The Gaming Outpost

Luisa nervously walked barefooted, her dress hem swinging with each vigorous step, down the right-hand grassy rut. In her hands was her ‘walking stick’, legally three feet long, and not an inch longer. The air was balmy, and trees thrust out new growth on either side of the wagon track road, but her eyes kept moving, watching, searching.

“Push it.” The flat order echoed through the bridge, and the nav officer shoved the nozzles which mixed anti-matter and matter open to their greatest aperture. And the Seeker of Things slammed forward, kept from slaughtering its crew by the inertial damper fields.
“We’re going in on the plane of elliptic.” Kevin Largos spoke, and felt at his black velvet collar which covered a stiffening board that gouged at his throat. He was not used to his duty as a first lieutenant with the Seekr, but he had served as security on the Mary Piper, and so he had some notion of proper military behaviour.
“They wil be…” Expecting us, he thought to say.
“They are primitives, mostly. In this system, they have barriers to catch us, but not in front of the supposed Kuiper Belt, and despite the lack of evidence they still fudge their data to make an Oort Cloud appear. This makes it easier for us to sneak in.”

And so it was that the ship plunged undetected into the Veranek Solare System, until Luisa and the courser saw its drive flame. And then men in powered battle armor leapt off, and began to search for datafiles stolen centuries ago. The huntsman raised his legal gun to one of them, and that man obeying the dictates of training shot him down with a plasma bolt leaving Luisa to watch wide-eyed with praise to God as the shiny metal angels bounded away after striking down the thug with their sword of flame.

I swore to myself as I spun the wheel of my gold-painted runabout up over Whencolme Hill, through the one-lane switchback at the military crest of the hill where the Guards had resisted the Zamthos. The fools at High Councillor Rathwick’s champagnier saw the decay of the League cities of Westhumberland, the rise of the gangs of highwaymen being but one problem. But the only solutions they proffered made things worse.

“Let us raise taxes on the small merchants and the people to pay for private guards for the Great Houses.”

Trade ran on the League roads through deep forrests for civilization was but a couple centuries old in the northern pine forrests of Westhumberland. The highwaymen were ordinarily put down by League patrols mounted on motorcyles, but without the Spells of Union, and Protection, and Sharpness of Blade that all patrols used to carry, but now that the War Against the Zamthos Pirates is done, no one wishes to spend the ingots needed for mages. And the Colleges seem to produce few new great mages which is another problem for the New Learning seems of little use to me. And the Renegade Spirits were stronger than ever, and made it so venturing into the deep woods was hazardous for even many men of goodly intention. The wicked could pass freely however.

But, the Great Houses can afford enough guards to stave off the thugs, and this made it so that they had no competition from the Minor Houses. So when I stand at the champagnier, and speak to the fools they can only think that they are not losing much money, and even they have gained influence. They fear losing that influence as they have gained illwill from the poor pressed people who have to pay more for their goods. Pride, laziness, fear combined with shortsightedness and alcohol with the lack of intellectual gifts brought by the New Learning.

And so I swore again as I drove down into Temras Valley, and up through the gates of Villiean Asando to my townhouse where my butler, Welkins parked my car for me.

“My lord?” He asked me as he climbed out of the car.
“More idiots.” I said, and he smiled.
“They seek to make the world new not knowing how little they know, how much wisdom is embedded in tradition. Their New Learning seeks to create politically reliable men rather than deeply learned scholars who understand the Ancient Ways. But the blessing of all this incompetence is that they disarm themselves before you, lord.”
“I do not want to take over the land, and make myself King, Welkins.” I said and walked away.
“That is why you are the right man to do it, my lord.” He whispered behind me whether I heard by mistake or purpose I knew not. Perhaps so, but I had not come to this universe to destroy a republic, and so I went to bed and dreamed troubled dreams of the unwise who poisoned themself, and then took more of the same poison as antidote. And it was thus that I cursed vulgarly as I do, even in my dreams.

Waking upside down, misted intermittently, in a new world, I groaned as I somersaulted feet over head down the short steps of the brownstone’s porch, waded through the flickering jets of redundant sprinkler water drenching the ten foot square brown grass ‘lawn’s on either side of the approach sidewalk to the asphalt road that dripped rainwater into its gutters. Escaping from the sprinkle to the mistfall descending from the uplit clouds outlined by searchlights and towerlights, I made my way uphill even as the cramps started.

Three worlds ago, I had gone after a black hat cyberhacker Dr. Memo who being a ‘knowledge is power’ sorta dude found out I was a verser, a quasi-immortal, and so in a last bit of revenge injected me with Storafin89.2. For that, his ninety year prison sentence in Ceres Asteroid Punitive Institution was upgraded to the High Jump where he got tossed out of a spaceship in orbit with a spacesuit and over the next ninety minutes he became a meteorite. Over the next year, I died as my lungs, liver, two hearts (I’d picked up a spare in another universe), and GI tract turned to mush.

No one in that universe could save me. And it was not a drug exactly. It was a genetic change.

Next universe, same pain. Dr. Memo believed in vengeance with a purity of hatred that had him walking to his death with a taunting smile on his face, just for me. I don’t understand that way of thinking.

And then as I crested the hill, and saw the brownstones give way downhill to the towers of downtown Somewhere City, I smelled coffee. Java. The Black Brew.

Salvation.

Something in coffee, some mixture of caffeine and the other chemicals held the Storafin change at bay. I would still die, but less painfully, and I might have a few good years before it got crippling instead of a year of constant pain.

I broke into a trot and followed my nose. Downhill a bit, overshot, and went back uphill to the right, and then down another side street, and in the midst of a dozen quiet houses, I saw a well-lit diner. It looked like the locals did not have barbaric zoning laws that made one drive across town for a burger instead of just taking a short hike.

I ran and the pain grabbed my first heart and squeezed. Gritting my teeth, I pushed on, and came into the warm light of the stainless steel tube, passed through the glass doors of paradise, and croaked out ‘coffee’.

A lovely woman, her hair astray from its ponytail, a lank smacking the side of her narrow face, yellow-brown-and faint red the hair was, put the hot ceramic mug in my hand, and before she could finish saying ‘cream or sugar’, I had guzzled own half the steaming hot brew. It scorched my tongue and throat, but the Storafin’s claw let go of my heart, and retreated to jabbing me in the gut with the occasional needle.

I hate the Claw.

She raised an eyebrow, arched, carefully plucked, and without another word refilled my cup. I let this cool down for ten seconds before guzzling it while standing there.

“I do like a man who enjoys my cooking.” She said in a soft, lilting voice that came from deep in her throat, from near the tattoo of the stabbed by a dagger bumblebee on her right side of her throat just above the green colar of the brown uniform blouse.

“More please.” And I gave her a coin of soft, heavy gold which widened her eyes.

“Have a seat. Whatever you want, mister. Its on the house.” She guided me to a formica bench which had a table jutting from a low dividing wall on the other side of which the cook, a bald in the middle, brown red chestnut hair tightly woven on the sides of his shiny deep varnish skin was giving her a wide-eyed look. When he saw me seeing him, he nodded, and went back to dishing up some mix of green vegetables and bits of meat frying on a flat metal plane some yards long.

I went to the next cup of coffee, and saw a man behind a newspaper glancing over its top at me in some little curiousity. His face was a straight edge of the V on the left, near vertical, but on the right, it was as if the V had almost fallen so his face was unbalanced. Craggy enough that had he been a woman he would have been two hundred pounds heavier and working at the DMV with a very bad case of misanthropy, but as a man he merely looked strong and a bit handsome with his tightly curled black hair cropped somewhat close to his head, and above his ears.

The cup eased the last of the Claw, and I breathed in.

“Feel better, mate?” The voice was calm, non-provoking and off to my left where an old man with a cane prominently held in his right hand to cant against the tiled floor sat at a tiny table against the opposite wall of the thin diner tube.

His face had once been craggy, but it had just become some strange bumps, and a grizzled gray close cut not beard, not quite with a ballcap on top, and a good right eye of pale blue and a black patch covering his right eye.

“Got that in Nimh Sang. Some twannie socialist stabbed me with a trench knife, but I shot him in the chest with my Smokker-Ferguson.”

I nodded to the old war vet.

“Coffee…helps.”
“Knew some folk who got addicted to Ja-MU. Nasty stuff. Changed you, but they were coffee drinkers too…” He eyed me speculatively, and I looked back. Maybe here was a clue. Maybe I could find a way free from the Claw here in this diner.

Clackiting iron lines under steel wheels muttered in tune with the joggling of the line of sun that ran lengthwise down the vinyl rubber runner bisecting Rail Carriage #14. Strobing, flickering orange fuelled sunlight added a bale of thorns to the camel’s back which was reading the financials of Du Morganne Cement Plant, for Jeff Sundheim. So he chose gaslight, and the study of the back of his eyelids, although fear for the loss of proprietary information opened his eyes to stash the folders and its dozen papers in his rhino hide briefcase under his chair amidst the two iron V’s holding his bolstered seat up under his considerable weight. Then he snored the afternoon away.

Subconsciously realizing the train had stopped, and believing they had reached Conslan Port, Jeff began rousing himself from dreams of trumpet song in purple palaces and green mist-shrouded bark covered giants clustered in darkling woods which in his dream had gone together, although in reality, they had been in altogether different worlds and universes only to find his nose cold and his eyes opening, then crossing as he spotted a pistol barrel pointing to a small zit on his proboscis.

A short gasp, a tightening of his hands on the arm grips, and then he looked up, with a slight tremulous in his chest to see amused grey eyes, a wide whiskery smile, and a Forton hat of felt with a small belt about the scalp made to slick off the rains that came in off the ocean betimes.

“Well, sir. You are a heavy sleeper, and a cool customer.” The man had some admiration in his voice, and he leaned his head to the side to point with while still holding the pistol in his left hand with utter stillness. Everyone else in the rail car looked either frightened or outraged, but all were awake. And making sure no one ‘got any bright ideas’ was another fellow in a Forton hat with a shortgun probably armed with several dozen pellets suited to shred a man and the fellow next to him.

“Is this a robbery?” Jeff Sundheim asked, hiding his hope. He made to get off his watch on his wrist, and the leader laughed.

“We’re not common thieves. We only want what is our due, Mr. Sundheim, is it? Troubleshooter and accountant for Duke Morganne?”

Jeff sighed. He had hoped, but there was really nothing for it, but to go along. He could not start a gun battle at such a disadvantage, particulary so since there were children in the carriage.

“You have me, sir.”
“Indeed, I do. Now stand, slowly.”
Jeff did and permitted himself to be briskly and amateurishly frisked. They missed the stilletto hanging between his shoulder blades which was some comfort.
“Tell ‘the Duke’ of what happens. He will be sure to gift you a doubloon if you’re quick.” Jeff spoke to the room at large, and the helper with the shortgun made to bash him with it, but the leader stopped him.
“No, laddie. We’re a peaceful lot. Feel free, my hosts to get some of the Duke’s gold. I’d be right pleased to see some honest workingman got it rather than that crook. Tell him that the Union has his man, and the Cement Plant as well.” The cheery laughter and the quiet that met this told Jeff much. He was in enemy ground, and his enemy was a canny fellow. Jeff knew that he would need to learn much more to extricate himself and his employer in the next days, or he might find himself not so well treated.

And with that, he was led outside the stopped train in a dark wood and mounted on a horse to which his hands were tied, and another rider took up the reins of his horse. The leader of the kidnappers told five of his men to clear the barrier in the track, and the other four nearest Jeff to guard him well and take him back to some place known only as ‘The Camp’. It promised to be the beginning of a long night.