
not argue about it, okay? We can't do anything about it. And, you're right, Paul 
is probably a nice guy. I'm sure we'll get along fine."
"Well, he is a nice person," Shanea said. "He's been very nice to us."
"Of course," Megan replied. He gets sex whenever he wants it and all he has to 
do is give us some board games and cloth. Great guy. 
"Dinner time," Christel announced, as she opened up her door.
"I'm not really hungry, yet," Megan whispered.
"Eat it while you can get it," Shanea replied. "Three meals a day, none in 
between."
"What about the sewing?"
"We'll just leave it here," Shanea said, standing up and touching Amber on the 
arm. "Ami, time for dinner."
"Dinner," Amber replied, standing up and walking towards the dining room. She 
had a graceful stride and, again, Megan had to wonder what she had been like 
before.
"Settling in?" Christel asked.
"Yes, ma'am," Megan said, trying to imitate Shanea's bright vacuousness.
"Have you ever sewn before?" Christel asked, stooping and picking up the pieces 
of fabric.
"No, ma'am, but Shanea is showing me how," Megan said, gritting out a smile.
"What is this?" Christel picked among the fabric, looking at the way it had been 
pinned. "This isn't a shirt or something, is it?"
"No, ma'am," Megan said.
"It's more of a breast-band," Shanea interjected. "It's going to be quite 
fetching, really. I hadn't thought of it, but I think Paul will like it."
"And a short skirt," Megan continued. "Very short."
"We'll see," Christel looked at the other girls who had paused to see if the new 
girl was going to get a tongue-lashing. "Get into the dining room!" She tossed 
the fabric on the pillow and put her hands on her hips. "We're here to make Paul 
happy. We make Paul happy by being pretty. Anything that is not pretty doesn't 
get worn in here. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, ma'am," Megan said as Shanea nodded her head. "I'll do the best I can."
"Now, go eat," Christel said, pointing. "And don't overeat; half the girls are 
starting to look like balloons."
* * *
When they reached the table the only spaces were at the far end. The food was 
brought through the door to the kitchens and then served to Christel first who 
passed bowls down the table. By the time they got to Megan, Shanea and Amber, 
who had somehow been driven to their end, there was very little left. The meal 
was the same that she had been served before, roast pork, broccoli and potatoes. 
The only pieces of pork left were ends and gristly bits, the broccoli was all 
gone and there was only a smidgen of potato.
Megan didn't mind, she wasn't particularly hungry, and she gave her servings to 
Shanea and Amber. But she noticed that several of the other girls had taken huge 
servings and then eaten barely half of them; as if they were trying to starve 
the girls at the bottom of the pecking order.
"Who's the skinny brunette by Ashly?" Megan asked, pointing with her chin at a 
thin-faced brunette who had started to become one of the "balloons" Christel had 
mentioned. She was sitting next to Ashly and wolfing down a huge plate of food, 
even though Megan hadn't noticed her doing anything in the afternoon but sit 
watching Ashly play backgammon.
"That's Karie, Karie Szymonic," Shanea whispered. "She likes to start stuff and 
then Ashly and the others join in."
Christel was at the head of the table working on a much smaller portion and 
taking delicate bites. On her right was Ashly and then Karie, across from them 
was a delicate, birdlike, redhead, who had also taken a small serving. Megan had 
noticed her earlier doing sewing in the corner.
"The redhead?"
Shanea leaned out to look down the table.
"Oh, that's Mirta. She's okay and Ashly doesn't pick on her because she does the 
most beautiful needlework. If you want anything nice, you ask Mirta. But she'll 
want something in return."
"And, unfortunately, I don't have anything to trade," Megan snorted.
"You'll find something," Shanea said.
"When can I stand up and leave?" Megan asked.
"Not until Christel," Shanea replied.
Megan continued to observe the other girls covertly. She caught one absolutely 
poisonous look from Karie, for no reason she could determine. Ashly seemed to be 
ignoring her so far. She knew from what her father told her that she should try 
to establish dominance, but the time didn't seem right. And if she made too many 
waves there was Christel with the threat of the neural whip. And mind-wipe on 
the other side of that. Neither thought pleased.
For some reason, her mind kept coming back to the scissors in the store room. 
Chaining them there was probably to keep the girls from using them on each 
other. The tiny cloth cutters would be almost useless as weapons, even in a 
catfight. She doubted that the scissors were secured to defend Paul; he had to 
have a personal protection field on at almost all times.
Almost. There's one time when a PPF had to come down, and that was during sex; 
any personal intimacy, really.
Interesting.
But he'd be able to summon it almost instantly. And practically any damage a 
person could inflict by hand could be repaired by medical nannites.
Almost, again. Her father had not talked a lot about his investigations but 
sometimes she was able to pry information out of him. Sometimes she had wished 
she hadn't, one time . . . 
She was about . . . fourteen. He had been . . . mean to her for nearly a week. 
He'd been pressing her, hard, about her boyfriends and what she had been doing 
with them. Usually he was more than willing to let her do her own thing. As he 
put it: "I gave you the skills to live your own life and I can't be there all 
the time. I have to trust you."
But he'd been . . . pressing her. He'd gone into what she called "Full Inspector 
Mode." Who was she hanging out with, were they having sex, what were they like, 
how old were they, how did they act, how did they treat her? Finally she'd lost 
her temper with him and told him to mind his own business. And it came out.
There was a predator who had been stalking little girls. Most of them just 
postpubescent, as she was at the time. He'd sweet-talk them into a little 
cuddling, not sex, oh no. Then when their shields were down he would hurt them, 
confuse them, teleport them out to somewhere and keep hurting them, 
continuously, never letting them get a moment to even think about summoning 
shields. He'd rape them while he hurt them and then usually kill them. He'd made 
a mistake with one, finally, and she'd had just enough presence of mind to call 
her shields and teleport out so they finally understood what had been happening.
He'd gone into some pretty graphic detail, probably to convince her of the 
seriousness of the threat. She hadn't liked it at the time and didn't really 
like thinking about it now. But that was the answer. But if she managed to kill 
Paul, really kill him, brain dead fully, against the fight of his nannites, what 
would she do then? And how to do it, how to hurt him that badly?
She realized that while she had been dreaming Christel had gotten up without a 
word and left. Most of the other girls were getting to their feet and filing out 
as well.
"What about the plates and stuff?" she asked Shanea, who was getting up and 
taking Amber's arm.
"The servants clear them," Shanea said. "Come on, Ami."
"That's silly," Megan replied, taking Amber's other arm and pulling the girl, 
who was still eating in very small, fine bites, to her feet. "Why don't we 
clear?"
"Because we can't go in the kitchen," Shanea replied. "You can't pass through 
the door and it zaps you if you try."
"Oh." So much for that way out.


CHAPTER THREE
When they reached the main room, they found their sewing scattered all over the 
place. Her breast band and the other large piece she had intended for the skirt 
had been cut into ribbons as had the triangular piece Shanea was working on. 
Karie was standing over the damage with a smirk on her face.
"Oops," the girl said, looking at Megan. "It looks like somebody had an 
accident."
"Oh, that's okay," Shanea said, getting down on her hands and knees and picking 
through the pillows. "But watch your feet, those pins could jab into your foot 
and really hurt you."
Megan looked at the girl, standing there with a vicious smile, and then sensed 
someone moving up behind her. She suddenly looked to the side where Mirta was 
watching her from over the piece of complicated brocade she was sewing. The girl 
raised an eyebrow as if to say: "Okay, what are you going to do now?"
Megan gave her one, brief, hard look, which she was pretty sure Karie wouldn't 
notice, and then . . . dissembled.
"Yeah, that's okay," she said, at her absolute meekest. "I think there's a pin 
there on the floor by your feet." She got down on her hands and knees, keeping 
her eye on the ground, and picked up the pin. "You need to watch yourself, 
really; you don't want to get hurt." All of this was said in the saddest little 
humble tone she could manage.
"Pathetic bitch," Karie said, kicking her in the side.
Megan rolled with it expertly and came up on one knee in the most helpless pose 
possible. Amber's knitting needle was right by one hand but she knew if she used 
that sort of weapon she wasn't going to like the consequences. Two of the other 
girls had closed on her as well and she was just as positive that showing that 
much ability would make her a threat, to Christel if not to Paul. She was pretty 
sure she could turn all three into mincemeat, especially if she used nerve and 
joint techniques. But it would not be a good thing in any sort of long term.
"Oh, come on," she whimpered, holding her hands up to Karie. "Can't we be 
friends?"
"Like I'd be friends with a pathetic little bitch like you," Karie replied. She 
darted forward and grabbed Megan's hair, hard enough to bring tears to the 
girl's eyes. "You think you're better than me?"
"No, Karie," Megan whined. The other two were standing back, letting the leader 
have the fun. "I just want to be your friend."
"You're gonna be my bitch is what you're going to be," Karie smirked. She pulled 
aside her robe and thrust her crotch in Megan's face. "Lick it, bitch."
"Karie," Ashly drawled. "Get a room."
"Okay, I will," the girl said, dragging Megan to her feet by her hair and 
dragging her down one of the corridors. She pulled open the first door and threw 
Megan into the room.
"Down on your knees, bitch," Karie said, striding over to Megan who had rolled, 
again, to one knee.
"Please don't hurt me," Megan whimpered.
"I'll hurt you if I feel like it," Karie said, catching her up by her hair 
again. "I won't hurt you, much, if you lick me till I come."
Megan whimpered again and then leaned forward, placing her left hand, lovingly, 
humbly, on Karie's thigh and then driving a knuckle-punch upward into the girl's 
crotch.
Women are very nearly as sensitive in the crotch area as men and, like men, it 
tends to take their breath away when struck there, hard. It certainly does so 
when followed up by a rock-hard fist to the solar plexus.
Then Megan really got to work on her.
"Mustn't make marks," Megan whispered as she pinched the base of the bully's 
nose then drove another fist into the woman's gut.
"Don't want anyone getting upset," she added, slamming one open palm into the 
girl's right kidney followed by another to the left.
After the second kidney strike, Megan realized that she was letting her bad out 
just a little too much and wrapped the sadistic bitch up in an unbreakable hold 
that included some very nice joint work.
"Having fun?" she asked Karie, who was whimpering softly and half unconscious 
from the pain. The last kidney punch had probably been over the edge; the girl 
was likely to piss blood for a week.
"Moan," Megan said.
"Wha . . .?"
"Moan!" Megan whispered, fiercely. "Like you're having fun with your new 
girlfriend." She increased pressure on the elbow joint until she felt sweat bead 
out on the other woman's body. "You're having fun with me right now, aren't 
you?"
"I don't . . ."
"Moan!" She gave the elbow an extra twitch and what came out was a gasp followed 
by a moan.
"I can take the whole lot of you, but I have no reason to want to," Megan said, 
softly. "But you need to know that Megan's the top bitch. Say it: Megan's the 
top bitch."
"Ooooooah!" Karie moaned. "I can't . . ."
"Say it," Megan snapped, bearing down on the wrist this time. "Megan's the top 
bitch."
"Megan's the top bitch!" Karie gasped.
"Now moan like you're having the orgasm of your life."
"Oooooaaaahooooo . . ."
"Lousy acting," Megan said, standing up by pressing a nerve point in the girl's 
shoulder so hard she gasped. "When we go out there, your acting had better be 
better. You'd better have a big happy, I-just-came, post-orgasm smile on your 
face. Moan."
"Ooooohhh . . ."
"Better. I'll be crawling. Don't think you can get your mad out because I'm on 
my hands and knees; you really don't want me to show you how mean I can get. 
Who's the top bitch?"
"Megan."
"Moan."
"Oooooohhhh . . ."
"Very good. Much better. I think you like this too much. Who's Megan's bitch?"
"Karie?"
"Bingo, moaner. Let's hear a low, growly one this time."
"I . . ."
"Loud!"
"Ooooooaaaagggaaaa!"
"Good. Now, fast pants, moans, and then orgasm gasp . . ."
"Ah, ah, ah, ooooo . . . ooo . . . ooooh, AAAAAH! Oh, my God!"
"Good. You're good at faking it."
Karie suddenly lashed out a leg and tried to sweep Megan's out from under her. 
Megan jumped lightly over the leg and landed with both knees in the girl's back, 
driving the wind out of her lungs. Then she hit nerve points a couple more 
times, lightly, to get the point across. With each strike the woman let out a 
moan of pain. Close enough to pleasure for anyone listening in the hall.
"You can't beat me, you can't sneak up on me, and all of you together if I was 
asleep and stone drunk couldn't take me," Megan said in a feral whisper. "Now 
get on your feet, be a good little bitch and I'll quit hurting you."
As Karie stumbled up Megan drove her heel into the girl's stomach.
"That was for calling me pathetic." Megan smiled broadly. "Now you can really 
get up. And, remember, big smile. Oh, I almost forgot." She stood still for a 
moment and then slapped herself as hard as she could, once on each cheek.
"You hit in the face?" she asked Karie.
"No," the girl said, looking at her wide-eyed. "No bruises."
"Nothing Paul might not like, right?" Megan snarled, working her jaw from the 
slaps. "Who's the best bitch?"
"You are, Megan," Karie said.
"And who's Megan's bitch?"
"I am," Karie said in a defeated voice. She wouldn't meet Megan's eye. "I'm 
gonna piss blood."
"Too bad," Megan said coldly. "I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed the recovery 
from what you were going to do. And this is just between us, right?"
"Yeah."
"And leave Shanea alone," Megan added. "She's my friend."
Megan got down on her hands and knees and headed for the door.
"Big smile. Big shit-eating smile."
"I am," Karie said. "Ashly's gonna eat you alive, though."
"Ashly's got no idea who she is fucking with," Megan replied, then opened the 
door.
* * *
"Are you okay?" Shanea said when she crawled over and sat down.
"Fine," Megan replied quietly. She looked over at Mirta who was staring at her 
somberly. The girl continued to stare and then raised one eyebrow. On an 
impulse, Megan winked. Mirta looked over to where Karie was clearly regaling the 
other girls with her tale of the rape of the new girl and then frowned and 
looked back at Megan. Megan just smiled, her eyes cold, and turned away.
"I managed to salvage some of it," Shanea said.
"Well, I think Karie got her mad out," Megan replied, smiling sadly. "So maybe 
she'll leave us alone for a while."
"Maybe," Shanea said. "But sometimes she decides we need extra training." Shanea 
looked sadly at the scraps in her lap. "I don't like that."
"Maybe she'll concentrate on me," Megan replied. "I can survive it."
* * *
She'd gotten another piece of cloth and pinned it when Shanea nudged her.
"Time for baths," the girl said. "Almost lights out."
The sun had set long before and the lamps had come on. They were clearly powered 
but instead of the normal diffuse lighting of pre-Fall these were globes, some 
of them colored, hanging from sconces set in the walls. They illuminated the 
area, but not brightly, and Megan had discovered why Mirta sat in the same place 
all the time; it was where the light of three lamps fell and just about the most 
brightly lit place in the room. The brightest spot was Ashly's seat and the 
girl, who had continued to play one game of backgammon after another, glowed in 
the light.
"I had a bath," Megan said.
"You take one every night," Shanea replied.
"I think I'll put this stuff in my room," Megan said with a shrug, picking up 
the sewing.
"No locks, it won't help," Shanea pointed out. "But I don't think they'll cut it 
up again. Christel doesn't like us wasting cloth. I don't know why; there's 
enough of it and more."
Megan took the pile of sewing to her room and set it on the bed, then headed for 
the bathroom. Most of the girls were in there and the vast majority had already 
climbed into the long, low bath. Warm water flowed in at one end and out at the 
other and the pecking order remained; Ashly was having her hair washed by one of 
the other girls while the far end, which was already filled with oils and soap 
scum from the upper end, was reserved for Shanea and Amber.
"I think I'll take a shower," Megan said with a grimace.
"I sometimes do after the bath," Shanea whispered. "But you don't want to stand 
out."
"I think, this time, I'll stand out," Megan replied, glancing over at Ashly. 
Mirta had just finished washing her hair and gave her a long, considering, look 
as Megan strode to the showers.
Except for relaxation, she'd never been much of a bather. She much preferred 
showers; she just ended up feeling cleaner. And since she'd already had one she 
did a sketchy wash of her pits, toweled off, grabbed a new robe and was out of 
the room before most of the girls had gotten done with their careful soaping.
When she reached her room she considered it carefully, then dragged the desk 
across until it was in front of the door. It wouldn't stop a concerted assault, 
but it would wake her up if and when.
She lay down and considered the day. It had been a long one. And there were 
probably going to be more long ones in the future. Right now, though, she was 
very tired. Before the lights dimmed she had closed her eyes and breathed into 
sleep.
Shortly afterwards, however, her eyes sprung open as the desk scraped on the 
floor.
She rolled to her feet in a defensive crouch but the movement had stopped.
"Megan?" Shanea whispered.
The lights were down and she was pretty sure the girl wasn't supposed to be 
walking around.
"What?" Megan said. She stepped over to the door and it was open enough to see 
that it, apparently, was just Shanea.
"I wondered . . . sometimes when bad things happen I have nightmares," Shanea 
said, uncertainly. "Would you like somebody to sleep with?"
"Is that okay?" Megan whispered.
"Christel doesn't care," Shanea said, "as long as it doesn't . . ."
" . . . bother Paul." Megan sighed. She really wanted nothing more than a good 
night's sleep and there weren't enough pillows for that. They'd have to be 
constantly in contact. On the other hand, she rather doubted that Shanea was 
there for Megan's comfort. After a moment's thought, Megan pulled the low desk 
out of the way and led the girl inside.
"The active term here is 'sleep,' " Megan muttered as she pushed the desk back 
into place.
"I know," Shanea said settling down with her back to the wall and Megan on the 
outside. The girl laid her head on Megan's shoulder and put one leg across her 
thighs. "I . . . just like someone to hold at night."
"Remind me, if I ever learn how to sew, to make you a teddy bear," Megan said, 
shaking her head.
In remarkably short order, Shanea was snoring very faintly. It was unpleasantly 
regular but Megan put it out of her mind and mentally composed herself for 
sleep.
I have got to get out of this place. 
* * *
After the events of the first day, things mostly settled down. Their sewing 
project was not disturbed and the clique around Ashly seemed to have decided to 
ignore them for the time being. Megan slowly learned to sew and as the days 
passed discovered the true horror of the harem: boredom.
There was nothing to do and, of course, nowhere to go. Their day was a regular, 
monotonous routine. Get up in the morning, clean themselves and their rooms, 
have breakfast, which was usually very tasty, flaky rolls with fruit, fruit 
juice and milk, play games, talk or work on sewing projects all morning, lunch, 
generally light, more killing time in the afternoon, dinner, more killing time, 
bathing, lights out.
She found herself unable to sleep at night after the stresses of the first few 
days wore off. More often than not Shanea came by, scratching at her door. She'd 
at first expected the clique around Ashly to attack her in the middle of the 
night. Then she'd dreaded it. Then she'd anticipated it as something to break up 
the monotonous routine.
Christel left the harem to more or less run on its own. She spent all her time 
in the inner sanctum. Which left Ashly to run things. Badly.
Megan had taken to leaving the main room for most of the day, although Shanea 
was aghast at that as well. It Just Wasn't Done. But Megan had to get some 
exercise. She retreated to her room and would spend hours in there, first 
limbering up, then doing katas, which segued into dance. Snatches of tunes would 
come to her mind and she danced to all of them, running one into the other as 
they could be recalled. She didn't sing, she didn't hum, she just danced, 
sometimes furiously, for hours.
She was getting to be in the best shape of her life. And she still was bored out 
of her gourd.
* * *
From time to time there had been verbal jabs from the girls around Ashly but 
since the incident with Karie nothing more. Then, at the end of the second week, 
when she had finished her sewing project, she returned to her room one 
afternoon, planning on getting in some solid exercise, to find that someone had 
placed the skirt and top on her pillows and then peed all over it and them.
She was pretty sure it wasn't Karie. The girl was a bully of the first order and 
unlikely to want to brave her wrath again. But it meant it was probably one of 
the girls in Ashly's little clique. And the way to deal with that was to kill 
the rot at the source.
She picked up all the material and walked through the main room to the baths 
with a sad expression of woeful misery on her face. Once in the bathroom she 
attacked the material, cleaning it as well as she could. The silks were too 
stained to be worth using, though, and all her work was ruined. She also 
couldn't get the smell of pee entirely out of the pillows. It infuriated her 
that she'd have to live with that smell for who knew how long.
Somebody was gonna pay.


CHAPTER FOUR
Megan waited a few days until the others had decided she'd decided to take the 
injury lying down. She had started work on another outfit and planned on making 
sure that this one was wearable. Then, one day, she noticed that Ashly was 
getting a bit squirmy and casually got to her feet, headed for the toilet.
The toilet was just off the bathroom and just as well appointed. There were more 
vanities inside as well as four stalls with doors so the girls could have some 
privacy. Megan waited in her stall until she heard someone come in and then 
walked out. When Ashly emerged from her stall, still adjusting her panties, 
Megan looked at her with eyes wide with sadness.
"Ashly, I know I'm not your friend, but it wasn't nice for somebody to pee all 
over my bedding," Megan said in her meekest little-girl voice.
"Well, I guess some of us just don't like you," the girl said dismissively. She 
was a head taller than Megan and carried herself with assurance.
"I was just hoping that maybe we could be friends," Megan said. "I'd like for us 
to be friends."
"Why would I want to be friends with a little turd like you?" Ashly said, 
brushing past her.
Megan waited until she was almost past and then drove a knuckled fist into the 
other girl's solar plexus. When Ashly doubled up, choking, Megan lifted her by 
one shoulder and drove her fist into the girl's stomach twice more.
"Well," Megan said, neutrally, as she grabbed the girl by her long, blond hair 
and drove a knuckle into her kidney. "For one reason, I wouldn't beat the shit 
out of you."
Ashly fell to her knees and whimpered.
"Christel's gonna . . ." the girl started to say, just as Megan grasped the base 
of the girl's nose and pinched, hard. There was a very sensitive nerve juncture 
there and clamping down on it effectively ended rational thought for Ashly.
"Christel is going to what?" Megan said, sweetly. "I don't think Christel is 
going to hear about this at all. Because if she does, you're going to find out 
that this is love taps. Now, you're going to talk to all of your friends. And 
you're going to explain that the little games are stopping, aren't you? Because 
if you don't, we'll have to . . . talk again. You might think that you can gang 
up on me, but if you do that it will be obvious. Besides, you might want to have 
a quiet chat with Karie about what happens when I get really angry. And then 
Christel is going to know. And then she'd better mind-wipe me. Because 
otherwise, you're not going to be good for anything but a kitchen slut. Do I 
make myself clear?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She just pinched the nerve point so hard the girl 
must have thought she'd been hit by a neural lash and then walked out, twitching 
her robe into place.
She didn't know if the girl would take it lying down or not. But when she got 
back to the main room she gave Karie a significant nod and then strode over to 
Mirta.
"Hi," she said, squatting down in front of the seamstress.
"Hi," Mirta replied neutrally. "Could you move over, you're in my light."
"Sure," Megan replied, moving over. "What do I have to do to get you to make me 
something?"
"Oh, I think you've already done it," Mirta replied, lightly. She was 
hand-embroidering the edge of a bra that was made of silk so transparent it was 
like glass. "I've been waiting for months for someone to take down that arrogant 
bitch."
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Megan said with a broad smile.
"Yes, you do," Mirta replied. "I wasn't sure at first, but Karie steps aside 
when you walk past. And she never gives just one lesson to the new girls. She 
didn't give me just one lesson," the woman said in a low but fierce tone. "And I 
notice that Ashly seems to be taking a long time in her toilet. But she only 
went in there to pee. She'd have been out at least two minutes ago."
"You notice a lot," Megan said, sitting down.
"I notice that you spend a lot of time in your room," Mirta replied. "That when 
you come out you usually go to the shower because you need it. I notice that you 
don't walk quite like a dancer, either. You walk more like some martial artists 
I've known. You walk like a panther, except when you play that meek little girl 
role. I notice that you watch all the time, too." She looked up and pinned the 
girl with her eye, tying off a section of the embroidery and picking up the next 
color without looking down. "And your hands have calluses. But not from sewing."
"How old are you?" Megan asked.
"Me?" Mirta squeaked. "I'm just like you, just a little girl, not even twenty! 
And some man picked me up by the side of a stream and then . . . oh, it was So! 
Terrible!" The entire performance was delivered in a frightened little voice 
while cold eyes stared back at Megan.
"Yes, it is so terrible," Megan replied neutrally. "Will you help me?"
"With sewing?" Mirta replied, finally looking down. "Happily." She had been 
stitching the embroidery, tiny stitch after tiny stitch, without looking at what 
she was doing. And doing it perfectly.
"You do it so well," Megan pressed.
"Most of my life," Mirta replied. "My parents were reenactors. You know what 
that means?"
"Yes, people who had a hobby of doing stuff the old ways," Megan said. "The town 
elders where I . . . was . . . were sort of like that. At least, they lived in 
an old house and had some stuff that they used from time to time."
"My mother taught me to sew when I was very young," Mirta said. "We'd make stuff 
and then take it to Faires." Her face cleared of the cold lines it normally had 
and she smiled. "I used to love to go to Faire."
"I hope we all can some day again," Megan said.
"Don't talk that way," Mirta said carefully. "We are Paul's servants. That is 
all that we are or ever will be."
"Doesn't mean he can't take us." Megan grinned.
"Hmmph," Mirta grunted, but she smiled as she did. "So what do you want?"
"I really don't know," Megan replied. "Some simple panties, for God's sake. I'm 
just too clumsy with a needle to get the fine sewing for them."
"Easily done," Mirta said, then looked at her. "I saw what you were trying to do 
with the other outfit. I have some ideas. I don't know if you'll like them."
"As long as it . . ."
"Pleases Paul." Mirta grinned evilly. "Yes, I think it will. Do you want me to 
do it?"
"Please," Megan said. "How do I repay you?"
"Oh, you already have," Mirta replied calmly. "Although breaking the bitch's 
neck and boiling her in oil would have been preferable."
"Once you break the neck, they don't feel the oil," Megan pointed out. "Details. 
You have to decide."
Mirta shrugged. "Okay, just lowering her into a vat of acid."
"What?" Megan said, frozen.
"I said . . ."
"Yeah, okay," Megan replied, her mind racing. "I guess I'll get them in a few 
days?"
"That . . . works . . ." Mirta replied.
"Thank you," Megan said, suddenly looking her in the eye. "You have been very 
helpful."
"I'm glad to hear that," Mirta said, staring at her. "Very glad."
Megan gave her a nod and walked back to her room. She refused to whistle as she 
walked.
* * *
Shanea was there when she arrived. The girl had gotten over her fear of being 
out of the main room and now hid in Megan's room much of the time despite the 
still-noticeable smell of urine. It was a pain in the ass in some ways and in 
others quite comforting. Megan had never really had many girlfriends and 
certainly none that looked to her for protection. It was pleasant and cloying 
simultaneously.
She was working on another outfit and looked up happily when Megan entered.
"Where were you?" Shanea asked.
"I had a . . . conversation with Ashly," Megan said. "And Mirta is going to make 
me an outfit."
"How did you talk her into that?" Shanea asked, eyes round.
"I was very charming," Megan said, throwing herself on the smelly pillows. 
"Shanea, I need to think for a bit, okay?"
"Okay," Shanea said, going back to her sewing.
After a while Megan threw herself to her feet and paced back and forth.
"Shanea, what does Christel do in her office all day?" she asked. It bothered 
her that the woman almost never came out except for meals. For that matter, she 
was never at the evening bath.
"She's working on the accounts," Shanea said. "You didn't know?"
"No, I didn't know," Megan said, stopping her pacing and looking at the girl. 
"All day?"
"There's a lot of them," Shanea replied. "That's why she's always so angry. She 
hates doing them. I saw them one time and they're really really complicated. I 
couldn't make head or tails of them."
Megan stared at her, unseeing, for quite some time, then smiled broadly.
"Shanea, you are the most wonderful person in the world."
"Thank you," Shanea smiled. "Why?"
"Just because," Megan said. "I'm either going to be stumbling back in just a 
minute or I'll be quite some time."
She walked to the door to the office and knocked, knowing that all the other 
girls were watching her. What was that feely she had watched? Oliver Twist. 
"Please, sir, can I have some more?" That was just how it felt.
"What?" Christel said angrily from beyond the door.
"I'd like to speak to you," Megan replied, as meekly as she could manage.
"Come in," the woman said.
Megan stepped in, half expecting to end up on the floor, doubled in agony. The 
older woman was behind the desk, which was littered with paper.
"Shanea just told me that you're in here doing the books all day," Megan said, 
standing more or less at attention. "I . . . think I could help."
"You?" Christel snapped, throwing a pencil on the desk. "What do you know about 
it?"
"I . . . was studying numbers before the Fall," Megan replied. "I know something 
about accounting. And . . . you seem like you really hate it. That makes it hard 
on the rest of us. If I can help, that makes it easier. And, frankly, I'm bored 
to tears."
Christel looked at her, cocking her head slightly to the side, then shrugged.
"You really think you can make head or tails of it?" Christel asked.
"Yes, ma'am," Megan said, walking over to the table and looking down. The papers 
were covered in columns with notations and numbers by them. They also were 
covered in equations, most of them scratched, rubbed or in some cases ripped, 
out. It was pretty clear that math was not Christel's strong suit.
She pulled one of the papers around to her and read it, then blanched.
"Oh, my God," she exclaimed. "You use single-entry bookkeeping?"
"What?" Christel said.
"Single entry," Megan replied, shaking her head. "You've got both your expenses 
and your income on the same line. Not to mention mixing up your purchases and 
your use. No wonder you've been having problems."
"How else do you do it?" Christel asked, bewildered.
"Okay, okay," Megan said, dropping into a cross-legged position next to the 
desk. "You've got food purchases here and a new shipment of cloth. Not to 
mention housekeeping items and cleaning supplies. By the way, can I get some new 
pillows?"
"What happened to the ones you have?" Christel asked, angrily.
"They got . . . damaged. Look, what you do is separate this out by category . . 
."
* * *
For the next two days Christel led her over the accounts, although it was quite 
often the other way around. It turned out that the woman was responsible for 
managing all of the needs of the harem. She had to track, and account for, all 
of the food that was consumed, the supply of bedding, the raw materials the 
girls used in their sewing, their "feminine" supplies and everything else that 
went into a functioning harem.
By the second day, Christel was in a more jovial mood. Megan hadn't been lying 
when she said she knew something about accounting. It was clear that the younger 
girl was far better at organizing the accounts than Christel had ever been.
"The worst part is that Paul is always checking on them," Christel admitted 
early the next day. "He wants me to account for every single item and explain 
why they were used. The food budget is the worst. He's always harping about how 
much food the girls eat. So one time I cut them back and then they didn't have 
enough and were complaining."
"Well, from the looks of some of them they could use a diet," Megan noted. "But 
not all. What we need to do is manage the diets individually. But that will mean 
working more closely with the kitchen staff. Also . . ."
"What?" Christel asked, looking at her sharply.
"Well, there's no reason they have to sit around all day," Megan pointed out. 
"I'm sure some of them know how to dance, for example. And they could use some 
toning up. Dial in on the food consumption, maybe have weigh-ins and track their 
body fat, and start having classes in, oh, dance, singing; can any of them play 
a musical instrument?"
"We're a harem, not a choir," Christel noted.
"Yes, but you said that one of our purposes is to keep Paul happy," Megan said. 
"Is he going to be happier with a bunch of roly-poly slugs? Or a group of girls 
that are healthy, happy, in good condition and maybe can entertain him other 
than on their backs?"
Christel made a moue and shook her head.
"Think of it this way," Megan said, carefully. "It's not going to cost anything 
more, except maybe for some instruments, and it's going to look good. Look, I 
can dance for Paul, at least. And I can teach the other girls, if there's no one 
else."
"You?" Christel asked.
Megan stood up and took off her robe, uncomfortably aware that it left her 
entirely naked, and went through a series of simple dance steps, lifting on a 
toe, turning, bending. She wasn't about to show her advanced moves, much less 
katas, which looked very much like a dance when she did them.
"Me," Megan said when she was finished. She picked up the robe and put it back 
on, belting it tightly. "Not to mention stretching exercises and gymnastics. I'm 
sure that Paul gets tired of the missionary position all the time."
"Well, you'll just have to find out, won't you?" Christel said cattily and then 
sighed. "You do have a point, though. And you're not the only one who can dance, 
girl. In fact, you don't dance all that well at all."
"No, I don't," Megan said, meekly.
"I'll see about it," Christel said.
* * *
Megan had been working all day, skipping lunch in fact, getting the books in 
order. She had broken out most of the items by category and had started to get a 
handle on in-flow and out-flow. Some of it still didn't add up, but she wasn't 
sure if that was Christel's execrable bookkeeping or something else. But she 
realized that she was so tired of staring at columns, and so hungry, that she 
wasn't making any more sense, so she stood up and walked out into the main room.
Christel, once Megan had demonstrated she knew what she was doing, had been 
spending most of her time in the main room. Ashly had been displaced from the 
position of prominence and Christel spent her time chatting and playing Yahtzee 
while Ashly sulked off to the side.
As Megan walked out and headed for her room, she heard her name called.
"Megan," Mirta said. "I've got your outfit finished."
"Let's . . . see it in my room if you don't mind," Megan said, gesturing at the 
corridor.
Mirta merely nodded and headed down to the room where Shanea, inevitably, was 
ensconced. Megan noted that her friend was one of the ones who needed to go on a 
diet. Since Megan had befriended her, mysteriously larger portions had made it 
down the table. Amber was in there as well, knitting something golden this time.
"Here it is," Mirta said, holding up two pieces of cloth that together might 
have made one decent skirt.
The top was at first glance a simple halter, with very brief coverage of the 
breasts; the triangular fabric might just cover the nipples. But the fabric was 
of some odd material that changed color as the light hit it. Small as it was, it 
was quite spectacular. The "skirt" that accompanied it, in the same fabric, was 
brief to the point of scandal in any other environment. Short, very short, and 
slit up either side.
"I made you some panties as well," Mirta said. "But with that, well, even a 
thong might show."
"It looks . . . tight," Megan said.
"It is tight," Mirta replied. "I got the outfit you were working on from Shanea 
for sizing and figuring that you went a little loose, I tightened it up, because 
. . ."
"Paul will like it," Megan said, making a moue of distaste. She slipped off the 
robe, despite the company, and slipped on the skirt, which had two buttons in 
the back. She found it easier to slide it around to the front to button because 
it was tight. The buttons gave no sign of straining loose, but she had a 
struggle to get them in the holes. She also had to pull it down onto her hips to 
maintain any shred of decency. The halter top was tight as well and as she had 
feared the tiny triangles barely covered her nipples.
"Oh, that's . . . lovely!" Shanea said.
"Pretty," Amber said, looking up at her with a fixed expression. "So pretty."
"Just right," Mirta said, pushing Megan's breasts up into the halter; the bottom 
of her breasts showed a goodly bit of rounded flesh. "Perfect."
"I think I'd rather wear a robe!" Megan said.
"I think that Paul would rather you wear this," Mirta replied. "And Christel 
will certainly have no problems with it. The other girls will be clamoring for 
one just like it."
"I want one," Shanea blurted. "But I don't have anything to trade!"
"I'll see if I can fit you into my busy schedule," Mirta replied. "Now that I've 
got the pattern in mind, turning more out won't be all that difficult. Some . . 
. small, strong stitches involved, but not hard ones."
"I can't wear this out of here," Megan complained. "Every time I sit down I'll 
show all I've got!"
"Not so," Mirta said, stepping to the side. "The method for sitting is thus. You 
point your toes and roll down onto your legs." The woman demonstrated, 
gracefully sitting without spreading her legs or showing anything she didn't 
care to show to the audience.
"Where did you learn that?" Megan asked.
"That's for me to know, dearie." Mirta laughed, getting up with almost the 
reverse motion. "When you sit, you stay in the same position, with your feet 
tucked under your butt. Nobody gets to see anything you don't want to show. 
Drives guys nuts. Try it."
After a few tries Megan had managed to sit without collapsing or spreading her 
legs and she realized that it was how Mirta always sat down. It was both elegant 
and, she suspected, alluring. A graceful and sexy motion. Grand.
"Now, go show it off," Mirta said.
"I'm not going to parade around in this . . . this . . ."
"Go show it to Christel," Mirta said, definitely. "You will too 'parade' around 
in it. You're my walking advertisement. Get out there and advertise."
"You evil old . . ."
"Ah, ah," Mirta smiled. "Me?" she added in a little girl voice. "I'm just . . . 
just a little girl . . ."
"Right," Megan said, facing the door. "And I'm Sheida Ghorbani."
She strode down the corridor and into the main room, walking over to where 
Christel was playing Yahtzee. The other girls watched her and she had to admit 
that based on their reaction she had to be the most hated girl in the harem. 
Many of them had some minor form of lingerie or panties and bras. But the outfit 
Megan sported was, to those, what a nuclear weapon is to a firecracker. It was 
the sexual equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction.
She stopped in front of Christel and pirouetted in place.
"Will this do?" she asked, sharply.
"It will do very well," Christel replied with a nod. "I'm sure Paul will love 
it."
"As am I," Megan said tightly.
"Dinnertime," Christel said. "Why don't you go get your . . . friends. And put a 
robe on; that thing is scandalous."
Megan went back to the room and stripped off the outfit, replacing it with a 
robe. She felt more dressed with a robe on. She felt more dressed naked.
"It was a hit," she told Mirta sourly. "Christel's going to want one."
"I might make her one," Mirta replied, with a malicious smile. "And she'll never 
understand why she doesn't look as good as you do in it. But the next outfit I'm 
going to make is for Amber."
"Amber?" Shanea said. "Why?"
"Because I want to." Mirta grinned. "You'll see. And one for you, dear, of 
course."
"One that will suit her?" Megan asked. "Dinnertime, by the way."
"Oh, yes," Mirta replied, as they walked out the door. "Definitely one that will 
suit her. And I think that Amber's will cover her almost completely. And make 
Paul want to tear down walls. The human body is a lovely thing, but never so 
lovely as when properly covered. It's using clothes to create a mystery that is 
the truest art."
"Not much mystery in what you made for me," Megan said, sourly.
"Enough." Mirta smiled. "Just enough and no more."
When they reached the dining room the food still hadn't been served and Megan 
sat down with a puzzled frown.
"Girls, listen up," Christel said, clapping her hands for attention as Mirta sat 
down. "Starting tonight, you will be served individually. And for tonight all 
the portions will be equal. As soon as I can obtain a scale, all of you will be 
weighed. Those of you who are overweight, and you know who you are, will be 
placed on reduced servings."
"What?" Karie said.
"Yes, Karie, you're one of them, and Shanea and Demetra. But we're also going to 
start having classes in dance and exercise. They will be mandatory for most." 
There was a general unhappy muttering at that and she looked around at the group 
with a hard smile.
"Paul maintains a harem, not a palace for lazy slugs. It is about looking good 
for Paul and, frankly, most of you are starting to look a bit soft in the 
middle. That is going to change." She waved to the kitchen and the servants 
began carrying out plates that had been pre-served. Megan carefully kept her 
eyes on her plate and tried very hard not to smile. One change effected.


CHAPTER FIVE
After another week, Megan had the books in order and Paul still hadn't put in an 
appearance. And after struggling for that week, maintaining things became easy 
enough that she got bored again. But she still didn't go out of the room, much, 
preferring to use the excuse of "keeping up the books" to maintain some relative 
privacy. She was also exempt from the regular exercise and dance classes, but 
she kept in shape by working out in the office. Everything was on track except 
one: The kitchen books still wouldn't add up; the harem was paying for at least 
twenty percent more food than was being consumed.
After going over the numbers repeatedly she reached the point that she was 
positive it wasn't just sloppiness. Which meant she knew darned well where it 
was going. The problem was what to do with the information. She could inform 
Christel in which case the head cook could look to being on the wrong end of a 
Change. Or she could manage it more . . . obliquely.
She was also fascinated by some of the items available for order through the 
kitchens. There weren't only foods and spices but cookware, distilling 
materials, cleaning solvents . . . 
An idea was starting to tick over in her head one afternoon when the door opened 
and Christel waved at her imperiously.
"Megan, go to your room and put on that lovely outfit Mirta made for you," 
Christel said, smiling viciously. "There's someone you need to meet. Again."
* * *
"Ah, the washing girl," Paul said, smiling. He was no longer the old man he had 
appeared, but the face was the same. As was the long hair that hung in lanky 
strands. But his clothes were clean and finely made. He had the look of being 
about two hundred, slightly below normal height. Megan suddenly realized that 
she had met him before, years ago. She truly hoped that he would never remember 
the meeting.
"Her name is Megan," Christel said. "Megan Sung."
It was the name she'd used after the Fall. She didn't know why she had changed 
it; it wasn't like her father was well known. But, then again, the sort of 
people who would react to the name "Travante" were precisely the sort she didn't 
want interested in her.
"How have you been, Megan?" Paul said, holding out his hand. "You look much 
better than the last time I saw you."
"Oh, I am much better, sir," Megan said, not taking the hand but instead 
dropping in a curtsey that kept her legs modestly crossed. She stayed in the 
curtsey for a moment then straightened back up, not meeting his eye.
"What a delightful young lady," Paul said, running an eye over her like a 
horseman with a likely looking filly. "Beautiful bone structure. Love the 
outfit."
"Thank you, milord," Megan simpered as well as she could. Let him choose one of 
the others, let him choose one of the others . . .
"I think we should get to know one another better," Paul said, taking her hand 
and leading her to the room reserved for him.
"Yes, milord," Megan said, trying to sound happy and failing miserably. She bit 
her lip and the last thing she saw before the door closed was Ashly looking at 
her with an expression of malicious delight.
* * *
"The first time is always hard," Paul said, raising himself off of her and 
rolling to the side. "It will get better."
Megan rolled onto her side, away from him, and curled into a fetal position, 
clenching her hands so hard that her nails dug into the palms of her hands.
I will not attempt to kill him, she thought. It's not possible. He's protected. 
I'm in a prison in a fortress. It will only get me killed. 
"It was . . . wonderful, milord," she heard herself say.
"That is, in fact, a lie," Paul said, neutrally. "But I appreciate the effort." 
He patted her on her rump. "Get up. Clean yourself. It will help you feel 
better. And it will get easier with time. What you do here is of great 
importance. You are a fine group of potential mothers. Good genes should be 
perpetuated and here you are protected from harm to you and your children. 
Understand your importance and it makes the life much more pleasurable."
"Of course, milord," Megan bit out. I'm supposed to be thankful for being a 
well-kept broodmare. Gee.
Paul rolled to his feet and pulled on his clothes than tapped her on the rump 
again.
"Get up," he said, not unkindly. "I will give you a few moments to yourself but 
then you will come out of this room."
When he had left Megan grabbed one of the pillows and hugged it to her stomach, 
fighting against tears. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream. She wanted, oh, 
how she wanted to escape. But neither tears nor screams would do anything. As 
she lay there, feeling fluids trickling down the inside of her thigh, she had a 
clear vision of her hands pushing Paul's head into a bucket. And she realized 
that the bucket was not filled with water, for all that the liquid was clear.
With that thought, she rolled to her feet, her face hard and her eyes like 
agate. She walked to the silver basin and carefully washed herself, then, 
recomposing her features, she donned her "outfit" and walked out the door.
* * *
"Marlene, thank you for meeting with me," Megan said, sweetly.
She was sitting in the dining room by the door to the kitchen when the head cook 
came in. The cook was a slightly overweight, older woman with piggy eyes buried 
in her flesh.
"What do you want?" the cook asked, brusquely. "I've got work to do."
"I know, I know; it must be terrible slaving over a hot stove all day," Megan 
said. There were enough cooks on the payroll, if they all existed, to do the 
work three times over. She doubted that the fat old bitch had been near a stove 
in a year.
"I work for my keep," the cook snarled. "I don't make it on my back."
"Well, we all do what we can." Megan sighed. "Speaking of doing what we can, I 
just had a couple of teensy questions. Nothing really."
"Oh?" Marlene said, suddenly wary.
"I was just looking at this item for meat last week," Megan said, her brow 
furrowing in clear perplexity. "You see, based upon what we've worked out in the 
individual diets, there should have been seven kilos of beef used in last 
Friday's meal. And it appears that we paid for ten kilos . . ."
"Well, there's wastage," the cook said, huffily. "I mean, we order it on the 
bone. Bones, gristle cut out, you ladies have to have everything perfect . . ."
"And I know you make your own noodles, aren't they delicious? But there's 
another ten kilos of flour listed as used. And, by golly, the servings should 
have only worked out to five kilos. I'm just so perplexed!"
"You had better get unperplexed, missy," the cook said, nastily. "You have no 
idea what can end up in your plate."
"Oh, I rather think I do," Megan said. "I rather think I do. And anything . . . 
untoward would be easy enough for Paul to detect if one of his concubines turned 
up dead. And he would wonder, wouldn't he? Let's just drop the bullshit, okay? 
I've been over the books for the last several months. You're not just skimming, 
you're stealing a council member blind. What do you think his response would 
be?"
The cook just looked at her, her jaw working in anger.
"Now, let's be friends, shall we?" Megan said, after a moment to let the cook 
consider her position. "I see no reason to cut in on your little . . . 
peccadilloes."
"What?" Marlene replied, suspiciously.
"I don't, frankly, care if you steal that bastard's shorts," Megan said, making 
the point clear. "On the other hand, there are a few things I need. And I see no 
reason that you can't get them for me."
"Oh."
"If you're stealing and I catch you out, I'm a hero," Megan said, smiling 
sweetly. "On the other hand, if you're stealing and at the same time slipping me 
things I need, while I'm covering you up in the books, that makes us . . . 
partners."
"What do you need?" Marlene said, after a moment. "And is this . . ."
"It's not going to cut in on your take at all," Megan assured her. "But you 
really need to be a bit more discreet. I can point out some areas that are 
easier, and more profitable, to cover up than others."
"Okay," Marlene replied. "What do you need? And how are you going to get it past 
the Gorgon?"
"I'll handle Christel," Megan replied, handing the cook a sheet of paper. 
"Here's a list. I'll also handle the books on those items. We'll just list most 
of them as . . . spice."
* * *
"Christel," Megan said as she was carefully walking the older woman though the 
last week's receipts, "you know what this harem needs that it doesn't have?"
"Dildos?" Christel said snippily. She had been spending less and less time on 
the books and liked that state of affairs. But she wasn't going to entirely 
trust "the new girl" either.
"No, easier to just get cucumbers from the kitchens," Megan replied with a 
chuckle. "No, it needs perfume."
"Perfume?" Christel said, then smiled. "Yes, as a matter of fact it does. I 
think Paul would like that."
"Perfume and cosmetics. I know all the girls are gorgeous, but there's nothing 
that a little cosmetics can't improve upon. The problem is, I talked to Marlene 
and there aren't any suppliers available."
"Paul could probably find one," Christel said, thoughtfully. "Or just ken it."
"He probably could," Megan admitted. "But wouldn't it be better as a surprise?"
"Yes," the older woman replied. "But you said there aren't any suppliers."
"There aren't. But the raw materials are available." Megan pointed out. "In 
fact, there's some indication that most early perfumes were invented in harems. 
Still-rooms used to be common in them."
"Stills?" Christel said, cautiously. "One of the reasons we only serve a little 
wine is that I could easily see us all getting to be drunks . . ."
"A still can be used for much more than making alcohol," Megan said, shaking her 
head. "What you do is you get raw materials for the perfume and you distill them 
down, concentrate them. That's how you get the concentrated scent. By the time 
of the Fall they were mostly based on nannites, but this is the old way of doing 
it."
"How do you know that?"
"I said I was studying numbers," Megan replied. "That wasn't . . . entirely 
accurate. What I was studying was chemistry. Early perfume production was part 
of the history I audited. I can make some simple cologne just from stuff 
available in the kitchen. But with a few other items, nothing expensive or 
complicated, I can make some really nice perfume. I think. I know the theory, 
anyway."
She looked up and saw the older woman eyeing her warily.
"Look, I'm talking about some rose hips to start, okay?" Megan said, shrugging. 
"I promise I won't be making brandy in my spare time. If I do anything out of 
line you can always zap me, right? There are two spare rooms. All I need is a 
table, some glassware, a catchment for runoff and some spices. Perfume, scented 
candles. I can't sew, but this I can do."
"Okay," Christel said, suspiciously. "But if you're trying something . . ."
"For the last time," Megan said, letting a note of anger enter her voice. "We're 
in an impregnable fortress in the middle of Paul's territory. I'm not even sure 
where we are except up in the mountains. And I'm well fed and well housed. 
Running away would be stupid, impossible and pointless. I like my brain the way 
it is. And, let me note, so do you. Otherwise you're going to have to manage all 
this damned accounting. At this point the last thing either of us wants is me 
brain-drained."
"True," Christel chuckled. "Are you going to have enough time for this and all 
your other duties?"
"Yes, I will," Megan sighed. "All of them. Including . . ."
"Keeping Paul happy."
* * *
Cosmetics turned out to be easier than perfume. There were people who were 
making the former and if it was available anywhere in Ropasa it was available to 
"Paul's Girls." The expense of the material made her blanch when she got the 
bill, but in time she'd find a better, meaning less expensive, source. But 
within a week she had a supply of rouges, mascara, lip gloss and powders that 
the girls cheerfully dug into with abandon. So much abandon that she knew 
immediately that she had to find another source.
Perfume was another matter; no one seemed to be making it anywhere in Ropasa. 
Certainly not commercially. She felt a twinge of anger at being trapped in this 
damned harem; if she was back on the outside she could make a killing in the 
perfume business. But needs must and she instead ordered the materials she 
needed to make it, including a good workbench.
The material for the table was brought into the harem by Changed. They were not 
the half-wild orcs that made up the bulk of Paul's legions but heavy-bodied, 
dull-witted beings wearing gray smocks that took no note of the women who 
shrieked and hugged the walls as they came through carrying balks of timber and 
tools.
They were followed by another Change. He was short with preternaturally long 
arms and legs. He did notice the women but only to wink at them and leer as he 
followed the bearers into the room set aside for the perfumery.
"I want it over there," Megan said, pointing to a wall that got a decent amount 
of light.
"Build it, build it," the shorter Change said. "Sammy build it he will!"
The Change started pulling out tools with what appeared to be complete 
randomness but he worked incredibly quickly, all the time singing and humming to 
himself. In less than thirty minutes he had taken the raw wood and constructed a 
heavy-duty table without using a single nail or glue.
Megan watched the proceedings with interest. The Change had never bothered to 
measure anything but the table appeared to be perfectly level and was extremely 
sturdy. As he was sanding the top she shook it, but it barely budged.
"Build!" Sammy yelled. "Solid. Live longer than Sammy it will!" He smoothed the 
top as the bearers left the room to another cacophony of screams, then began 
applying lacquer to the whole thing.
"Well, Sammy, you did a very nice job here," Megan said. "I'm going to go see 
about some glassware."
"Build!"
She thought about the construction as she walked back to the dining room. Paul 
wasn't only building legions of fighters, but other specialties. She suddenly 
had a vision, as if she had been there, of rank upon rank of "Sammies" 
specialized for metalwork turning out weapons and armor for the legions. Of more 
Sammies building ships and engines of war.
She wondered, if Paul's faction won this war, if this was the fate of mankind. 
If, with the unlimited power and knowledge of Mother available, the New Destiny 
faction would turn everyone into narrow, specialized, insects. What, then, would 
be the fate of Megan "Sung"? Would she be specialized for providing sex to a 
wretched old pervert, so far beyond the bounds of sanity that he thought the 
women of his harem were happy to be here?
In all honesty she knew that most of the women in the harem were happy to be 
here. The life was far easier than anything since the Fall. And, as Marlene was 
only too happy to point out, all you had to do was lie on your back and spread 
your legs from time to time.
All.
And who was Sammy? Who had he been before he was Changed? What had caused them 
to Change him into this . . . builder-goblin? Had he angered some council 
member, one of their staff? Or had he simply been chosen at random. "Five orcs, 
next one's a builder . . ."
She shuddered at the thought and, deep inside, admitted that maybe there were 
worse things than having to fake enjoying being raped every few weeks. Even if 
the person they happened to no longer knew it.


CHAPTER SIX
Megan was in the still-room trying to convince rose water not to boil when 
Shanea came in.
"Paul's here," Shanea whispered.
"I guess I should go get dressed," Megan said, looking down at her spotted robe.
"And fix your hair," Shanea replied, pulling at her arm.
Megan turned down the oil lamp and went up the corridor. Other girls were 
rushing past her but she ignored them. Once in her room she stripped off the 
robe and started to pick up another.
"You probably should wear . . . you know," Shanea said, picking up the few 
decimeters of material.
"I probably should," Megan groaned. "God help me."
"Have you seen the one that Mirta made for Amber?" Shanea asked, helping her 
into the skirt.
"No, is it as bad as this?"
"Covers practically everything," Shanea answered. "In gauze. I don't think she's 
wearing it, though. And Mirta's not done with mine."
"I need to talk to Mirta about the fabric closet," Megan said, making a mental 
note. "I think she probably has some suggestions."
"Probably," Shanea said, taking Megan's hair down from the bun she'd had it in 
and brushing it out. "It's snarled."
"I can't keep it down around the flames; I'd end up burning it." Megan sighed 
and winced as the tangles were pulled out. "That will have to do."
"Everyone else is made up," Shanea pointed out.
"This will have to do," Megan stated.
The two girls walked down the corridor to the main room. Paul was still there, 
talking with Christel, who did not look happy. Paul looked, if anything, worse 
than the last time they had seen him and Megan noticed that his hands were worn 
and almost white. It looked, impossible as that seemed, as if he'd been washing 
clothes by hand, probably with lye soap.
"Ah, Megan," Paul said when she walked in the room. "I was wondering where you 
were."
"Megan has many projects at the moment," Christel said, subtly shifting to be 
between them.
"Surely none that require her attention right now," Paul replied, walking around 
Christel to take Megan's hand. "You look lovely."
Most of the girls in the room had made heavy use of the cosmetics Megan had 
procured and had donned their best outfits. She got vile looks as Paul led her 
into the room.
This time she tried very hard to if not enjoy the act, at least appear to. After 
the first "session" she had had nightmares three nights running. The worst was 
when she awoke with the face of her father over her. That had brought her as 
close as she had ever gotten to suicide. But she had tried to mentally prepare 
herself for the next time, knowing that with no way to avoid it, the better she 
could make it for herself, the better off she would be.
However, there was no foreplay or even time for her to prepare herself. Paul 
took her practically as soon as the door was closed, pushing her to the floor 
and thrusting into her, hard. She tried to loosen up, to moisten up, moaning, 
badly, as if she enjoyed it. But he came quickly and then rolled off of her, 
pulling on his pants quickly and not looking at her.
"I guess you like the outfit," Megan said. He'd pulled the halter away from her 
breasts and she'd managed to get the skirt out of the way of any outflow. But 
the outfit had never really come off.
"Maybe too much," Paul said, getting up and starting to retrieve his shirt.
As she wiped herself she looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
"Paul," she said. "what's wrong?"
"Nothing," he replied, dismissively.
"Was it me?" she asked with a plaintive note in her voice.
"No, sweetling," he said, sitting down by her. "It's just work."
"You look tense," she said. "Lie down."
"Why?"
"On your stomach," she replied, pushing him over. She rolled over and straddled 
his back, the skirt hiking up out of her way. She thought for a moment of simply 
hammer-driving his upper vertebrae, but she wasn't sure if his healing nannites 
would cure it. And whoever took over from him was sure to kill her, even if she 
succeeded. Instead, she took her thumbs and started digging them into his back, 
rolling upward with strong, firm, strokes.
"God that feels good," Paul exclaimed. He pillowed his head on his hands and 
rolled his back up. "Thank you."
"Now, what's so troubling at work?" she asked. "Don't you dare tense up on me," 
she added, pushing at the muscle that had bunched at her words until it had 
eased back down.
"It's nothing I think you'd be interested in," Paul said.
"Probably not," Megan said. "But verbalizing a problem is quite often a way for 
the unconscious to find a solution. You talk, I'll massage. Call it division of 
labor."
Paul laughed at that but was quiet for a while as she continued massaging his 
back.
"Minjie Jiaqi's aide killed him and took his Key," Paul said, finally. "He's 
willing to join with New Destiny, but he's putting too many conditions on it for 
me to feel that I can trust him. Minjie had been a friend for years. I don't 
feel happy just letting the son of a bitch get away with it."
"Good God," Megan said. "I hope the Coalition doesn't know."
"They don't," Paul replied. "We have a very good source close to their Council. 
But the problem is . . ."
"You're tensing up again," Megan warned. "Talk, don't tense."
"The problem is that if he feels he can go his way, the others will too," Paul 
snarled.
"Calm," Megan said. "Shuuuh. Talk it out."
"I'm holding a tiger by the tail, honey," Paul said, rolling out from under her 
and sitting up. "The council members that side with me don't understand the 
importance. Really, only Minjie ever did. Celine wanted to be able to make her 
damned abominations. Chansa . . . Chansa just wants power, direct power. The 
kind that the Council couldn't really wield before the Fall. Reyes has his . . . 
girls." Paul stopped and looked to the side, shaking his head. "Every time I 
come in here I think of the . . . the horror that they are suffering and it just 
makes me want to throttle that perverted bastard."
"You need some more massage, Mister Paul, sir," Megan said, grabbing him by the 
shoulder and pushing him facedown again. "So how do you keep them in line?"
"Subtly," Paul muttered. "For one thing, all their guards are bound to me. They 
didn't notice at first and since they have I've been quite pleasant but very 
definite about it. The thing is, if one of them decides to defy me, I can take 
them out at any time. Furthermore, it's my guards who hold the power plants and 
my word that locks the shields. And I'm very careful to remain shielded myself. 
When I'm in here, no one can enter or leave and there's a shield up to ensure 
that. But this Patala bastard had all my guards killed and refuses to have them 
replaced. He doesn't have access to much power; I could destroy him in an 
instant. But I'm afraid if I do, it will cause the others to react."
"How was Minjie killed?" Megan asked. She lay down on his back, pressing her 
breasts into his muscles and rolling them around. "Now, doesn't that feel 
better?"
"Oh, very much so," Paul said, rolling over.
She mounted him, smiling sweetly, trying hard to enjoy it enough to get moist 
and started moving up and down. To her surprise she actually did start to enjoy 
herself, at least partially because she was looking at his unguarded neck. She 
clamped down on him and leaned in, stroking up and down, imagining cracking his 
hyoid bone and watching him choke to death on his own blood. When she realized 
she was finding sexual pleasure in the thought, she tried to think of something, 
anything, else.
"How was Minjie killed?" she asked, panting.
"You want to know now?" Paul gasped.
"Um, hmmm."
"Binary toxin," Paul said. "Part in his food, part in his wine. By the time the 
nannites could react, he was already effectively dead." He rolled her over and 
began thrusting until he came and collapsed onto her, burying his face against 
her neck.
"Kill him," she said, grabbing his hair and pulling his head back to where she 
could look in his eyes. "Have him assassinated. Quietly. Then make a deal with 
his aide. Don't fuck with me, I won't kill you."
"How?" Paul asked as he drew out of her.
She knew the answer but wasn't about to tell him.
"That should be easy to figure out," Megan said. "Have Celine do it."
"Hmmm . . ."
"There," she said, using a corner of a towel to wipe herself, "don't you feel 
better?"
"Yes," he replied, kissing her on the lips and running his tongue into her 
mouth. He needed to use a toothbrush and he smelled. "Thank you."
"I live to serve," she said, running her hands over the back of his neck. She 
knew damned well how she would kill this unnamed usurper. The only problem was 
escaping after she did it.
* * *
Paul returned over the next three days in quick succession, each time looking 
more worn and wan. Each time he chose at least one of the girls, sometimes two. 
Twice in the three days it was Megan, to her well-hidden disgust.
After the quick succession of visits Paul didn't come back for two weeks and 
then another long pause of almost a month. The last visit he bedded Ashly and 
Velva, one of Ashly's little clique, giving them something to talk about for 
days.
This pattern continued for months. From time to time one of the girls would 
begin showing signs of being pregnant and after a brief check by Christel she 
would be whisked out of the harem and into the confinement quarters.
Each month, Megan secretly prayed that she wouldn't be one of them. If she was 
taken out of the harem, away from her "experiments," away from the books that at 
least gave her a few hours of work during the week, if she was simply cooped up 
and fed like some damned brood mare, she was sure she would go completely 
insane.
She wondered, as the time passed, about the pregnancy rate. She had spent enough 
time on the outside to know that farmers' wives spent most of their time 
"knocked up." But over a six-month period, only two of the girls tested 
pregnant. A similar group on the outside would be at least an order of magnitude 
more efficient as "breeders."
But given Paul's infrequent visits, the rate was not so surprising. A couple of 
visits a month, one maybe two of the girls "taken" at apparent random and there 
was no way that the rate was going to be much higher. And he was getting to be 
in terrible shape. She had to wonder if his nannites were bothering to maintain 
his sperm count. It was just another of Paul's studied blindnesses. He had a 
"duty" to perform, even if he was performing it badly. The fact that this "duty" 
happened to be sex with voluptuous young females, none of whom had a say in the 
matter, was quite beside the point, of course. It was just another proof that 
Paul was absolutely crackers.
But, as the time went on, despite the many things she now had to occupy her, 
Megan looked forward to his infrequent visits. The disgust was starting to fade 
and that terrified her. By the sixth month of captivity, she was beginning to 
look forward to the act, to the sex. It no longer felt like rape and she was 
horrified that she was actually starting to enjoy Paul's company. He was smart, 
very smart, and when he did bother to talk he was interesting. The chance to 
know something of what was happening outside the harem was delightful. To listen 
to the intrigues that were going on among the New Destiny faction and, from time 
to time, to hear about the actions of the Freedom Coalition that fought against 
them.
What was even more horrible was, she began to enjoy him as a bed partner and he 
definitely seemed to prefer her to the other girls. The dreams continued but 
more and more they tended to be erotic rather than nightmares. Or, they were 
nightmares, because the dreams never really changed; she'd see his face above 
her, taking her. But the fear and anger and disgust drained out of them as time 
went by. The helplessness was still there, but something in her was changing. 
When she had him at her relative mercy, she no longer looked at him as a target. 
The plans were still there, remaining in the background, waiting the proper 
time, but she no longer thought of killing him when he was inside her. She 
wanted him. And she hated herself for it.
* * *
"Here it is," Megan said, holding up a small bottle filled with yellow liquid.
The still-room was now filled with odd scents, a complex of strong musk, rose 
water and an undertinge of sulfur. Ceramic bowls bubbled over charcoal braziers 
and a small complex of distilling equipment dripped liquid into a small glass 
jar. The end of the table was covered in a pile of spices and several sealed 
bottles were scattered around them.
Christel took the bottle and removed the stopper, sniffing at the liquid.
"Oh," she said, tipping some of the liquid out and rubbing it on her inner 
wrists. "Wonderful!" she exclaimed, sniffing at her wrist.
"It's not very potent," Megan noted. "The scent will wear off quickly. I need a 
secondary distilling apparatus to get it to be real perfume as opposed to a very 
light cologne."
"Can you do that?" Christel asked. She sniffed at her wrist and noticed that the 
scent had already begun to fade.
"Oh, yes," Megan said. "But it will have to be ordered from a glassmaker. The 
cost is well within our . . . well I've got it listed as 'fripperies' budget. 
The cloth to make clothes, board games, that sort of thing. We haven't really 
touched the budget on that. And the glassware isn't all that expensive."
"All right," Christel said, sniffing at her wrist again and touching some of the 
cologne behind her ears.
"Um. I'd sort of hoped that I could . . . use this to trade," Megan said. "I 
can't sew and I was hoping I could trade this with the other girls. Obviously, 
you have first dibs."
"Obviously," Christel smirked. "But that's fine. Just don't start too many 
fights, okay?"
"Okay."
Christel looked around the room and then under the workbench.
"What is that big bucket?" she asked.
"That's sort of the junk left over," Megan said. "I'm going to have to have it 
hauled out sooner or later, but there are two hogsheads for it. They're plastic 
lined, so they won't leak."
"Okay," Christel replied, looking around and shaking her head. "You really do 
surprise me, Megan."
"Thank you, ma'am," the girl said as the older woman left the room. "I certainly 
hope so."


CHAPTER SEVEN
Megan was frowning at the latest bill for cosmetics when Paul suddenly appeared 
in the office. She let out a slight shriek and the paper she was holding flew 
across the room.
"Jesus, Paul!" she snapped. "Ding a bell when you're porting or something!"
"I'm sorry," Paul said, then frowned at her, looking at the papers scattered 
across the desk. "What are you doing in here?" he added severely, the frown 
creating a furrow between his eyebrows. He had lost weight even in the last few 
weeks and was so thin his ribs showed. His clothes weren't as elegant, either. 
Actually, he looked like a walking corpse.
"I'm doing the accounts these days," Megan said, waving at the papers and 
worrying about the change in his appearance. Paul dying from malnutrition was 
not part of her plans. "And other things."
"What 'other things'?" Paul asked, dangerously. There was an almost feral light 
in his eyes as he stared at her. "And why are you doing the accounts?" he asked, 
harshly.
"The 'other things' is making perfume," she said, coming gracefully to her feet 
and walking over so he could smell the underside of her wrist.
"Nice," Paul said, mollified. "You make it?"
"I have to." She frowned in turn, returning to the desk, and sitting in the 
graceful motion Mirta had taught her. "Do you know that there's not a single 
perfumer in all of Ropasa? Saving me, of course. You want to make some money 
instead of spending it for a change?"
"Making perfume?" Paul snorted.
"Perfume was a major trade item in preindustrial days, Paul," Megan replied, 
hotly. "Given what I'm paying for cosmetics for the girls, I could make a 
killing if I was still on the outside. Setting up a perfumery would be 
expensive, but I'd recoup the investment in a year!"
"You're not getting out of here, Megan," Paul said, kindly, squatting by the 
desk. "You have more important work to do. Don't . . . don't make the mistake 
that some have made."
"Paul, I'm not trying to escape, okay?" Megan replied, wondering and fearing at 
the truth in the statement. "I don't even know where we are. Okay, I got up to a 
window, that I couldn't fit through, and looked out. We're in a castle. Big 
surprise. We're in a castle on a mountain. We're in a castle on a mountain that 
has a valley down below and other mountains in the distance. Paul, I could be 
anywhere in Ropasa, okay? And I got enough of a look to see that there are about 
a billion Changed guarding the castle. There's a town in the valley. Why do I 
think it's probably crawling with your forces? Paul, I'm not trying to run away. 
I'm just saying that you're leaving money on the table, here!"
Paul looked at her for a moment and then laughed, finally sitting down on a 
pillow, some of the tension going out of his face.
"You've changed," he said, still chuckling.
"What do you mean?" she asked, cautiously.
"Where's the meek little Megan that I found by the side of the stream?" Paul 
said. "Meek, scared little Megan. She's disappeared and been replaced by a 
coldhearted business woman who wants to make a killing in the perfume business."
"Little Megan is still here," she said, smiling. She shook her head at his 
appearance, though. "Paul, what have you been doing to yourself? You look like a 
damned ghost. How long has it been since you've laughed?"
"Too long," he admitted, frowning. "The world is such a terrible place right 
now, Megan. That bitch Sheida and her lackeys . . ."
"Paul," Megan said gently. "You need to get some rest."
"There's too much to do," he said, almost wailed. "I'm holding on with both 
hands, as tight as I can, and I can feel it all slipping away!"
"Paul," Megan said, severely. "Go take a shower, maybe a bath. No, wait . . ." 
She thought for a moment and then nodded. "Stay here. Don't go anywhere. 
Promise?"
"Promise," Paul said. "But why?"
"Why do you come here, Paul?" Megan asked.
"Because I have a duty . . ." Paul started to say.
"And we have a duty, too," Megan replied, cutting him off. "More than just to 
make babies. You're the most important man in the world, right now. Our duty is 
to make sure you can do yours, and we've clearly been falling down on the job."
"That's what Christel says, but . . ."
"Christel, Schmistel," Megan snorted. "I'm sorry; she's good for keeping the 
girls in line but there's a reason I'm doing the accounts. Face it, Paul, she's 
not the brightest leaf in the tree. I know what you need, and you're going to 
get it. So you wait right here."
She got up and walked into the main room, pointing at Shanea, who was talking to 
Mirta, and then at Mirta. She walked over to Christel and squatted down.
"Paul is here and he looks awful," she said to the woman.
"In the office?" Christel said, flustered and getting to her feet. "He'll want 
to check the books . . ."
"I'll handle it," Megan said, laying her hand on the woman's arm. "Let me handle 
this, okay? He needs rest. You've tried your arguments, let me try mine, okay?"
Christel looked at her, and at the door, frowning.
"Christel, I don't want your job," Megan said, softly. "I don't want to try to 
keep the girls in line. I don't want to hold the whip. I don't, okay? But what 
happens if Paul kills himself from neglect?"
The woman gulped and shook her head. "I don't know, I suppose . . ."
"You suppose what?" Megan said, softly but fiercely. "That Chansa would take us 
under his wing? Not hardly. We'd probably go to Reyes, who goes through women 
like a shark though a school of fish. Or to service the Changed. Or be Changed. 
Maybe even turned over to Celine." The latter council member was the source of 
most of the monsters that had been created for New Destiny's war. Most of them 
had started off as human beings. Under the rules pre-Fall they still were human 
beings. But nobody who had seen them or heard of them could think of them that 
way.
"They wouldn't . . ." Christel said, desperately.
"Yes they would and you know it," Megan replied. "So we have to make sure that 
Paul survives. You were right all along; we're here for Paul's needs. But he has 
more needs than the 'duty' to turn up from time to time and inseminate us. And 
I'm going to prove it to him."
"Go," Christel said, finally. "Try it."
"I will," Megan replied. "Shanea, Paul is in the office. Go get him. Take . . . 
Velva. Take him to the baths. Bathe him, don't let him do a thing for himself. 
Don't have sex with him. If he says he wants to, tell him 'not now, later, just 
bathe now.' Got it?"
"Give Paul a bath," Shanea nodded, gulping. "Don't have sex with him, even if he 
wants it. What if he really wants it?"
"Really tell him, 'later.' When you two are done, bring him to his room in a 
robe," she turned to Mirta. "Mirta, get Amber into her costume, then go to the 
kitchen door. Get a platter. Light foods. Bread, fruit, cheese, a small carafe 
of wine. Then bring it and Amber to Paul's room."
"Paul has . . . problems with Amber," Christel said. "Are you sure . . . ?"
"I'm sure," Megan said, looking around. "Girls, go get into your new costumes. 
When Paul comes through from the bath, I want you to stand up and move in around 
him saying nice things. Nothing important, just that we're glad he's here. Don't 
be suggestive. And don't try to follow him in. If this works out I'm going to 
keep him here for at least a couple of days."
She looked at Shanea and Mirta, then gestured. "Go."
Megan stood for a moment, pulling at her hair, then turned to Christel.
"I have things I need in the workroom," she said. "If I could . . ."
"Go," Christel said, "you're doing fine. I think you're right, okay? Girls, what 
are you doing just sitting around? Up on your feet, go get dressed . . ."
* * *
Megan rushed to her room and grabbed up various pots, then to the abandoned 
still-room. Shanea had taken to watching the bubbling substances for her but 
with the girl otherwise occupied Megan turned down the heat on all the 
crucibles, grabbed some bottles and headed for the toilet.
There were other girls in there jockeying for position in front of the mirrors 
but Megan shoved one of them out of the way with her hip and carefully deposited 
her bundles on the countertop.
"Ashly," she said, looking over at where the blonde was brushing her hair in 
front of a mirror. "My next-stage perfumes; they're a little more concentrated. 
And I need somebody to mix something for me while I do my makeup."
Ashly looked at her as if she had grown another head, then nodded.
"Okay, Karie, you do the mixing," Ashly said, walking over to look at the 
bottles and pots. "What is all that?"
"Perfumes, oils, massage creams," Megan said. "Karie," she continued, opening up 
a jar and dropping a few milliliters of oil onto the cream inside. "Mix that up 
for me, please?"
"What is it?" Karie asked, sniffing at the contents.
"Almond massage paste, the oil is sesame," Megan said, looking in the mirror. "I 
don't have time," she muttered, picking up a flat of eye shadow.
"Vita, do her hair," Ashly said. "Megan, calm down. What the hell is wrong?"
"Did you see him?" Megan asked, turning to the girl. "He looks like a zombie."
"I saw. Megan, don't tell me you're falling in love," Ashly said, smirking.
Megan closed her eyes and decided not to "explain" to Ashly the facts of life, 
again. But it was tempting.
"No, I'm not falling in love," Megan replied, wondering if it was a true reply 
or not. "But if Paul dies, all this will go away and very bad things will 
probably happen to us, okay? I don't want that to happen. Do you?"
"No," Ashly said. "I hadn't thought . . ."
"Neither had Christel," Megan replied as Vita combed her hair and Ashly took the 
eye makeup out of her shaking hands.
"What are you going to do?" Vita asked. She was brushing Megan's hair up and out 
to make it appear larger.
"I'm going to make him the one happiest son of a bitch in the world," Megan 
replied. "I'm going to make him never want to leave. And then I'm going to 
convince him that, for the good of the world, he shouldn't for a while. A few 
days at least. And we're going to feed him up and primp him and pamper him until 
he's able to take care of himself again."
"And if you can't?" Ashly asked, brushing on the makeup expertly.
"Lightly, please," Megan said. "Then we might as well all cut our own throats. 
Do you want to be turned over to Reyes? Or the Changed?"
"Oh, God!" Vita said.
"Right, so we'd better make him really happy," Megan said, looking in the 
mirror. "Got it?"
"Got it," Ashly replied.
Megan picked up the pile of cloth at her feet and put on the new "outfit" that 
Mirta had made for her; a bikini bottom with a long "loincloth" front and back 
and a tight matching top like a sleeveless shirt that completely covered her 
breasts except for a swelling that dropped out from the bottom. It practically 
begged to be pushed up.
"You look like . . . well you look good," Ashly said.
"You all need to get dressed, too," Megan replied. "Hurry."
She picked up the pots, nodding at Karie and Ashly and practically ran out the 
door.
* * *
She dropped the pots in Paul's room and then ran back to the office, getting the 
synopsis of all the accounts that she had prepared. She knew that Christel 
usually covered them with Paul but that had to stop soon, too. There were too 
many inconsistencies that Christel, bless her black stupid heart, wouldn't know 
how to explain.
She piled the reports by the pillows and then assumed a modest position and 
waited. Before Paul got there Mirta came in with the platter of food and Amber. 
As Mirta left, she settled Amber in place, positioned the tray of food and wine, 
with the addition of a carafe of water, which was smart thinking on Mirta's 
part, and settled down to wait again. She had barely had time to rearrange the 
pillows when she heard a murmur from the main room and the door opened up. She 
could see that the girls were all in their finest and as Paul came in the room 
she imperceptibly waved at Velva not to follow him in. The girl looked 
nonplussed but closed the door behind her.
"Megan," Paul said, weakly, "this is all quite unnecessary . . ."
"Hush," Megan said, standing up and unbelting his robe. "Lie down."
"Megan," he said, looking at the other two girls.
"Have you bedded each of us?" Megan said, pushing him down.
"Well . . . yes . . . but . . ."
"Hush," she replied. "No talk. No work talk, no talk at all."
She rolled him over on his stomach and positioned Shanea and Amber on either 
side.
"Like this," she said, taking up a fingerful of the massage cream and dabbing it 
on his upper arm. She took Amber's hands and pushed the thumbs into the muscle, 
working down the arm. "Slowly and firmly, all the way down the arm. You 
understand? Don't pinch."
"Down the arm," Amber said with a nod, pressing into the flesh of his triceps. 
"Don't pinch."
"Shanea, you do the other arm," Megan said, rubbing the cream into his back, 
then beginning to massage.
"Oh that feels good," Paul murmured.
"You need to take better care of yourself, Paul Bowman," Megan replied, pressing 
into his muscles. They were firm from work but he was so skinny. "What happens 
to us if you die?"
"I won't die," Paul said, starting to push up.
"Don't you dare get up," Megan said, sternly. "We've barely gotten started."
She worked his back as the other girls worked on his arms and shoulders, then 
the three of them worked down his legs. As they massaged he began to relax and 
at one point gave a faint snore. He started at that and began to rise.
"And you haven't been getting enough sleep apparently," Megan said, pushing him 
back down. By then they'd worked most of the way down his legs and she pushed on 
him to roll over. She began massaging his pectorals and nodded downward at 
Shanea.
Shanea looked at her with a happy grin and slid downward, taking him in her 
mouth.
"Megan!" he said, his eyes flying open and his arms coming up.
"No, Shanea," Megan grinned. "Now lie there and enjoy."
"This isn't right," Paul said, lying back anyway. "People are starving and . . 
."
"And if you die, who will care about them?" Megan asked. "Chansa? Celine?"
"You have a point," Paul admitted.
She slid over and propped his head in her lap, then gestured at the platter. 
Amber had to think about it for a moment but then her eyes lit up and she slid 
the platter over, taking a plum from it and offering it to Paul.
Megan picked up a loaf of bread, still warm from the ovens, and broke off a 
piece. As soon as Paul was finished with the plum she handed him the bread and 
he tore into that as if he were starving.
"Softly," she said. "Slowly. You need to build your strength back up. And I'll 
tell you something, Paul Bowman, you are not leaving this . . . building until 
you are looking better than when you came in. And you had better be back soon 
for more pampering."
"This isn't right," Paul muttered, but he also didn't try to rise.
"My neck's getting tired," Shanea admitted. "You never give me enough practice 
at this, Paul."
"See?" Megan said, trying not to either laugh or cry. "You've been neglecting 
Shanea shamelessly, forcing her to lose the best of her arts."
"Oral sex does not get babies made," Paul pointed out.
"Babies won't get made, or have a protector, if you don't take care of 
yourself," Megan said, ruthlessly. "Amber, can you remember . . . ?" She pointed 
to where Shanea was idly stroking at his member.
"Yes," Amber said, moving down to replace the other girl. As she started, Paul 
groaned and reached out a hand to her.
"Amber," he said, sadly. "Of all the things I've done, I feel the worst about 
you."
Worse than throwing the world into barbarism? Megan thought, surprised at the 
sudden intensity of her anger.
"I think she's probably happier this way," was all she said. She picked up 
another piece of bread as Shanea snuggled into his side.
"Sometimes the caged nightingale won't sing," Paul murmured stroking the hair of 
the woman who was fellating him. "Did you know she was a . . . friend before the 
Fall?"
"Like Christel?" Megan asked, neutrally.
"Yes, I care for our daughter as well. But Amber could not adjust to the 
confinement I had to impose on her." He looked up and back at Megan. "You seem 
to have adjusted well."
That's because I'm working on the key to the lock at this very moment. 
"Some people can't handle change," she replied, picking up another piece of 
bread and feeding it to him. Shanea had slipped out of her top and was now 
lightly licking his chest, and he groaned again.
"Amber," he said, breathlessly.
The suit Mirta had made for the brain-drained girl covered her almost entirely, 
somewhat like a jumpsuit. But it was made of nearly transparent material that 
shifted in color and opaqueness as the light hit it, hiding and revealing in 
apparent randomness. It also had well-placed buttons and ties, and Amber 
obediently opened up the bottoms and mounted Paul.
He groaned again as she began to stroke and then came quickly.
"This is all too much," Paul said as Amber lifted herself off. Shanea picked up 
a cloth and wiped him clean, then ensured the job by lowering herself onto him 
again, working the area with her tongue, her head moving like a cat.
"This is all too much," Paul murmured again, then his head lay heavy in her lap.
Shanea looked up with an unhappy expression when she heard the snore.
"Stay here with him," Megan said, slipping his head off her lap and deftly 
sliding a pillow under it. "When he wakes up, send Amber to me and give him 
whatever he needs. No, let me make that clearer, when he wakes up, make sure he 
comes again, one way or another. But send Amber to me first."
She picked up the platter and stood up, walking to the door. It was only when 
she was through it that she realized she was the only one in the room who hadn't 
gotten involved in one form of sex or another and she was horrified to find 
herself regretting it.


CHAPTER EIGHT
"How is he?" Christel asked.
"Sleeping," Megan replied. Mirta took the tray from her and she thanked the 
seamstress with a nod.
"He never sleeps here!" Christel said.
"He will for the next few days if I've got my ducks in a row," Megan said. "He 
needs the rest."
"He's supposed to be guarded when he's sleeping," Christel pointed out. "Did he 
ask about the accounts?"
"The accounts never came up," Megan said. "Although other things did," she added 
with a grin.
"He'll never stay," Christel said. "He has things to do."
"Look, when he wakes up, first he gets screwed then we feed him," Megan said, 
lifting her fingers in order. "We feed him heavily, lots of meat and 
carbohydrates; he's bound to be hungry after two bouts of sex. When he's fed, we 
get him to come again. Between the food and the sex he'll fall asleep again. 
When he wakes up again, we might have an argument out of him. But if we have to, 
all the girls strip naked and pile on him in a giant scrum of bodies. There's 
not a man on earth who will try to run away if he's got fifteen naked girls 
holding him down and begging him to take them."
"You have a point," Christel said with a grin of her own.
"This is really important," Megan pointed out, again.
"I know," Christel replied. "Should somebody else go in there?"
"You know anyone else who has the patience of Amber and Shanea?" Megan asked, 
raising her eyebrows. "Why do you think I'm not in there. It's going to be lots 
of fun watching him snore."
"What about guards?" Christel asked.
"What about them?" Megan shrugged. "He's got a PPF; what more does he need?"
"They don't activate automatically anymore," Christel pointed out. "He has to 
summon it. What if someone broke in and tried to assassinate him?"
"Who?" Megan said, exasperated. "They'd have to get through the Changed guards 
around the castle and then through us, which, admittedly, wouldn't be hard. But 
by then he'd be up and prepared. He's safe, Christel. The only person who is 
going to kill Paul is Paul himself. And that's what we've got to convince him 
not to do."
* * *
Megan was in the distillery when Amber came to get her and she hurried at once 
to Paul's room, pulling off the robe she'd used to cover her outfit as she went.
When she entered Shanea was already fellating him, stroking up and down hard. 
Paul looked up in annoyance as the door opened and then in something like shame 
when he saw who it was.
"I don't like being watched," he said, his face wrinkling up in worry.
"Then why don't I join in?" Megan said, stripping off the panties of her outfit 
and pushing Shanea aside as she slid onto him.
"Hey, mine," Shanea said, jokingly.
"Later maybe," Megan said, sliding up and down on him. Fortunately he'd been 
premoistened and she found herself rapidly lubricating the area. After a short 
time she rolled over and pulled him onto her, grabbing his buttocks and digging 
her fingernails in. He pumped at her hard and rapidly and, as always, came a bit 
too soon.
"I need to go," Paul said, getting to his feet.
"Not until you've had something to eat," Megan said, gesturing at his robe. 
Shanea obediently picked it up and put it on him.
"Come on out in the common room," Megan said. "The rest of the girls want to see 
you, too."
She cleaned up, put on her bottoms and led him out into the common room, 
settling him on some pillows with girls on either side. The she went to the 
dining room, dragging Shanea with her.
"Marlene," she called from beyond the doorway. She had already determined that a 
field extended out for at least a meter into the dining room. If one of the 
harem girls moved into the field she got a very unpleasant pain jolt. She 
wondered if it extended to the other side of the doorway as well. If not, it 
might be possible to throw yourself through the field. On the other hand, she 
had no intention of trying to find out.
"You rang?" Marlene said, coming through the door with a tray covered by a 
silver lid.
"Thank God," Megan said, taking the tray.
"And I've made up another with cakes and other goodies so the girls can eat, 
too," Marlene said as a servant came through the doorway. "He might not if they 
don't have anything."
"Thank you," Megan said, nodding at Shanea to take the second tray.
"I heard why you are doing this," Marlene said, looking her in the eye.
"Just my duty to help my lord and master," Megan replied, smiling.
"Mirta says more with a glance than you do with a sentence," Marlene grinned. 
"Paul might like a couple of those cakes as well; make sure the girls don't 
stuff themselves silly."
"I will," Megan said. "Later."
Megan walked back to where Paul was listening to Ashly tell about her latest 
triumph in backgammon. It was apparent that he was trying to be interested and 
failing miserably.
"More food?" he asked, as Megan sat down and opened up the cover.
Marlene had outdone herself. There was some sort of meat covered in a red wine 
sauce and beautifully sculpted portions of potatoes, lightly grilled tomatoes 
and a green mash that had been shaped into the form of a flower. Shanea had 
opened up the other tray and was distributing small, glazed cakes to the girls, 
one apiece, and whispering that they were supposed to make them last.
"More food," Megan replied, picking up a fork as he reached for it. "Ah, ah, you 
don't do anything for yourself."
"I can feed myself," Paul said, but he let her section small bites of the food 
and shovel them in his mouth. When a few crumbs fell off the fork, Ashly 
helpfully leaned forward and licked them off of him. By then Christel had turned 
up with another carafe of chilled wine and fed him sips between bites.
"What are you doing to me?" Paul asked, looking at Megan.
"Pampering you," Megan said. "We'll stop when you learn to take care of 
yourself."
"Okay, I promise not to learn to take care of myself," Paul said, laughing as 
the last of the food was served.
"Good," Megan said, honestly. Having him here a lot worked perfectly. She 
unbelted his robe and kissed his chest, licking at it lightly.
"Megan, not here," he groaned.
"Here," she said, reaching over and pushing Ashly's head towards his crotch. She 
would have grabbed Shanea, not knowing how Ashly would feel about it, but Shanea 
was just out of reach.
Suddenly she found a breast in her face as Karie sidled up on one side and she 
backed away as the rest of the girls closed in on him.
She stood up and looked at Christel who winked back at her. So there was more 
than one plan afoot; good.
Megan backed away from the pile and gestured with her head at Christel.
"How do we get him back to sleep?" Megan whispered.
"Oh, I think when they're done with him he'll sleep," Christel chuckled quietly.
"I think they'll all sleep," Megan said, turning her head to the side. Paul 
wasn't the only one who was having fun in the pile. Ashly, who was still 
stroking for all her neck would bear, was sitting on Shanea's face. And there 
was no way that Shanea had been forced to the position; she'd been on the other 
side of the pile to start. But Shanea wasn't lacking as somebody's hand was down 
in her crotch and that led to . . . maybe Velva . . . 
"It looks like an erotic M.C. Escher painting," Megan muttered, shaking her 
head.
"Good work." Christel chuckled again.
"Sure, laugh," Megan replied. "I've got distillation to attend to."
"Go for it," Christel said, stripping off her clothes. "I've got better things 
to do. All this needs is a half a ton of whipped cream and five more males."
Megan shook her head as Christel writhed into the group. She fully intended to 
just go back to her, lonely, workroom and keep distilling the various substances 
she had concocted. But the more she thought about it, the more she watched, just 
standing there as the pile writhed in a tangle of limbs like some giant fleshy 
amoeba.
But far more attractive.
"Oh the hell with perfume." She sighed, aware that she had reached a point where 
she wasn't about to go to her workroom. Although the bath had some interest. 
Finally, she took a deep, shuddering breath, stripped off her clothes and dove 
into the pile.
Christel was right; it needed whipped cream.


CHAPTER NINE
Paul looked slightly shamefaced when he woke up in a pile of female limbs. But 
the first thing he saw was Megan, leaning on one arm, watching him.
"Was it just my imagination, or did I see your face in the middle of . . . 
this," he asked, gesturing at the girls, most of whom were still sleeping.
"It wasn't your imagination," Megan replied, shrugging.
He watched the way that moved her breasts and shook his head.
"I . . . didn't figure you for this sort of thing," he said, carefully.
"Neither did I," Megan admitted. "But it was pretty fun once I got over the 
idea."
"I have to get up," Paul said, trying to figure out how to crawl out and disturb 
the least number of people.
"You are staying here at least one more day," Megan said, sternly. "You looked 
like death-on-a-cracker when you came in and you still don't look good."
"I've got things I have to do," Paul said. "Besides go to the bathroom."
"It's over there." Megan gestured with her chin. "But you'd better come back 
out, too."
"I will," Paul said.
When he came back out he was wearing one of the standard robes and he sat down 
on a pillow, turning his head to the side as he contemplated Megan.
"What are you doing awake at . . ." he paused and obviously consulted the Net, 
"three a.m.?"
"I get enough sleep in the harem." Megan shrugged. "I wasn't tired. I was 
watching you."
"Watching me sleep?" Paul asked. "Or watching over me?"
"A little of both. Watching and thinking."
"How easy it would be to kill me?" Paul asked.
"Damage you, yes," Megan said. "Kill would be for all practical purposes 
impossible. And if I even tried, well, the best that might happen is that I'd 
wind up like Amber. And, hell, I don't want to kill you. I did at first, but I 
don't want to anymore."
"Do you know why?" he asked quietly.
"No," Megan replied, sitting up. "Tell me, O Wise One."
Paul smiled and said something softly.
"Have you ever heard of the Sabine women?" Paul asked.
Megan thought about it for a long time and then shook her head.
"I think my mother mentioned the term," she said. "But I don't recall anything 
about it."
"Very old legend," Paul said, taking a sip of wine. "The Romans were short on 
women so they invited a neighboring tribe, the Sabines, to a festival in honor 
of the gods. Under a binding truce of course. At the height of the party, the 
Roman young men took off with the Sabine's wives and daughters while the older 
men held off the Sabines. Then they raped them and took them as their wives. 
Quite a few years later the Sabines had built up enough force to fight the 
Romans and, hopefully, destroy them. But the Sabine women convinced them not to 
kill their new husbands. After a while the Sabine tribe was absorbed by the 
Romans."
Megan frowned. "It's a legend."
"A legend that has had a ring of truth to this day." Paul sighed. "Because the 
psychological basis of it started to be understood in the twentieth century, 
starting with something called the Stockholm Effect. People tend to bond to 
their captors in personalized imprisonments. Most of the real-life examples have 
faded over the last few millennia but there are tens of thousands of them that 
have been studied. And the psycho-physiological effects, even the evolutionary 
bases, are easily traceable. Women who have been kidnapped and imprisoned tend 
to bond to their captors even more readily and to fall in love with them. Tend. 
Not always, humans are individuals. But it's the majority."
"I've fallen in love with my kidnapper," she said, hanging her head.
"You've fallen in love with your kidnapper," Paul confirmed. "It's not nice, 
it's not the way that things are 'supposed' to be. But it's very real and it's 
very human and it's something that I counted upon when I set up this . . . 
group. It probably goes back to prehuman conditions. Young female chimpanzees 
that are thrown out of their packs are often found by males from other packs. 
When they are, they are forced back to the area that the females stay in and are 
brutalized until they stay there of their own free will. To the point of 
preventing new females from attempting to escape. I have not brutalized you 
girls, but do you think Christel, for example, would support any plans to 
escape?"
"No," Megan said.
"I could postulate a race which is different," he paused and chuckled grimly. 
"Actually, I don't have to. The elves are different. Attempt to rape or imprison 
an elf and you'd better have lots of chains. And a gag."
"You haven't . . ." Megan said, her eyes wide.
"Never," Paul replied, definitely. "But some have tried from time to time, 
especially in the years when they lived among humans; elves were always 
beautiful. But the elves have no submit in them. They do not change their . . . 
emotions under stress. Put them in an imprisonment situation and they will 
always try to escape. They will tend, very hard, to try to kill their guards, 
even if it means their own deaths. Humans, though, tend to make the best of a 
bad situation. Even to the point of falling in love." He looked at her tenderly 
and smiled. "I take it you're human?"
"Very," she admitted.
"Amber, though, seemed to be part elf," Paul sighed. "She never would submit to 
this necessity and when she plotted to kill Christel and escape I was forced to 
make her . . . more compliant."
Megan shuddered and shook her head. "Paul, do me a favor. If I ever go insane 
and do something that makes you have to do that, just kill me, okay?"
"I truly hope it never comes to that. You can't kill me, you know," he added, 
looking at her. "And if you even managed it through some miracle, it would be 
worse than it is now. That is part of this effect; faced with unpalatable 
choices humans choose the lesser of the evils and live through them as best they 
can. But you don't want to anymore, do you?"
She thought of all the nights that she had cried for her loss and the pain. And 
of all the times they had talked. She probably knew more about the inner 
workings of the New Destiny faction than anyone not a part of it. And she knew 
that she no longer wanted to kill him. It didn't mean she wouldn't, but she 
didn't want to.
"No," she answered honestly, dipping her head again and fighting not to cry.
"If it helps you at all, I love you, too," Paul said. "You're . . . very 
precious to me. Sometimes when I come here it is only to see you. I can't talk 
to other people as I can with you. I certainly can't to anyone outside this 
group and of all the ones in it, the only other one that had your clarity of 
mind and ability to listen and make useful comments was Amber. And in the end, I 
had to make her safe."
"I won't force you to do the same to me," Megan said. "At least, I hope I never 
do."
"Do you know why the caged nightingale won't sing?" Paul asked.
"You said that before," she said, looking up with unshed tears in her eyes.
"It is because it knows that it is supposed to fly free," Paul said. "When you 
can't sing anymore, I'll know that it is time to release you . . . or know that 
you will never sing again." He looked at her sadly for a moment then stood up. 
"I have to go."
"Paul, you are not going anywhere," Megan said. "You're still not strong 
enough."
"I have things I have to do, Megan," Paul said. But when he stood he swayed on 
his feet.
"There," Megan said, triumphantly.
"Blood flow, that's all," Paul said. "I stood up too fast."
"I'll wake everybody up again and we'll start all over," Megan warned. "Where do 
you have to be? What can't you do from right here?"
"I need . . . I don't have to be anywhere. But I need to recall my avatars and 
find out what they have been doing while I've been . . . busy."
"You've got projections running and not monitoring them?" Megan asked.
"They're sentient avatars," Paul corrected. "For all practical purposes they are 
me. It was proscribed pre-Fall, but it's the only way to keep track of what is 
going on. I need to recall them, soon. They're not . . . fully stable. I need to 
recall them and then send out new ones."
"Well, you can do that here," Megan said. "Right?"
"I need to be undisturbed," Paul pointed out.
"There's an empty room right there," Megan said, pointing at his chamber. "And 
I'll make sure you're not disturbed. And when you're done, I'll make sure that 
you're fed and comforted and cosseted and . . ."
"Okay, okay." Paul laughed, hushing himself as one of the other girls stirred 
and snaked a hand across the body next to her. "I'll go in there."
"And I'll watch. Is there anything I should be aware of?"
"No, it's a harmless procedure," Paul said, walking to the room. "Mostly."
Paul reclined on one of the pillows and closed his eyes, appearing to go back to 
sleep or into a trance. But almost immediately he began to twitch as if hit by 
some invisible force. And he muttered.
"Bloody hell . . ." Pause. "No, no, no how stupid can one vacuous bitch be? 
Released?" Pause. "Ekmantan." Pause. "Ships? Dragon-carriers?" Pause. "Damn 
them."
"Talbot." A hiss of anger.
It went on for what seemed like hours and he became drenched with sweat, the 
increasing anger boiling off of him like a vapor.
She rose after a while and left quietly. All of the other girls were still in 
sodden slumber so she picked through the detritus of the orgy until she found 
the remains of the carafe of wine and a jug of water. She carried both in and 
resumed her vigil.
Paul finally settled down, stopped twitching, mostly, and appeared to dream. He 
muttered from time to time unintelligibly. She listened as closely as she could 
but there was nothing that was understandable. Finally, he opened his eyes, 
looking wan and pale.
"Harmless, huh?" she asked, sitting him up and propping pillows behind him. She 
held a glass of wine to his lips and then followed it with water.
"This one was harder than normal," he admitted. "I'd been away too long."
"And you do this regularly?" she asked.
"Usually every day," Paul admitted. "It's how I keep track."
"What are dragon-carriers?" she asked.
He looked at her sharply, then shrugged.
"The UFS has rigged out one of the warships to land and launch wyverns and 
greater dragons," Paul said. "I'd heard about it, but didn't really expect it to 
work. Well, it did. They destroyed the force that we sent down to the Isles to 
disrupt their negotiations with the mer. Now Chansa wants to build some of his 
own, so he can protect the invasion fleet."
"What do you think?" Megan asked.
"I think we're playing to their game and that's what I told Chansa," Paul 
replied. "We're just about evenly matched for power at this point, so we can't 
use that against them. But just making our own carriers isn't going to win us 
control of the sea. We need something to deal with the dragons. I told him to 
consult with Celine about modifying our dragons and get a group together to 
consider how to counter theirs."
"Do you think it will work?" Megan asked, handing him the water.
"We have to take Norau," Paul shrugged. "There are five power plants in Norau. 
We've tried everything from sedition to infiltrating attack teams, but most of 
them are well away from the coast and we can't use teleport. If we take the 
plants, or capture that bitch Sheida Ghorbani, the war will be over. But taking 
it will be . . . difficult. They've armed every peasant in the field and they 
make them train with the arms. There are areas that haven't done that, though, 
because Sheida's too stupid to make them. We're going to concentrate our attack 
on those areas. But we have to get there first, which means controlling the 
ocean. And we can't do that if one carrier can destroy six of our ships, five of 
them without ever coming in sight of the ships. And the carrier had less than a 
full complement of dragons."
"What are dragons afraid of?" Megan said. She'd wished for a month now that she 
had some way to get word to the other side. This was operational intelligence, 
stuff that could be acted on. Especially if she found out the counter plans. She 
had to figure some way to smuggle out information. There had to be a way.
"Nothing that I'm aware of," he said, getting a far away look as he accessed the 
Net. "Their wings are monomolecule fibers, so no hurting them there. Their 
underbellies aren't, though. I'd say that a well-placed ballista bolt would take 
one down."
"Lots of dragons?" Megan prompted.
"Lots of bolts," Paul smiled in response. "Chansa's problem, I'll let him come 
up with the solution."
"Who is Talbot?" Megan asked. "You've mentioned him before."
"Duke the Honorable Charles or Edmund, take your pick, fucking Talbot," Paul 
said with a frown. "He was one of Sheida's little fuck boys before she became a 
council member. He apparently threw her over for her sister. He's now the 
commander of the eastern defenses in Norau and he was on the mission to the 
mer-folk. Apparently he put some spine in those Changed abominations, because 
they killed everything that Chansa sent at them. Chansa is simply furious. He 
not only lost the orcas and a kraken but a reasonably competent field agent and 
a very good source. All thanks to Duke Fucking Talbot."
Megan decided that she much wanted to meet "Duke Fucking Talbot" someday and 
give him a very friendly kiss.
"And the rest?"
"We've settled the negotiations with the replacement for Minjie's replacement," 
Paul said with a grin. "You had a perfect plan there, my dear. I let Celine 
handle all the arrangements. I understand they almost have the blood off the 
walls. She sent a very small and somewhat intelligent spider into his quarters. 
When he was in flagrante delicto, it bit him and paralyzed him. Then its momma 
came in and finished off the job."
"What happened to the girl?" Megan said, horrified.
"Boy as it turns out," Paul replied. "Nothing, the spiders had very specific 
instructions. I made that clear to Celine. Much more horrible that way."
"Paul," Megan said, glancing around. "I can't guarantee I'd notice a spider."
"I would, my dear," Paul smiled. "I don't keep up a PPF when I'm with you 
ladies, but nothing can come in or out."
"I got food and drink from the kitchen," Megan pointed out.
"Only because I relaxed the protocols to let you," Paul replied. "And the 
kitchen itself is sealed. I also sweep for anything that might be one of 
Celine's little monsters, not to mention poisons. You have a few lovely items in 
your lab, by the way. What do you use sulfuric acid for?"
"Reagent," Megan said. "It's used to transform some of the products that I get 
to add a sulfur molecule. That makes them more volatile."
"Ah," Paul said, getting a far-away look. "Actually, most of the stuff that you 
use for perfumes is poisonous in sufficient concentration." He looked at her and 
smiled. "But not to me, of course. It takes something much more subtle than 
concentrate of rose hips."
"People used to die from cosmetic poisoning," Megan shrugged. "Heavy metals. And 
painting. Painters didn't always start mad, but lick enough paint brushes that 
have been covered in vermilion, which was basically mercury, and you get a 
little brain addled. Not to mention that lovely yellow from lead."
Paul got a far away look again and then smiled. "You are a font of knowledge my 
dear."
"I like chemistry," Megan said with a shrug. Of course, mostly from a forensic 
side, but let's not go there. "Half of chemistry is knowing what you don't want 
to swallow."
Paul yawned and smiled at her.
"Could I convince you to snuggle down here with me?" he asked, patting at the 
cushions. "Just like two people who enjoy each other? Not one of my girls who 
feel they have to . . . service me. Just . . . friends?"
"Yes, Paul," she said, lying down in his arms. "I think we could do that."
"Always sing for me," he murmured as he coasted on the edge of sleep.
"Always, my dear," she whispered. Till death do us part. 


Appendix
New Destiny Key-holders
  1. Paul Bowman, Leader of New Destiny, Minister for Ropasa
  2. Chansa Mulengela, Minister for Frika, Marshall of the Great Army
  3. Celine Reinshafen, Minister for Ephresia, Chief of Research and Development
  4. Lupe Ugatu (Vice Minjie Jiaqi), Governor of Hindi (in dispute)
  5. Reyes Cho, Minister for Soam
  6. Jassinte Arizzi, Minister for Chin (in dispute)
  7. Demon, lone actor


Freedom Coalition Key-holders
  1. Sheida Ghorbani, Her Majesty of the United Free States, Chairman of the 
  Freedom Coalition
  2. Ungphakorn, Lord of Soam
  3. Ishtar, Counselor of Taurania and the Stanis States
  4. Aikawa Gouvois, Emperor of Chin
  5. Lenora Sill


Neutral:
  The Finn


THE END