dochermes

"Boss, That Dog Just Ate My Gun"

10/9/2021

I

Everyone gasped when Galvan broke his cane over the little dog's head. Not that the dog seemed to mind. He resembled a short haired terrier, tan and white, not more than a year old. The thick cane snapped cleanly as it came down hard across his skull.

"Oh my God!" yelled Timothy Limbo, diving off the couch to kneel in front of the puppy, who happily greeted him with tail wagging. "He's not hurt?"

Picking up the broken piece of the cane, Galvan laughed. He looked like the classic stereotype of a lumberjack, a huge burly man in work boots, tough pants and plaid flannel shirt. The curly brown hair and beard, the blindingly white teeth and the deep baritone voice completed the image. "Oh, Tim, you don't think I'd hurt my Bruno, do you?"

"No, no, of course not but..." At this point, the dog had evidently accepted Tim as his new best friend and was licking Tim's hands with enthusiasm.

Watching from the doorway, Ashley Whitaker laughed. "That's the toughest Jack Russell ever! I didn't know that even Melgar dogs were superhuman errr supercanine." The little platinum blonde dropped to her knees next to Tim and started cooing, "Who's a good boy, yes you are..."

Galvan pulled over a chair for himself. "He really likes you two. I'm glad. Melgar fox-hunter dogs are friendly and good-natured but I didn't expect him to warm up to strangers so quickly."

Tearing himself away from the pup, Timothy reached over to grin at his teammate. "Tell you a secret? It's the Tagra tea diet we're on. Tel Shai knights have a clean mint odor that animals love. Even predators tend to disregard us unless we provoke them. We're like, well, dognip if there is such thing."

"TIM-othy!" objected the Unicorn, who had both arms around the dog at this point and was carrying him around. "It's because dogs are excellent judges of character! Bruno can tell we are just wonderful people."

"But hold on, since when did you have an invulnerable dog?" asked Tim. "I think I'd remember you telling us about that."

"This is something new," Galvan told him. "You know how roughly each generation of Melgarin has a boy or girl born with the Legacy of Malberon? How we develop strength and resilience beyond what flesh and blood can bear without a gralic charge? Valera was the last such heir and she was born in 1940..."

"Wait, Valera is eighty years old?! I'd swear she was maybe thirty at the most?" protested the Unicorn.

"Our average lifespan is greater than yours," Galvan said. "So, my people expected a new heir to the Legacy in a decade or two. Then, a goatherd named Berenthir saw his new puppy knock down a split-rail gate to chase a squirrel. Somehow, Bruno has inherited the Legacy."

Ashley bent over and lowered Bruno to the floor. "Ummm, I'm cuddling an animal that can bite through granite...?"

"It's fine, it's fine," Galvan assured her, scratching the dog behind one ear. "Bruno's a good boy. Right, my friend? Melgar hounds are well-behaved."

Timothy Limbo had dropped down on the end of the brown leather couch. Bruno came over to sit next to him, resting his muzzle on Tim's knee and gazing up with adoring eyes. "So, Galvan, as much as your doggo has won our hearts, is there some reason you brought him here today?"

"I'm afraid so," the giant Melgar admitted. "Bruno is official a ward of the Androval court. Since I have my time occupied with my wife and our new son, King Holmir has decided that Sulak should take charge of the pup. But, as you might expect, Sulak is not to be found. He was last known to be in the Northwest Mountains fighting Trolls. My king has charged me with finding Sulak and dragging him back to Androval to take care of Bruno here."

Ashley had remained standing, resting one slim hip on the edge of Sable's desk. "Hey... wait a minute..."

"Obedient and good-natured Bruno may be, yet he is still a dog and prone to sudden enthusiasm," said Galvan. "Except for Sulak, Valera and myself, he is the strongest living creature in any realm. But I have one friend who is able to watch him safely."

The petite blonde waved an index finger from side to side in denial. "Oh no. I'm not dog sitting something that can knock a house down. Take him with you."

"With your sacred Horn, you can damp the gralic charge from his body. He will be a normal playful dog for an hour while the Unicorn spell lasts." Galvan rose to his feet, towering six inches over six feet tall and massing nearly three hundred pounds of hard muscle. Mild as his demeanor was, his sheer presence was intimidating. "I knew I could count on you, Ashley. And you as well, Tim. Bruno...Stay!"

With that the Melgar champion simply left the room and was out the front door before the Unicorn could muster an objection. For once, her glibness failed her. She crossed over to sit next to Timothy and asked, "Why didn't you say anything to stop him?"

"Hmm? I was feeding Bruno a pepperoni Slim Jim. He likes it. Say, did Galvan say if he was housebroken?"

( the rest of the story )

DUST MITES ATTACK! III - Panic Time

9/14/2010

I.

Third Avenue at 40th Street was weirdly deserted at a Friday afternoon at three. Delis and newsstands and stores were unexpectedly closed. Traffic was sparse. The few pedestrians hurried down the sidewalks and vanished as soon as they could. It was a pleasant September day but the city seemed more deserted than it became when the worst ice storm was breaking.

The random deaths by skinless faces had broken all attempts at cover-up. By sheer word of mouth, by more postings on social media than could be suppressed, the public had informed itself. This unexplained phenomena was claiming more than one hundred lives each day in the metropolitan area and no defense was known. Sudden agonizing attacks meant tiny crablike vermin were eating the skin right off a victim's face and injecting caustic venom in the process. The world watched in helpless horror. Fearing spread of this pestilence, demands were being made to quarantine the Five Boroughs.

Striding up the block, Jeremy Bane was an even more ominous figure than usual. Tall and gaunt in his inevitable uniform of black slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket, he was scowling and the pale grey eyes were furious. He rushed up to the three story yellow brick building which housed his office and entered as the twin glass doors slid open. To his right in the lobby was the day clinic EMERGENCY ONE. Dr Hamsa Chughtai came forward to intercept him.

"Jeremy! Jeremy, wait a minute," he said.

They were on a first name basis because over the years Bane had brought so many wounded patients there, a good number of whom had made the mistake of attacking Bane or because his clients had a habit of showing up injured. The Dire Wolf paused and made an effort to soften his glare.

Lowering his voice, Chughtai stepped closer. "Six cases brought here today, even though there's nothing we can do to help them. They never make through the ambulance ride. I have to ask, Jeremy, what do you know the public doesn't?"

Bane didn't answer for a long moment. "What I can tell you... Hamsa, I can tell you that every agency is working full blast on this. I can't be more specific. I wish I could be more encouraging."

"What doesn't help is that we're swamped with people panicking. They feel their faces itch or someone tells them their face looks flushed and they come in all hysterical. All we can do is hold them for observation an hour or so and counsel them for anxiety." He raised both hands helplessly. "I have to get back in there. We're staying open late tonight."

In a gesture rare for him, Bane pressed a comforting hand on the doctor's shoulder. "You've found out a little bit about the Midnight War, Jeff. You know I won't stop until this is ended."

"I feel better knowing you're on it." Hearing a nurse calling him, he shook his head and went back inside the clinic.

"We both do our best," the Dire Wolf said to himself. Ahead of him was the wide wooden staircase leading up to the second floor. To his left was the FRESH START salon and spa. Going past that, he entered the narrow aisle between that wall and the side of the staircase. This ended in an Exit door marked EMERGENCY ONLY. Just before that was the plain wooden door with the bronze plaque DIRE WOLF AGENCY - PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS and a phone number.

And leaning on the wall next to his office door was the familiar bulk of Joseph Montez.

The big homicide detective looked awful. He had apparently not shaved, showered or changed his clothes for at least three or four days. It seemed likely he had not gotten a full night's sleep for that time either. The surprisingly gentle face under the thick black pompadour was bleary-eyed. "Ah. There you are..." he grumbled.

"Come on in, lieutenant," Bane said. He unlocked the outer door and ushered Montez through the tiny waiting room into the office proper. Steering the police detective to a chair facing the oak desk, the Dire Wolf got a pitcher of ice water and some tumblers from the waist high refrigerator, then down a glass himself and insisted the lieutenant do the same.

"Rather have black coffee..."

"Come on, chug it," Bane insisted. "You look dehydrated as hell. Your skin is dry." He gulped down a second tumbler and watched as his visitor sipped a second one as well. Going back to the refrigerator, he came back with two walnut Danishes wrapped in cling film and tossed one to Montez.

The Dire Wolf settled into the swivel chair behind his desk and allowed himself a grumbling sigh of exasperation. "I've spent most of today meeting with agents of the Mandate, INTERCEPT and Department 21 Black. AND the D.A.'s office! Now you're here for the NYPD."

"Yeah," said Montez. "The city is packed with thousands of cops, spies, Feds and G-Men turning over every rock looking for this Cogitus freak."

"And the full KDF team as well," Bane added. "Sable has called in as many of our Associate Members as she can reach, too. Everyone from Karina to Sulak is running around Manhattan today!"

Montez could not help giving out a sharp barking laugh. "Jeez, I bet the creatures of the night are hiding as hard as they can. I'd hate to be a newbie vampire or Skinwalker out looking for a stray victim with all you guys on the warpath."

Never evidencing much of a sense of humor, Bane showed no trace of amusement at the thought. "Cogitus is harder to catch every time. He learns from his mistakes, he doesn't trip himself up like so many bad guys do. Megan tells me she's certain he's somehow enlarging and mutating the dust mites that live on everybody's eyebrows and eyelashes. They live long enough to poison their victims and eat their faces, then the little bastards die off."

"I know our little Trom Girl is a super-genius herself," Montez said. "She come up with a defense?"

"Not so far," said the Dire Wolf. "Cogitus has been using the artifacts of ancient Zhune. They don't make any sense even in theory, even to the Trom."

Montez slumped so deeply he seemed at risk of falling off the chair entirely. He picked up the second Danish and took a bite. "Honestly, Bane, I don't understand half of what you say. This Zhune was like a sort of Atlantis, right? They somehow invented crazy technology that's still dangerous today? And this lunatic Herbert Lewis Sinclair, Cogitus he calls himself, uses some of these Zhune gadgets as weapons nobody else can figure out."

"That's accurate enough, lieutenant," the Dire Wolf said. "I used to be able to track Cogitus down because he used such enormous amounts of electrical power to charge up the artifacts. I'd hack into Con Ed records and find him that way. But he's figured out another way to get the Zhune relics up to speed and I'm stumped."

Montez' leonine head had dropped down onto his chest and the half-eaten Danish fell to the hardwood floor. Bane kept silent. Like Inspector Klein before him, Joseph Montez had started as an adversary who regarded the Dire Wolf as a wild loose cannon. But, as the reality of the Midnight War sank in, the lieutenant had gradually come to see Bane as an essential defender against the dark powers of the night. Let him doze for a few minutes.

Leaning forward on his desk, cradling his chin in his palm, the Dire Wolf kept thinking furiously as he tried to find a course to take. While he sat in his office, he knew innocent random people were suddenly screaming and grabbing at their faces. Bane had never felt more helpless.

( the rest of the story )

"The Dust of Forgotten Temples"

11/22/2003

I.

At the head of the long table, Sable pressed her hands out flat and stared down at them. "It's true. I have been getting dozens of reports from our observers all over the British Isles and Northwestern Europe. Friday night, an unexplained wave of gruesome crimes broke out. People mutilating animals for no reason, cutting out the eyes out of cats and dogs. People harming themselves, slicing long gouges across their own faces, burning their hands in fires, tearing off their own ears. Many brutal murders. And there are reports of thousands of people too exhausted and traumatized to go to work or school because of nightmares which left them shivering and wet with cold sweat."

"Ack, " said Unicorn. "Any of this in the news media? I haven't noticed it."

"No. A few scattered reports in local newspapers and TV stations of the less troubling atrocities. I think it's clear the authorities are consciously suppressing coverage and hushing it all up. But Facebook and the other online sites are on fire. People were hesitant to connect the horrors at first but now the phrase 'the Long Dark Night' has broken out and is referred to everywhere." Sable raised her head and her dark eyes fixed on their visitor. "And this is what you have come to warn us about, isn't it?"

Seated at the other end of that table where four generations of Tel Shai heroes had assembled, Eidurach lifted his bony long-fingered hands and gestured wildly. "That night was but the beginning. It has been seven days and the darkest forces have gathered again. Tonight will be far worse and the next Friday night even more dreadful."

Eidurach's long straight white hair and beard shone in the subdued overhead lighting of the conference room. His gaunt face with its prominent cheekbones and pointed nose was unsettling to see, he reminded everyone of starvation victims. The loose, bell-sleeved white tunic under a heavy cloak of bull hide added to his dramatic image. "Deep in the earth, Forgotten Ones stir angrily and begin to send their murderous hatred up toward us."

"And how do you know of all this?" demanded Josef Jubilec bluntly. The Blind Archer was not one for tact.

"I am the last of the True Druids," said Eidurach. "Our wisdom must never be written down, only passed on in song and recitations. As a boy, my grandfather taught me much so that I would never forget the lore. Ages ago when we were many, our chants and ceremonies served to keep the Forgotten Ones drowsy and harmless but now I alone am left. The new warlocks, the Black Druids, have replaced us. Their sacrifices with golden sickles and Wicker Men have rousted the Forgotten Ones."

Seated to Sable's left, Sheng Mo-Yuan lifted one hand in protest. His normally mild voice had a sharper tone to it. The young Chujiran man was the most scholarly and intellectually curious of the new team. "Hang on a second. I've done some reading on this. The Druids weren't a blasphemous cult or anything. That was propaganda from the Romans and the early Christians to get rid of them. The Druids were like, teachers and lawyers and healers and historians. They've been unfairly stereotyped."

"You speak of my kind, the True Druids. We were the wise men and women of the oak groves. But by the time the legions of Rome marched over Britain, we had been mostly supplanted by the Black Druids." Eidurach's deepset blue eyes had dark shadows under them as they burned feverishly. "Of all the schools of knowledge left on this fallen world, I fear only the Order of Tel Shai might still be able to act against this coming cataclysm."

"It does sound like exactly what Tel Shai was founded to handle," Sable replied. She did not say so, but her gift of enhanced perception had been studying their visitor. Sable could hear and count his heartbeats from twelve feet away. She could smell the adrenalin traces in his sweat, she could hear the subvocal tremors no amount of guile could disguise, she could watch how his pupils contracted and widened as he spoke. Her team knew her powers and understood she was using them as the most accurate lie detection process possible. All her readings were behind her next statement, "For the moment, we believe you, Eidurach. Tell us more."

"It has been longer than I realized since I had counseled with Tel Shai knights. Where is the Dire Wolf? In this crisis, we need the power of Khang, the wisdom of the Eyeless Helmet, the resolve of Sulak. I had hoped to meet with the Silver Skull and the Cat's-Claw. I came seeking the greatest heroes of this era but I see only young unlined faces watching me with dismay."

"We ARE the knights of Tel Shai," Sable told him. "Khang has been destroyed. Nebel doesn't wear Sagehelm any more, Sulak stays in his realm of Androval. The Silver Skull was killed and no replacement has turned up, but at least Levon here bears Cat's Claw. What you see here is the new generation, like it or not."

"Hey, I think we deserve a little respect," interrupted Unicorn. The petite blonde was also dressed all in white and her platinum hair was as bright as their visitor's, but her face had delicate features that were in complete contrast to the Druid's withered countenance. "We're not babies. We have been fighting the Midnight War for three long years. This team been accepted at Tel Shai and we are full knights. Give us a little credit."

A tense silence followed her outburst. Then, grudgingly, Eidurach nodded in her direction. "Overlook any slight my words may have given. In this terrible moment, I must speak plainly."

"Okay, sorry if I over-reacted." Along with her teammates, Ashley turned to gaze at their captain. "So, Sable, this looks like another world-threatening cosmic crisis about to explode. Exactly what we signed up for."

"Yes," Sable responded. "Megan, warm up the CORBY and do the pre-flight check. Sheng, see if you can contact Jeremy, he was in Okali the last we heard from him. We're assembling in the hangar at ten sharp, full field suits and combat gear. The Midnight War has broken out again."


( the rest of the story )

"When the Trumpets Fall Silent"

9/6-9/8/2015

I

For nearly a hundred years, the ten-story stone building on East 38th Street had seen many strange and even bizarre figures walk up to its front door. This pleasant September evening at exactly midnight, it saw yet another one. People stepped aside on the sidewalk not from apprehension but from sympathy, thinking that here was an elderly man afflicted with arthritis.

He would have been six feet tall if he had stood fully upright, but he was bent forward and leaning on a thick wooden cane. A long white coat hanging loosely from his shoulders disguised how powerful that broad body was, how thickly muscled the long arms and short bow legs must be. Clench wore a wide-brimmed slouch hat pulled low. His immense feet wore shoes that had to have been handmade. Ignoring stares, he moved easily up the six steps in front of a door that read "KDF 28" and pressed the bell.

Seconds later, a reserved female voice came through a speaker behind a panel over the door, "Hello there. can we help you?"

"Hello, I'm Clarence Ambrose. Clench?"

"Oh sure. Just a minute."

With buzzes and clicks that suggested multiple alarms and locks being turned off, the massive door swung outward on its own. The man who had called himself Clench stepped into a small vestibule which contained only a bench with a few magazines on it, a wall lamp and a life-sized oil portrait of a middle-aged gnomish man. The tab beneath read, KENNETH DRED 1900-1979.

Laying his cane on the bench, he shrugged off the coat and placed it down as well.
Immediately, Clench dropped to stand with his weight supported on stiff arms with his fists pressed down on the floor. This posture looked entirely reasonable for someone built that way. Simian comparisons were inevitable. The strange man looked as if he would weigh nearer three hundred pounds than two hundred, but he was not fat. His body and limbs seemed solid muscle. He was wearing loose navy blue sweatpants and an equally baggy sweatshirt that was canary yellow with blue side panels His oversized hands and feet were bare. The man had a wide, homely face under a thick thatch of light brown hair but his expression was amiable enough.

As he sighed with relief at not having to stand upright, Clench cocked his head. All around him sounded a deep, nearly subliminal hum. His skin tingled. Was he being X-rayed? Then the inner door swung open toward him and he swung around. Standing in the doorway were two women and a man.

Timothy Limbo he had met a month earlier. A bit under six feet tall and fit looking, the blond young man was wearing a plain white T-shirt, worn out jeans and biker boots. To his left was a dark-haired woman about forty, arms folded across her chest, watching him with a cold appraising gaze.

But it was the other woman that got his full attention. She was tiny, not much over five feet tall and thin, wearing a tight suit of grey shark-hide. Under short bristly white hair, cloudy dark blue eyes glared at him as if she was eager to attack. The woman slapped the flat of a long bone-bladed knife against one palm, which did not make her less threatening.

"Hey there," said Clench hopefully. "Sorry to drop in so late, but someone told me you guys are mostly active late at night and so many lights were on in the windows, so..."

"Oh, I remember YOU," Timothy interrupted. "As soon as we met, you kicked me in the head and kidnapped me!"

"Well, yeah, but let's not live in the past," the apelike man replied. "So, about why I'm here, maybe we can sit down to talk about it."

"I'm Sable, captain of this team," said the dark-haired woman. "Stand down, Jin. i don't think our visitor is any immediate threat."

Reluctantly, scowling all the time, Demrak Jin slid her weapon into a flat ivory sheath across her back. "Whatever you say," she growled.

Sable moved forward a step. "Adrenalin levels in your perspiration and your heartbeat are only slightly elevated. Muscle tension is normal, as are your pupils. I'm sure you didn't come here to attack us."

"You're puttin' me on," Clench said. "How do you know all that?"

"We all have our gifts. All right, come on in and tell us what's on your mind."

Escorted warily by all three KDF members, Clench loped in his unusual way across the front hall, past the wide staircase leading up, through an open door into the conference room. To the right, a desk sat against a wall under a gorgeous hand-painted map of the world as it had been in 1937. A long, brown leather couch sat in the middle of the room, with six simple wooden chairs scattered about. Against the far wall to the left was a chest high bookcase filled with reference books and on its top a coffee pot with accessories and a tray of Danishes. The air was cool and dry, the lighting subdued.

"Have a seat facing the couch," Sable offered. "Mr Ambrose, you should be aware we have no reason to be cordial. I annotated the report that Timothy filed when he got back from his...encounter."

"True, true," Clench replied. "Sorry about all that. You know my family is, well, maybe you could call us mutants. Except instead of stray genes changing naturally, we were changed by our mother's sorcery. She WAS a head witch of Red Sect, after all."

"And..." interrupted Timothy, "She ordered me abducted to stage a fake marriage and wanted me to get her pregnant! And she's seventy years old!"

Clenched waved a broad hairy hand dismissively. "I thought we were past all that."

"What are you TALKING about?! 'Past all that'...?"

"Timothy, stand down," said Sable. "Take a seat. We have to be professional. Mr Ambrose, we'll hear you out."

"Fair enough, fair enough," the visitor said. "Ahem. Anyway, my family left the area recently. Grandma wanted to get a fresh start out West. But I decided to stay here. I've heard an awful lot of wild stories about the Kenneth Dred Foundation. You're knights of Tel Shai. Everyone says you're the greatest heroes the Midnight War had ever seen."

"And...?" asked Sable.

"Look at me, ma'am. You can imagine it's hard for me to get a regular job. When I go to apply anywhere, they all hide in the back. But I do have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men--"

"Oh, brother," Tim groaned.

"I looked up records. I'm more than twice as strong as the record-holding weightlifter. I'm nimble and agile as an acrobat or Olympic gymnast. My toes are prehensile enough to tie and untie knots. I have a lot to offer."

"Wait," said Sable, "You're not saying...?"

"You bet, I want to join the KDF."

( Read more... )

"Beyond the Great Silence"

12/23/2023

I.

It was above forty degrees and sunny on December 23rd in Manhattan. Ashley Whitaker lowered the trap door behind her as she stepped up onto the roof of the KDF building. Most of the roof surface was taken up by a segmented steel panel which could roll up to allow the CORBY stealthcopter access. The Unicorn straightened up. For once, she was not wearing all white but instead had on a dark red jacket and maroon jeans, rather subdued for her.

Now past forty, the little platinum blonde still appeared to most observers to be in her mid-twenties at most. She had stayed trim and athletic. But there was a thoughtful depth to those crystal blue eyes that had not been there a few years earlier. Ashley glanced around. A waist high railing of horizontal steel rods had been erected around the edge of the roof. At the northeast corner with his back to her sat Carlo Ventura.

The mystic was wrapped in his heavy cloak of gold cotton shot through with threads of the Ensalir metal. Only the back of his head with its shaggy mop of curly black hair could be seen. Without turning, he said, "Hello, Ashley."

This did not surprise her at all. It was for his uncanny perception that she had sought him out as soon as she had returned to Manhattan. The Unicorn went over and easily lowered herself to sit next to her teammate. "Hi. I went to my parents' graves today."

Carlo turned a narrow, bony face toward her. He was twenty years younger than she was, but there was a calm reserve in his face that made it seem as if he was an elder dealing with a child. "Christmas is an emotional time for so many."

"Yeah. Tell me about. You know, if no one is around at the cemetery, I talk out loud to them. Mostly to my mother. It makes me feel better. But today... I don't know, suddenly it seemed pointless. I was standing in front of a stupid piece of granite with names and dates chiseled on it. Six feet down were wooden boxes with what's left of my parents' bodies. I didn't expect an answer! I didn't even expect a sign, like a bird flying overhead or anything. It was dumb."

There was nothing judgemental in Carlo's voice at all. "You want to ask a question."

"Yeah I do. Listen, Carlo, you've been wearing that Eyeless Helmet for years now. You're in tune with the Universe, you go on deep spiritual journeys outside the physical world, sometimes you seem more like an angel than just a flesh and blood guy. So give me a straight answer. Is this all there is? Is there life after death or not?"

"I can not answer that."

"What the hell, why won't you? It's me asking, we've been through Midnight War together, we've literally saved each others' lives. Why won't you give me an answer?"

Carlo sighed almost imperceptibly. "It's that I CAN'T give you an answer, Ashley. I have tried to find out, of course. I have gone beyond the subtle barriers. I have sent my consciousness where the living may not trespass. And I don't remember what I found."

"Wait, what? I don't get it. What are you saying?"

"Whatever my spirit learned, it does not retain. I return to my body and the best I can recall is no more than a vague emotional state which fades. It's just like waking up from a dream and immediately having the details evaporate."

The little blonde shook her head, making her gleaming hair swing from side to side. "That doesn't make any sense, Carlo. All I want is a yes or no answer. I hardly remember my dad, my mom raised me to be the second Unicorn. She died so suddenly! Unexpectedly! She had no symptoms at all, it was a tiny bent blood vessal in her head. She went to bed feeling fine and I found her two days later when I came to visit."

"Go on," Carlo said.

"I want to talk to her again. I want to know if she's proud of me as the Unicorn. She got to see April reach five but I want to know if she's watching April hit puberty. It's important. It matters to me!"

"Ashley, I would give you an answer if I could but the knowledge is not permitted to me. Once we enter the silence, we are not heard from again."

The Unicorn shot to her feet, body tense as if about to fight. Then, as Carlo rose as well, she unexpectedly threw her arms around his neck and buried her face against his chest. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I know you would tell me if you could."

After a long silence, he rubbed her upper back gently. "There is one thing to consider. It may mean nothing. When I return from going beyond the barriers, in the brief moments as I settle back into my body... I feel happy."

That did it. Ashley sniffled and, although she was not crying audibly, tears ran down her face. "I'll take that as hope, Carlo. It's enough. It'll do."

12/26/2023

"Squid Attack Squad"

4/6-4/7/2023

I.

Few helicopters would have been cleared to fly during such a storm. Even the US Coast Guard would have weighed the risk to a crew against any rescue mission. And for a flight intended for only research purposes, no copter would have launched into the heavy rain and gale force winds over Long Island Sound that night.

But the CORBY was like no craft available to any Human nation or organization. Sleek and sharklike in its contours, the black stealthcraft tore through the downpour as steadily as if it was flying on a calm summer afternoon. No visible lights showed. With its radar alignment systems working, the CORBY was as good as invisible in the darkness as it sped over the northern coastline.

At the combined cyclic/collective stick, the Trom who called himself Frank Mills kept his eyes moving constantly. From the row of small monitors screens showing views from all sides of the CORBY to the luminous windscreen which worked with both light enhancement and ultra-violet projectors to the sonar pulses lancing down into the black waters a thousand feet below, he saw everything he wanted to.

In the co-pilot seat, Demrak Jin shifted her weight irritably. Patience had never been one of her strong points. At first, she seemed to be only a rather short, thin woman with a wide flat face and sullen dark blue eyes. But further scrutiny of the stiff bristly white hair and odd facial bone structure would prove unsettling. In bright sunlight, a close examination would reveal three barely visible lines in a row on either side of her throat. These were gill slits. Demrak Jin was a Geldydra from the realm of Ulgor, a Cousin Race who were amphibious.

"I should be down there!" she abruptly cried, breaking the long silence. "That is MY element. Any monsters of the deep are my natural prey."

Mills responded with his usual bland mildness. "The sensors are probing for miles in every direction and down to a depth of three thousand feet. If any anomalies are detected, that would be the appropriate time for you to take action."

"You just don't have feelings," Jin continued. "A father and his child have been missing for the past few days. Before that, three teenage girls in their sailboat disappeared. This area is notorious for missing people. Only bits of wreckage have been recovered and you don't care."

The Trom turned his head to regard her without visible reaction to her tirade. Mills was a tall athletic man in one of the KDF black field suits. His short black hair and regular unremarkable features were offset by a pair of dark eyes that showed deep awareness and intelligence but no emotion. "I am what I was meant to be, Jin. Nothing will be gained by trying to provoke me."

"Arrrhh! I feel love! Anger! Sorrow! I have a heart. And you... you are like the cold machines you prize so highly!" she shouted right in his face.

"We are both true to our natures," Frank Mills responded in the same even tones he always used. "So far, sensors have detected nothing out of the ordinary. I intend to move closer to the shore and descend to three hundred feet. Under these conditions, we are not likely to be observed."

Folding her arms across her narrow chest, Jin scowled at the banks of pastel green and blue lights which filled the cockpit. Any one of those indicators turning red would have instantly gotten their full attention. After a long heavy silence, she grudgingly said, "You Trom say you value Human life."

"Yes," Mills answered. "We work behind the scenes in secrecy, but our goal is to improve conditions for Humans. We guide researchers to useful new discoveries and we release information conducive to reducing wars and violent crimes."

"You're not doing a very good job at that..." she grumbled.

"Events would have proceeded much more harmfully without our restrained interventions," Mills said. "As bad as history seems, it would have been much worse without the Trom pulling strings behind the scenes."

"So you say. Never mind. I am not like you, Trom. Sitting in a hard seat for six hours and circling the ocean is not what I was meant to be doing. I am a daughter of a warrior Race. Each Gelydra is born at the same time a shark hatches and the spirit of the shark lives in us!"

Instead of commenting, Mills pulled back on the stick and brought the CORBY to a hover. The pounding of the rain on the stealthcopter seemed louder because the engines were nearly silent. "Do you see that yacht tied to the dock directly below us?"

"What? Yes, of course. There is a small speedboat moored next to it."

"Watch as I enhance the sonar image."

After a few seconds, Jin hissed with an intake of breath. "Interesting. Very interesting." She unbuckled her restraint straps. "I will take a look."

"Let me extend the pontoons and land first," Mills said but he was speaking to an open hatch as Demrak Jin dove out into the darkness. Straight down three hundred feet she plunged, to punch down through the surface with hardly a splash. A normal Human would have been killed hitting water from that height, but the Gelydran womam took such a feat for granted.

Without showing any exasperation at his partner's impatience, Mills pressed a few buttons that extended the pontoons he had attached that afternoon and descended to a textbook perfect landing on the uneven surface of choppy waters. The advanced Trom impulse engines were still on, keeping the craft from capsizing or drifting. From behind his seat, he unhooked a helmet and fastened its lower seals to the high collar of his field suit. He had earlier fastened a short metal cylinder across his shoulder blades above the round disc of the gravity shield. When he lowered the helmet's visor, a fifteen minute oxygen supply would kick in.

His final action before exiting was to switch on the three running lights on the CORBY's lower hull where they could be seen from beneath the surface. Then, as smoothly as if he had practicing this all his life, Frank Mills dove out into the darkness of Long Island sound. The hatch slid shut behind him.

( the rest of the story )

"Squid Vicious"

3/11-3/12/2022

I.

Early on a frosty March morning, passers-by in Times Square found a badly injured Timothy Limbo lying in the alley between two buildings. Someone called for an ambulance but the EMTs were not hopeful about his chances. Timothy had four broken ribs, severe bruising, concussion, and was bleeding from nose and mouth. Strapping him to the gurney and securing him in the rear, they took his vitals. One drove while the other gave him nasal oxygen clips and tried to stanch the bleeding. Within a few blocks, though they could not know it, his enhanced healing kicked in. At a red light, Timothy unexpectedly broke free, unstrapped himself and jumped out the rear of the ambulance, brushing the confused paramedic aside. He was way down a side street and out of sightbefore the EMTs could react.

Recovering quickly, Timothy managed to get into the bathroom of a McDonalds without being stopped. He cleaned himself up as best he can, then started limping toward 38th Street. Despite his appearance, he was walking steadily and confidently enough that no one approached him.

Finally, after what seemed like the longest trudge of his life, Timothy tapped his ID code into the pad by the front door and entered the small foyer. For twenty seconds, clicks and buzzes sounded as he was scanned, identified and cleared. He did not try to locate his captain Sable, but stubbornly made it up the stairs to his rooms on the third floor. The air was cool and dry and immensely comforting. Sitting on the edge of his double bed, Timothy managed to tug off his heavy biker boots, torn jeans and leather jacket as if wrestling with stubborn living things. He stretched out on top of the covers and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

Waking easily, he blinked at the round clock hanging on the opposite wall. Two-twenty, and the yellow sunlight slanting in through his window told him it was afternoon. He felt much better, almost normal except for some stiffness. Timothy yawned and rolled over to get some high protein energy bars from his nightstand and wolf them down. He always kept a sixteen ounce of water within reach too, and sipping most of that helped his healing factor finish repairing all the damages done to his body.

The intercom panel by his headboard buzzed, he tapped the button and said, "Hi," rather uncertainly. "Sable?"

"How are you feeling?" came the voice of his captain.

"I'm okay. Give me a few minutes to clean up and I'll report."

"Take your time, I'm in the office." With a click, she broke the connection.

After a quick steaming shower, wearing fresh pants, T-shirt and sneakers, Timothy went down the staircase and turned right into the office. Sable greeted him with a mug of the Tagra tea. As he sipped it gratefully and felt the final twinges of pain ease away, Tim took a chair in front of the desk as Sable seated herself behind it facing him.

Lauren Sable Reilly's gift was enhanced perception. Gralic force augmented all her senses beyond what Human science could explain. Timothy was used to her abilities and knew she was examining him right then and there with a single glance. "I don't sense any internal damage left," she said after a few seconds. "No blood clots, no infection. Your ribs have already sealed up. Do you feel any dizziness or nausea?"

"No, captain. I'm ready for duty. Thanks for the Tagra." He put the mug down by his feet.

Sable leaned back in her swivel office chair and smiled reassuringly. She was an attractive woman in her early forties, with long straight black hair brushed back off a high forehead. A pug nose and slight overbite added to the huge dark eyes to give her a distinctive face most people liked on sight. "I have to say, I was worried when you came in this morning. Your injuries were serious enough that the Trom sensors alerted me. I stood outside your door and heard your breathing and heartbeat were fine, so I didn't bother you. Sleep seemed to be what you needed most."

"Thanks again," Timothy said. "Man! Without the Tagra healing, we'd all be in wheelchairs by now."

"We do take some punishment," Sable agreed. "So. I'm recording, starting now. I'll type it up in a few minutes and we can both add and correct the report before it goes into the files. Last night, you went out at eleven-thirty. Your aim was to check our observers and see what what you could learn about some of these senseless atrocities in the lower Manhattan area. All we had to go on was a name, 'Squid Vicious.'"

"That name cracked me up at first but now I don't find it funny. Okay. I went out on foot and walked down to the Korean neighborhood by the Empire State Building. A lot of our observers are active at night, of course. I made the rounds. Spanish Eddie, Nurse Robin, Old Lady Choi, Herman the German, the usual street folks we keep on retainer. They're all agitated. For a month now, there's been a wave of pointless violence going on. Fires started, windows smashed and cars vandalized. Some beatings and sexual assaults. Not many witnesses to any of these. Security cameras are no help. For some reason, video gets hazy and vague during the crimes."

"That's interesting," Sable interrupted. "That's what happens when we're around. Between our own gralic powers and the Eldanaran sigil we wear, recording equipment degrades in our presence. We fog film and distort videos."

"Yeah. That's true. So I thought, hey... these aren't just destructive punks. There's something Midnight War going on here. I kept going the route for a few hours, visiting the crime scenes, asking our people. At three, I got a grilled cheese and fries at an all-night corner shop and thought things over. When I left, I turned at the corner of Mulaney Street and First Avenue and got sucker punched from behind."

"Not too many people could catch you unaware like that, Tim."

"It's hard to explain. I mean, I'm not a top Kumundu master but I do have eight years training. There was a man ten feet behind me. His footsteps were even and balanced. I didn't hear the movement of a weapon being drawn. But something sure impacted the back of my head like a hammer."

"And then?"

"It's all a confused blur. I was yanked up off the ground, my arms held out to the sides, but I don't remember being aware of men holding me. I got smacked around severely enough that I was dazed, and they shook me during the beating. Then I was thrown against the side of a building and dropped. A voice said, 'Stop asking questions.' After a awhile, I was regaining my senses when some Good Samaritan saw me and called 911."

Timothy went on to relate how he escaped from the ambulance and made his way back to the base. "So here I am. There's one funny detail, though. The marks have faded but I had four or five of these on my body." He tugged back his shirt sleeve. On his inner forearm was a still visible round bruise two inches across, darker in the center. "The skin was broken but it's healed up now. I apologize for not taking a few pictures when I first saw them, but honestly I was exhausted."

"I understand," Sable said, peering with eyes that saw at the microscopic level. "Tim, this is Midnight War all right. Those marks were made by suckers such as are found on tentacles. Cephalopods."

There was an undertone of uneasiness in his comment, "SQUID Vicious."

II.


Sable called a full meeting for eight o'clock. On the second floor, most of the conference room was taken up by a long oak table at which five generations of heroes had met. Only four of the twelve chairs were occupied in person at the moment. Each member present had a tablet or laptop propped up in front of them, on the screens two additional KDF members could be seen and heard.

At the head of the table, she sat with Timothy Limbo on her right hand and Demrak Jin to her left. Ashley Whitaker, the Unicorn, was next to Tim and opposite her sat Carlo Ventura. Attending onscreen were Jocelyn Garimara, who was in Los Angeles, and Galvan, who was at home, holding the son he had with Demrak Jin.

Seated at the opposite end of the table was a newcomer. This man was tall and wide-shouldered in an immaculate black business suit with a dress white shirt and narrow tie. He had short black hair over an olive-skinned face with presentable but unremarkable features; the deepset dark eyes were notably alert and reserved. His face gave away nothing of what he was thinking. It did not look blank but simply thoughtful.

No one there remarked on his appearance, but this newcomer appeared to be a near-identical twin of KDF founding member Leonard Slade, who had died in action in 1990. None of the current members had met Slade, most had been children or unborn at the time of his death, but the resemblance still was on their minds.

After roll call, Sable opened the meeting. "Our first item of business is the admission of a new member. You have all met Frank here over the past few days.
Following the recent death of our Megan Salenger, the Trom have sent a replacement liaison. Frank Mills is a Monitor, same as founding member Leonard Slade. Unfortunately, we have just found out he has been rejected by as a student by Tel Shai."

Unicorn interrupted without preliminaries. The little platinum blonde had never hesitated to speak her mind. "And why is that? I think it's in our interests to know."

"Fair enough," Sable agreed. "Several of the Teachers are telepathic, of course. They state that Frank has, quote, 'a hidden agenda' which he declines to reveal."

"Well, THAT's ominous," grumbled Unicorn.

"Be that as it may," Sable continued, "This presents a real problem for us. Our agreement since 1979 was that the Trom provided some of their advanced tech in exchange for a Trom having access to Tel Shai secret lore. Now that deal seems in danger of failing. Without Trom devices like the Links and the CORBY stealthcopters, we risk losing much of the edge we enjoy in the Midnight War.

Unicorn blew up and raised an impeccable finger in protest. "Hey, we can function just fine on our own. No CORBYs? We have Eldanar travel crystals, and we can use regular cell phones instead of the Links. The armor is good for a lifetime if not longer. Anyway, half our team doesn't even use Trom tech. Galvan and Jin and Carlo don't need it and the rest of us will get along fine with our own abilities."

"Thank you, Ashley," Sable said calmly. "You're right. But it would be foolish to give up Trom tech if there's any way to retain it. Besides, a Trom Monitor as a member would be invaluable. His intelligence, skills and abilities would place himm among our most powerful members. So, we need to find some solution."

On their screens, the image of Jocelyn Garimara scoffed. "No sense in petitioning the Teachers of Tel Shai to change their minds. They're all over a hundred years old and completely sure of themselves. It'd be like telling a grove of oak trees to get up and move around."

"I think I have an idea," Timothy offered. "We Tel Shai knights can't directly teach Kumundu or Mind Arts or provide access to the Great Archives. But this headquarters building holds tens of thousands of rare books on the arcane and the occult. These belonged to Kenneth Dred and are the property of the KDF to use as they wish. We can provide Frank with access to them."

"Sounds like it's worth pursuing," Sable agreed. "Frank, what do you think?"

Like Slade before him, the new Trom put enough inflection into his voice that his speech sounded natural. The Trom were as close to being completely unemotional as flesh and blood sentients could be. Between the minimizing of hormones which affect behavior and a culture which had stressed logic and discipline for thousands of years, they struck Humans as both cold-blooded and rigidly formal. But Frank managed to sound normal enough.

"The proposal has merit," he said. "As I understand your rules, a Full Member must be a Tel Shai knight but the status of Associate Member is also available."

"Yes!" interrupted Demrak Jin. The Gelydran woman was wearing her snug outfit of grey sharkhide with the rough denticles on the outside, as if ready for instant action. Strapped across her back was the carved ivory sheath holding her bone-bladed knife. "I myself am an Associate Member. Those fools at Tel Shai turned me down as well..." her voice trailed down slightly, "For a bad temper which I admittedly have."

Frank Mills continued, "Of course, I will need to discuss this with the Trom Council in charge of this project. I project a high degree of probability they will approave. I would join the KDF as an Associate Member in exchange for being able to scan the rare books and send the images to the Trom Council. My full abilities would be at the team's service. We will establish a new arrangement between the Trom and the KDF, lesser in scope and productivity than the original but still very useful for both sides."

"Sounds workable to me. Okay, team, any objections?" Sable waited a minute, then went on. "Right now, I want to move on to our current mission. You've read Tim's report. I've been receiving tips and pointers from our army of observers and I think there are two likely areas where this Squid Vicious is likely to be found. One is in Tribeca. Unicorn and Carlo, that's your assignment. Take the Mustang and dig around. The other is further downtown, almost by the Battery. Timothy and Jin, that's for you. Considering the damages Tim took, I don't have to remind everyone to be even more alert than usual."

Demrak Jin made a rumbling noise deep in her narrow chest and reached back to tap the knife hilt up by her left shoulder. She came from a warrior Race in Ulgor and her thin-lipped smile was unnerving.

At the other end of the table, Frank Mills said, "I offer my services for this case, in an unofficial capacity if needed. The more I observe and interact with the team, the more competent I will be as a member."

"True." Sable nodded and looked out over the cool, unwelcoming faces of her teammates. "We'd be foolish to turn down having a Trom Monitor on hand."

"He can't replace Megan!" snapped Unicorn. "Nobody can."

Sable said, "Ashley, I know you believe in the work we do. As knights of Tel Shai and members of the Kenneth Dred Foundation, we are all that stand between innocent unknowing Humans and creatures of the night that are eager to prey on them. I am positive this is your life's work and you would not give it up for anything."

"Well, sure. Sorry if I sound... it's just that Megan's only been gone a month and already we're filling her chair, it seems disrepectful."

The bland face of Frank Mills regarded the little blonde without taking offense. "Would Megan Salenger have wanted you to turn down an arrangement which will make you and your friends safer?"

A long tense moment broke as Ashley huffed. "Yeah. I get it. Look, I'm not blaming you for Megan's death and I should give you a fair shot. That's not asking too much." She rose to her full five feet one inch and clapped both palms down on the meeting table. "Let's roll."


III.

Timothy was not surprised Demrak Jin does not recognize the pun in the name 'Squid Vicious' and he suggested the Gelydra to listen to music once in a while.. any kind of music. She had been living in the surface world for years and had not taken advantage of any of its various arts.

Close to midnight found the team of Timothy, Frank and Jin approaching an auto body shop in one of the worst part of lower Manhattan. Right next to an embankment edging the East River was a block long lot with a wire fence around it and a plain wooden sign FRANK'S. This was mostly a junk yard filled with cast iron bathtubs and sinks, broken furniture, unidentifiable machine parts and random scraps of metal. The pothole-riddled ground was a maze of jagged masonry and ankle deep rain puddles. It also boasted a small brick garage with a sign advertising body work and salvage. Eight bikers were there with their Harleys, working on a stolen BMW which was being painted for resale on the black market.

Facing the KDF team as he entered was a wide short man with a tan raincoat tossed over his shoulders. He was markedly bizarre in appearance, with a bald pointed head, and smooth unhealty-looking grey skin. Even this late at night, he was wearing round oversized sunglasses with nearly opaque lenses. "Our hours of business are clearly posted," he announced in a deep mournful voice. "So you are trespassing. My Squidlings and I must conclude you are burglars and home invaders, and so we are forced to defend ourselves."

Suddenly, Tim remembered everything. Frank Pugliese had been a bodyguard for a Red Sect warlock whom he tried to rob and been cursed by a Darthan spell as punishment.

Demrak Jin whipped her bone-bladed long knife from its sheath across her back and charged. From Squid's ribs at each side sprouted two thick, rubbery tentacles stretching eight feet in length, lined with hooked suckers. These were extremely tough and strong. These had taken Timothy off-guard the night before, but Demrak Jin was ready for them. She stamped down hard on one tentacle, pinning it to the cold concrete floor. Even as another of the limbs whipped around her torso, Jin sliced entirely through it with her bone-bladed knife. The severed limb whipped about wildly. Jin sprang in close and drove her knife to the hilt into Squid's chest, then kicked the wounded man back away from her.

As Squid sagged to the ground and the tentacles spasmed and twitched, she whirled around to confront the gang. Timothy had dropped several of them with his anesthetic dart gun, but more ran into the garage began shooting at the KDF members. Several of the gang are using AR-15s and the barrage was heavy enough that Timothy shielded Jin with his body, since he was wearing the Trom armor.

The merciless drumming of hundred of bullets across his back forced Timothy down on to his knees, still bent protectively over Jin. Her sharkhide suit would have shredded away within seconds and her body perforated beyond recognition. Even the flexible Trom armor was tested to its limits. Its film structure worked by dispersing impact over its entire surface, which worked fine against a single shot by even a high-powered rifle, but this barrage was too much.

Within a second of the onslaught, Frank Mills unclipped a small flat device from his belt and swung it back and forth as if waving a flashlight. The Squidlings dropped straight down where they stood. The hot rifles fell from limp hands and the shooters made no effort to even catch themselves. Their nervous system restarted normal functions after that disruption but it would be quite a while before any of them would even attempt to move around.

Even as the final gang member hit the ground, Mills replaced the beam projector to his belt and swung around to his new teammates. "How much damage have you sustained?"

Demrak Jin wriggled out from under Tim and immediately began supporting him instead. "I am unharmed. My comrade took the attack meant for me."

"Ow ow ow," Tim mumbled, stretched out face down in the cold gravel. "I was just getting over being beat half to death last night. My luck is all bad."

"Scanning now. No significant internal damage shows. The bruising is extensive and severe." Mills examined his Link's screen. "Even with your advanced healing, Timothy, I suggest you do not try to walk for the immediate future."

"Yeah, I'm not enthusiastic about trying out for the Marathon!" Tim groaned. Very little remained of the back of his jacket or pants and, as Jin carefully turned him over, the detached front of his field suit dropped off to the ground.

Without a word, Frank Mills silently launched straight up into the dark sky. Timothy and Jin were taken aback. They had become used to seeing Megan use her gravity shield but for some reason, neither had considered that Mills would have the same equipment.

"Where do you suppose he's gone off to?" asked Tim.

"I neither know nor care," the Gelydra said. "Can you sit up? Timothy, I do not know how many times we have saved each others' lives. But I think I am in your debt."

Starting to feel better, Timothy exhaled more easily than before. "Ahh, who can keep track? The important thing is we know we have each other's back."

"Maybe I am the first of my Race to understand teamwork. We are stubborn and solitary by nature. But then," she added with uncharacteristic wistfulness, "I am the Gelydra who fell in love with a Melgar! There is something wrong with me."

Daring to touch her, Tim reached over and patted her shoulder. "Not as far as I can see, Jin."

Silently, without any flash or roar from his device, Frank Mills descended and landed perfectly on both feet next to them. "I must report that the enemy has escaped. I scanned the surrounding area for a distance greater than he could have run."

"Wait, you don't think... Did he jump in the East River?"

"There is a high degree of probability he did so. My sensors do not penetrate water effectively. It seems likely that the 'Squid Vicious' has been altered more than he first seemed to be. In addition to the extensible tentacles, he was not seriously harmed by his wounds and he has remained under water for at least nineteen minutes."

"More of a Squid than we thought," Timothy added in a low voice.

Demrak Jin took a few determined steps toward the embankment before Tim called, "Hey wait! Don't go after him."

"Why not? If anyone can slay a Human squid, it is a daughter of Ulgor. I will bring you back his head as a trophy."

"He is several miles away by now."

"I can track him by his ammonia scent. He will not escape me, I promise you that."

"Please, Jin," Tim said. "We need you to come back to base. In a few minutes, the NYPD will be arriving in full battalion force. I'm sure there's enough evidence in plain sight to arrest all these Squidlings. An obvious chop shop with a stolen car half taken apart, dozens of firearm violations, probably a lot of illegal drugs and paranaphenalia. But the last thing we need is to get caught up in the investigation because we were waiting here for you to come out of the river with someone's cut off head."

Even Demrak Jin had to see the bizarre humor in that last sentence. "Bah. So be it. There will be another time." As she helped Tim maneuver himself into the rear seat of the KDF's car, Frank Mills got behind the wheel and started it up. As it happened, he was just turning right at the next intersection when flashing blue and red lights could be seen arriving at the Squidlings' shop.

5/19/2023

"Seven Nooses In Seven Weeks"

A Trom Girl/Unicorn Team-Up

5/11/2009

I.

Sunday morning at ten to seven, Archie McAllister was bent over the huge stack of the NEW YORK TIMES, the one newspaper he read each week. Sitting at the little round breakfast table by the kitchen window, he nibbled on the last piece of wheat toast with honey and tried to decide whether making fresh coffee was worth it. Archie was a big friendly bear of a man, comfortable in baggy T-shirt, dark blue jockey shorts and white cotton socks. He had skipped shaving the day before and had no intention of making up for it on his day off. The warm June sunlight slanting in through the window made him smile at the contrast as he struggled through an article about cod fishing in the frigid North Atlantic, a subject that he was not even vaguely interested in.

Through the open curtains to his right, Archie spotted a silver Accord skid to a halt not three inches behind the rear bumper of Megan's beloved cherry-red Jeep Cherokee. From behind the wheel, a petite blonde with shiny platinum-white hair leaped out and stood talking on her phone in the driveway. She was wearing all white as usual... ankle boots, jeans and long-sleeved crewneck pullover, and in the bright May sunlight she almost glowed.

"Megan? Here comes trouble!" he called out.

From the adjoining room, the normally controlled, subdued voice of Megan Salenger grumbled, "Not Unicorn!"

"You got it," he answered with a grin. A second later, Megan entered the kitchen in her gold-colored terrycloth robe and fuzzy slippers. Her mop of thick black hair was still damp from the shower. The Trom Girl was just over thirty years old, alert and energetic even caught unawares at this hour. She had been a Human orphan raised by the Trom to be a liaison between the two Races. Her romance with Archie had strengthened into a solid relationship that had surprised both her Trom superiors and her friends with the KDF. No one had expected her to fall in love, least of all herself.

Leaning over the breakfast table to peer out the window, despite her grumpinesss Megan still could not repress a smile as she watched the little blonde gallop up to their front door. She had never shared Ashley's enthusiasm for excitement and she sometimes wistfully envied it. Even as the doorbell rang, the Trom Girl had her hand on the inner handle and was opening the door.

"Hi, Megan, Megan!" blurted Ashley. "Something's UP!"

"Good morning, Unicorn. What did we agree about phoning first, especially early in the morning?"

"Oh. Right. Sorry," Ashley Whitaker said, even though she barged past Megan as if she had been invited in. "But I'm onto something important here. Three murders already and I am sure there are four more planned. Hey there, Archie!" she called with a cheerful wave.

"Hi, Ashley," replied the big man, going back to his newspaper placidly.

"Listen," said the blonde, seizing Megan by both arms. "Sable has the team in Signarm for something dumb, some conference between the barons there. It's up to us. The thief will be killed next."

The Trom Girl gave up on understanding or resisting. "Well, I am on reserve duty but I do remain on call. Give me some little scrap of data so I know what you are talking about."

"This is one of those serial killers who act out a set pattern. You know, like how Samhain murdered some astronomers using weapons based on the names of planets? Or how Sepulchre killed five women named after months? I just figured it out. The thief is next!"

Giving Archie a shrug which he returned, Megan said, "Let me change, okay?" She hurried out of the kitchen.

Left behind, Ashley plopped down into the chair next to Archie and used a voice that could have been poured on French Toast. "You don't mind if I borrow your girlfriend for the day, DOOO you Archibald?"

"You're wasting the charm on me, honey," he said. "We didn't have any plans for today other than cleaning up around the house. If Megan decides to go on a mystery with you, I'd be okay with napping on the couch and watching TV."

"Eating nachos and drinking beer, maybe?" she asked.

"Somebody's got to do it," Archie said. "Whatever happened to you and that boy, Cory whatever?"

"Cory Adams," she said. "We're getting serious. We decided to try and do some babymaking. My mom always craved grandchildren, and me and Cory both like the idea. I'm an only child. Mom always said one of me was more than enough."

"Maybe it'll be a little girl to take over as the third Unicorn when you get old," Megan offered from the doorway. She had changed into sneakers, blue jeans and a black T-shirt with an open denim vest. In one hand, she clutched a travel bag containing her field suit and equipment.

"Worth a try," Ashley grinned. "Come on, come on, we have to get up to Lake George today. Let's use your Jeep, I'm sure it's already stocked up, with a full gas tank and the tires all checked and like that. Let's go."

Megan Salenger gave in. She went over and kissed Archie. "Sorry, my love, you see what I'm dealing with? How can I refuse this fireball?"

Archie rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. "It's fine with me. You haven't been on a case in quite a while, come to think of it. And you may not admit it, but I think you love the suspense and danger as much as Unicorn does."

As the two women headed out the front door and Archie got up to brew more coffee, he heard Ashley chirping excitedly, "There's this absolute nut calling himself Mr Gallows..."

( the rest of the story )

TIGER NATION II

2/9/2022

I.

"I'm scared, I don't have a problem admitting it," Timothy Limbo said. Still watching the row of monitor screens and status lights, he pushed the collective/cyclic stick forward and brought the CORBY up to four hundred miles per hour. "Maybe I shouldn't have watched those videos of tigers leaping up fifteen feet in the air with no trouble. Or that one where a tiger catches up to a car going forty."

Next to him in the co-pilot seat, Jocelyn sounded more tired than anything else. "You've seen my Red Spectre, Tim. She is living lightning. She is faster than anything of flesh and blood and she can blast through granite."

"Yeah. That's true, and I'm glad you're paired up with me, to be honest. My caspers are great for searching and spying and stuff, but not much use against Tigermen." In the subdued light of the CORBY cabin, Timothy's face looked as exhausted as his teammate's voice sounded. His bright yellow hair had finally been trimmed by a professional barber, it no longer hung down over his forehead almost in his eyes. "Having you and your Spectre with me is a big comfort."

"I've got your back, my friend." In the years she had lived in New York, Jocelyn Garimara's accent had eroded so much that someone meeting her would not immediately know she was Australian from her voice. But the rich dark brown skin, straight black hair and distinctive facial bone structure made it clear she was Aboriginal, from the Northwest. Timothy was not a big man, a few inches under six feet and lanky but she was small as well. Both were wearing the KDF field suits with the layer of silk-thin armor and tiny weapons and gadgets in numerous pockets. She went on, "I never trusted anyone until I met our team."

"This is awful. My heart has broken in half. I'm still having trouble processing what happened but instead of having time to think, here we are chasing monsters again. How are you doing?"

"Okay, I guess," she replied. "It happened. We lost Megan. Maybe it's better to keep busy now. We certainly should concentrate on what we're doing for our own sakes."

"Yeah. Looks like another three or four minutes before we need to find a touchdown. I'm sure no one will be ready for us. Sensors aren't picking up any radar within miles, we're in a black stealth copter with no external lights flying through a moonless night. And the CORBYs don't make any more noise than a stiff breeze passing by."

Jocelyn took a moment before venturing, "Do you ever get tired of this, Tim? It feels like we've been fighting the Midnight War all our lives. We were barely adults when we started. I'm not sure I want to do this forever."

"No, I haven't felt like that. Not yet. But I'll tell you the truth, I'd rather be doing more research and rescues than fighting." He turned his head for a second and saw she was watching him thoughtfully. "Anyway, right now we don't have a choice. Those monsters are out there. They'll keep killing innocent people until we stop them. So they don't have a choice, either."

"I know. They're like animals, not good or bad, they act the way they're born to act. I've been given my Red Spectre, you've been given your caspers. I think we've been made special for a reason. We can save a lot of lives tonight, how can we turn away?"

"Yeah, I'm not arguing with that. We do have an obligation. Okay, I'm slowing down and descending. Night vision screens are working great but all I see are miles of trees. We need a clearing in the next few miles. See anything?"

"Not yet. Shogren's cabin is almost within sight, maybe we should circle a little... Hey! On your nine o'clock, there's a spot."

"Great, I'm bringing us down now." The CORBY touched down so gently that no impact at all could be felt, and as the rotors slowed, the Trom-built impulse engines reduced even their whisper to silence. Tim checked the status lights one last time, then the cabin went black as he shut the stealth copter down. Through the windscreen, not even starlight could be seen on this overcast night.

Jocelyn unbuckled the restraint straps from around her waist and across her chest. "We're suited up. All we need to put on is our helmets and gloves."

"We'll be glad to have these suits tonight. It's twelve degrees out there."

"You and your Fahrenheit," she said, lowering her helmet down and tightening the seal where it attached to her suit's high collar. Her voice came clearly through a speaker in the chinbar, "America's a civilized country except for its dumb measurements."

They got out, sliding their hatches shut, and the CORBY automatically locked itself and armed its alarm systems. Timothy held up an individually crafted handgun with a barrel thicker than normal, clicked its mechanism and holstered it again at his right thigh. "No dart guns this time. I'm not counting on anesthetic darts against people with tiger DNA, hell no. They'd be done eating me before the drug put them to sleep."

Jocelyn placed a hand on her friend's shoulder and squeezed. "We're heading north northwest, this way. Come on, Tim. We're doing what Megan would have wanted us to continue doing." She sat out with a brisk stride and he followed without hesitation.

That trek was little more than a mile and nothing unusual happened, but it was nightmarish for both of them. Grief and lack of sleep left them not at their best. Bane's description of the Tigerman he had faced had been terrifying in itself, but the reports of another savage killing in this area by one of these monsters made it worse. An experienced hunter with a Marlin in his hands had been ripped open. If an alert man holding a rifle didn't deter these Tigermen, then normal unsuspecting Humans would be completely helpless prey.

Making as little noise as possible, relying on the light enhancers in their helmets' visors, Jocelyn and Timothy covered ground quickly. Their nerves were raw. Even the slightest sound from the forest around them made both swing around with hands dropping to clutch their weapons. A brisk wind had picked up, howling through tree branches with no leaves to soften its whine. Even though they were both warm and comfortable in their field suits, they frequently shivered anyway.

Walking up an elevation that made jogging difficult, they slowed to a walk and finally peered out between a clump of birch. Ahead, on a hill from which the trees and brush had been cleared, sat a simple one-story cabin of redwood planks. The single window showed yellow light. They could make out a generator beside the humble structure, black smoke drifting in the wind away from a stovepipe chimney. Next to the cabin sat three all terrain vehicles.

As they studied the scene, from around them came the snapping sounds of things deliberately making noise. Timothy and Jocelyn pressed their backs together, turning in a circle, hardly breathing.

A low, mocking voice said, "Looks like a feast tonight."

II.

Years of Kumundu training failed Jocelyn and Timothy that night. The deepest, most primitive fears overwhelmed them. It was instincts older and stronger than martial arts or civilization itself, instincts from dim ages when their tiny primate ancestors ran shrieking from gigantic predators. Every nerve pulled at them to run as fast as they possibly could.

But the two Tel Shai knights stood where they were and showed none of this.

Moving out between the widely spaced trees, four men in dark clothing stalked in at them, encircling them. With their light enhancers, Timothy and Jocelyn could see that these Tigermen remained mostly Human normal except for the fangs and claws where their teeth and fingenails had been. The way they moved so lightly on their toes, slightly crouched, shoulders up, was inevitably suggestive of cats moving in on prey.

The fifth man was different, walking in a Human manner, holding a 12 gauge pump action shotgun with both barrels aimed squarely at the two prisoners. "Keep quiet," he warned. "Not another house for ten miles around, no one to hear you scream."

Surprising everyone, Jocelyn placed both hands on her narrow hips and calmly asked, "Is Baron Shogren up there?"

"Har! What do you care? You're gonna be dinner in a minute."

One of the Tigermen rumbled deep in his chest. "I smell fear but not enough. What's going on?"

"We have an offer for the Baron. Serious money from a group that wants to back him. You've heard of STIGMA, right?" Jocelyn said.

"He's not here, no matter what offer you got," scoffed the shotgun man. "He's in Florida and by the time we could reach him, these boys will be cracking your bones for the marrow."

"They can try," was her answer. From inside her torso, a shimmering crimson outline of a woman's form lifted up into the night. Crackling, surrounded by an aura that made its details indistinct, the Red Spectre hovered at head height. Faced with something they could not understand, the Tigermen cringed back as they would from a raging fire.

The normal one yelled, "I was told all about you!" and let loose both barrels of the shotgun right at Jocelyn's chest. At pointblank range, that storm of pellets would have shredded an unprotected person. Her Trom armor under the field suit dissipated most of the impact but nothing is completely effective. The air was driven out of her lungs with a gush and she fell backwards without trying to catch herself.

The Red Spectre seemed to resist being drawn back to her. Despite its flailing, the weird apparition flashed backwards to merge into Jocelyn's limp form.

Pumping the action on his shotgun, the Human menace started to say something but there was the sharp crack of a pistol immediately followed by a deeper boom as the man's body flew apart in gouts of blood and flesh. Timothy whirled, firing three more times as quickly as he could. Three more explosions thundered in the woods. The Tigermen were blown into bits before they could realize what was happening. Timothy had brought one of the KDF concussion guns, intended for actual all-out combat, and each resonance cap was more devastating than a grenade.

He managed to get three of the monsters before the fourth Tigerman sprang fifteen feet through the air and pounced down upon him with all its weight. Timothy had happened to have his gun hand raised when he was slammed down to the ground. The creature's jaws gaped wide and clamped down on Timothy's forearm with force that would bite cleanly through a bare arm. Even with the protection of the Trom armor layer under his sleeve, Timothy screamed as the bone broke.

The gun had fallen from his hand. There was no hope of reaching it, and he was pinned down in a way that prevented him from reaching his survival knife or other weapons. Timothy couldn't draw his legs up under him or wriggle loose. Panic ran cold through his chest. Even if this monster couldn't bite through the armor, those fangs and claws could do enough internal damage to kill him in a few seconds.

Red lightning blinded him. A fierce sizzling rang in his ears as Timothy suddenly felt the crushing weight lift off him. He took deep, shuddering breaths. The Tigerman slumped to one side with a trench seared through the torso that made the corpse fall into unequal halves. Gulping for air, his right arm dangling in horrible pain, Timothy scrambled to his feet and looked for his partner.

"Jocelyn! Jocelyn, are you okay?" he yelled but could hardly hear his own voice. Even with his helmet dampening loud noises, those explosions a few seconds earlier had left his ears ringing.

"I'm all right. I'm all right. Just.. got the wind knocked out of me. Damn, Tim, you sure blew them away. Not enough left to dress up for the wake, as we say."

Despite everything, he laughed at that. "Ow, ow. I'm pretty sure my right arm is broken. Our healing factor should get rid of the pain in a few minutes."

"I'll make a sling. Here's someone's shirt sleeve with not much blood on it. Hold still." She fashioned a workable sling and tied it up behind his neck. "Will you hold STILL! Stop wriggling."

"I guess my arm will heal in a few hours. That's the norm for us, but if the bones are misaligned, they'll seal up that way."

"Can't be helped right now, mate. If that happens, you'll need a little surgery and get a day or two off. Right now, we have to search that cabin and the vehicles."

Tim grunted and let his arm relax, feeling the sling hold it securely. "Good work with this thing. Yeah, you're right. We need as much information as we can find up there. How many of these creatures are there? Where are they? We might be taking that place apart all night."

"First, let me tell the others what happened. The man with the gun mentioned Florida, that might be exactly what our team needs to know." She twisted the left earpod on her helmet two clicks counter-clockwise. "Hello. Sable? We're both fine but we have a lot to report..."

III.

When the segmented roof panel slid open, freezing night air poured down into the tenth floor hangar. Sable's black hair whipped around and she shivered, but it would only be for a moment. Behind her, Ashley and Sheng stood unaffected because their field suits had an internal power source that kept them heated and comfortable.

Weirdly silent even at such close range, the dark stealthcopter CORBY II descended to touch down with gentle precision in the marked off circle on the floor. The top rotors slowed to a halt and the right front hatch slid open.

Stepping down from the pilot seat, Josef Jubilec crouch-walked over to where his teammates waited. "She's ready for action, captain," the Blind Archer said.

"Good work, Josef," replied Sable. "Thanks for going to Hawk Island and bringing it here. I can't remember when we last had both CORBYs in use."

"There's still the third one at the HCE Project. I contacted Stephen earlier to see if he was working on her and he guaranteed that copter can be wheels up in ten minutes. He also said he's standing by to bring her in and he'll be ready himself for anything we want him to do."

Sable nodded, untensing as the roof closed up again and the hangar returned to normal room temperature. "I don't know if that will be necessary. Jocelyn and Tim should be back with the other CORBY in an hour. If we have it here, Unicorn and Sheng will have to return this one to the island and then drive back down from Maine. There's barely enough room here for one CORBY at a time."

"We'll see what happens," Josef said. "I'm ready to go with them right now."

"No. I want you here in case we find another pack of these Tigermen. I'm still searching for where Baron Shogren has his hideouts. It's taking me forever. I can't simply hack into DMV and power company records as easy as Megan could. I'm not as smart as she was."

From behind her, Sheng Mo-Yuan said, "None of us are. We're doing the best we can with what we have."

Ashley Whitaker, the second Unicorn, chipped in, "You're dealt your cards and you play the game. That's what my mom used to say."

Sable jerked a thumb toward the door behind her. "You're off duty for four hours, Josef. I'd like you to nab some sleep. None of us have been getting as much as we should the past few days."

The Blind Archer's normally terse voice had softened as he went toward the door. "I'll be ready when you need me."

When he had gone from the hangar, Unicorn said quietly, "I've never seen him so gentle. He's trying to be supportive, captain."

"I know, I know. Josef has feelings, he was brought up not to show them but he's as hurt by Megan's death as the rest of us. Back to business. We have our hands full and we need to concentrate on our mission no mattrr what."

The Unicorn's perfect little face revealed more exhaustion than it ever had before. Dark circles under the crystal blue eyes showed she had not applied even her minimal make-up that day. Yet her voice remained firm and clear. "You don't have to remind us, Sable. I believe in what we do! Being Tel Shai knights is an honor and a duty."

Next to her, Sheng had lowered his helmet over his head, leaving the visor up. To most people, the Chujiran seemed to be Northern Chinese but that beaked eagle nose suggested his true origins. "We've got the co-ordinates of Shogren's facility," he said. "I'm going Mach-plus as soon as we're high enough, we should be there by dawn."

"All right. I'll be here, tracking down more leads. Jeremy is going through his own sources. He promised to contact us if he found anything instead of going after it on his own. But you know how he is."

Heading for the pilot side of the stealthcopter, Ashley scoffed. "Dire Wolf! If you ask me, he should really be called Lone Wolf." She hopped up lightly into the seat and raised one gloved hand toward Sable in a sort of salute, two fingers up by her temple. Beside her, Sheng got in from the other side.

"Good luck," Sable called as the rotors began to turn again. "Be careful." Overhead, the steel roof panels rolled open and a gust of subzero wind rushed in. The black helicopter shot straight up more quickly and silently than anything made by Human technology could match. Sable watched it go, finally allowing her face to lose some of its stoical strength now that no one was there to see her doubts and worry. "Please be careful."

IV.

As they shot up to twenty thousand feet, Ashley helped Sheng by watching all the monitor screens and gauges. The interior of the cabin was illuminated by dozens of blue and green lit dials. Any one of them going red would have stood out dramatically. "Radar realignment working fine," she said. "Although, to be honest, what would really happen if anyone picked us up? A tiny blip for a few seconds before vanishing? Any air traffic controller would shrug it off."

"Good to be careful anyways," Sheng replied. "Okay, we're accelerating to just under Mach-One. Still can't feel any shuddering but in a minute we'll be able to crack the barrier and really travel."

"These are amazing aircraft, all right. Mom gave me some lessons in a Bell she leased and they're incredibly hard to fly. You have to worry about fuel, which you don't with a CORBY, you have to watch oil pressure and engine temp and a dozen other things while you're also balancing lift and thrust to keep the bird from crashing. It's nerve-wracking and I have iron nerves of course."

"Yeah." Sheng hesitated before adding, "I wonder if the Trom will send one of themselves to do maintenance on these?"

"I dunno. I hate to think about it. Megan used to spend two days a week servicing the CORBYs and our Links and all our other equipment. I guess Jeremy or Sable will be working out a new arrangement with those guys. Bunch of cold-hearted emotionless geniuses!"

"We're speeding up now. Rotors are locked and Trom impulse engines cranked up. Hitting the resistance. There! We're through."

"I hardly felt anything," the little blonde said. "These things are basically spaceships disguised as helicopters. Hey, Sheng, I wanted to ask you. Remember when you fought that Turner guy who turned into a tiger?"

"As if I'd forget. Cirkoth watch over me! He wasn't like these monsters, he physically went full tiger. Nine feet long. he tossed me around like a stuffed toy. My Argent powers weren't much help. I can tell you, I'm not exactly excited to be faced an unknown number of Tigermen." Sheng made a disgusted noise.

"Huh. And I don't think my Horn will be any help either. Sure, it removes gralic abilities from anything from werewolves to Dragons to sorcerers. But these critters don't have any gralic force in them. I came packing serious weaponry this time."

Sheng checked a monitor screen. "ETA is one hour, eleven minutes to Florida itself but then we have to go into the Everglades, so who knows how long the whole trip will take. I figure we'll finding Baron Shogren's headquarters around two this morning."

"You know what's weird? I had a favorite Mad Scientist bad guy. I thought Cogitus was hilarious. He had a head like a watermelon long side up, and he wore mechanized exoskeleton armor because he was so damn old he wouldn't be able to hold his head up without it."

"I remember him. His real name was Sinclair."

"Well, I always laughed at the way he insulted everybody. He didn't even know he was doing it. Everytime he opened his mouth, he said how smart he was and how we were barely better than trained monkeys. After awhile, I almost looked forward to listening to him."

Sheng glanced over at his friend. "You're ODD, Ashley, but in a good way. He was trying to kill us, when he wasn't unleashing a horde of Insectoids or trying to keep brains alive in fish tanks."

"Oh, sure. He was still funny, though. Maybe being raised to be an action girl by my mom left me with a strange sense of humor. Listen, don't you think we should have had a service for Megan?"

"I'd have liked that," Sheng responded more somberly. "Back in Chujir, we had two days of fasting when a family member died, everyone got to say something about them, then we all got drunk on rice wine and hugged each other."

"We need something. We need closure." Unicorn pulled her helmet up and hung it on a hook on the back of her seat. Pulled up in a bun, the silver-blonde hair shone in the subdued cabin light. "I know her will said she didn't want any ceremony. She didn't believe in rituals or holidays or even birthdays. I know she's already been cremated and her urn will be buried by Archie's parents when the ground softens up. Where's that again?"

"St Anne's Church, up by Albany."

"Yeah, that's it. I think we need to all go up there and say goodbye. Otherwise, I dunno, we'll never feel like we were respectful enough. And another thing, don't you think Archie's taking it well?"

"He IS," Sheng agreed. "I mean, you can see he's crushed but he has been coming over to our headquarters building and working on Tim's motorcycle or our cars every day. I guess he wants to be doing something useful."

Ashley leaned over toward her teammate. "Don't tell anyone, but I'm glad he's acting like that. I expected him to blame us! I seriously thought he would hate all of us for getting her into danger."

"Guess not. He knew she loved this life. Listen, Ash, you sound like you're ready to drop."

"Yeah. I guess I'll stretch out in the back compartment and take a nap." She punched him lightly on the bicep. "I couldn't be any safer than being in this bird and having you nearby."

After she had unbuckled the restraint straps and wriggled through the clear divider panel into the rear compartment, Sheng Mo-Yuan exhaled sadly and patched into their satellite channels. He found some soft music he liked, something called post-rock, and settled down for the flight.

He didn't miss Chujir any more. Actually, he had lived in Manhattan longer than he had lived back in his home realm. His family there were only some uncles and aunts he barely knew, he had not had many friends in his village but he did like to visit Sifu Tang once in a while. Tang Ming, once a Tel Shai knight and KDF member herself. If not for her, he would never have known about the real world, let alone dared to live in it. He should go home soon and visit her, bring some gifts from so-called civilization.

There was Uncle Pao to think about, too. The old man had been very fond of Megan Salenger, one of the few white people he ever warmed up to. Sheng had often wondered why, but then who could explain why some people got along better than others? Uncle stayed at Sheng's office on Canal Street so much he was practically living there. Before he visited Sifu Tang, Sheng thought he should take Uncle Pao on a little vacation. Going to Arizona in the middle of winter should please the old Chinese. They had thought of each other as uncle and nephew for so long that either would have been startled at being reminded that they were no blood relation at all.

Sheng blinked as he realized they were on the edge of the Everglades. He had sunk deeper in thought than he had realized. The chronometer told him they had been in the air for an hour and a half. The Chujiran throttled down, eased the CORBY down below the speed of sound so he could engage the rotors again.

"Ashley! Hey blondie, we're almost there," he called over his shoulder.

The Unicorn mumbled something that sounded like, "Come on Cory, five more minutes, okay?" She could be heard yawning, getting up and climbing back into the cabin. "Drat, I was out like nobody's business. Some strange dream about climbing trees in the rain, I remember that much. Let me get strapped in."

"That's Highway 88 below us," Sheng said. "I haven't seen a car for the past twenty miles. This is really isolated territory. There! That house there up its little side road, that's on the co-ordinates Sable turned up."

Peering down through the windscreen, Unicorn wrinkled her nose. "Imagine living there. Almost an hour to the nearest store. Who the heck built that house in the first place?"

Instead of answering, Sheng said, "I'm going to swing around again. Do me a favor and use thermal imaging and neural scans. See if anything living is down there."

"I'm on it. Nah. Nothing. Maybe a few mice that are too small to detect."

"Really? That's disappointing. Oh well, we better search anyway. There could be useful information about these Tigermen. That area behind the house looks big enough for the CORBY and the trees say it's solid enough to land on."

"Go for it, Sheng. We must be crazy, you know? We're feeling let down that there isn't a pack of extremely dangerous bloodthirsty half-Human half=tiger monsters for us to fight."

"Landing gear down. Descending," Sheng said. "Here we go. Yeah, when you put it that way, it's funny. But we'll be looking for these creatures until we find them. Touch down, we're good." He began slowing the rotors, and switching off various functions.

Ashley opened the hatch to her left but, before exiting the copter, she held up a handcrafted pistol with an unusually thick barrel. "Our strongest resonance caps. You can blow up an engine block with these shells. Believe me, I'm keeping it ready until we're back in the air again."

V.

When they met by the CORBY's nose, Sheng had fastened his own helmet on but had not drawn his dart gun. Seeing Unicorn's questioning expression, he said, "I'm shifting to durability. As dense as I can get. Right now, my skin is bulletproof, muscles and bones are like leather and granite. I feel a little safer."

"No one can hear us talking, right?"

"As long as we're using the coms in our helmets, no." He began moving toward the house slowly, looking around the area. The light enhancers in their visors illuminated everything brilliantly. In this moonless cloudy winter night, they saw at a level comparable to noon in summer sunlight. The only drawback was range, the visible area only extended thirty feet in any direction.

"Say, Sheng, did you ever find a way to use two gralic effects at the same time? You know, be fast AND strong or strong AND invulnerable?"

"Nah. Not that I haven't tried," he laughed. "Teacher Jathis says I do actually have some secondary effects each time, though. When I get strong, my body also toughens up otherwise I would hurt myself. Same for when I get fast, so I don't rip tendons. And when I go dense, like now, my normal strength goes up a degree, too, otherwise it'd be hard to move."

"Jest wondering. Not that I'm envious of you having actual gralic abilities or anything, although I am! Check out how chewed up this front yard is. Lots of cars were parked here and almost got stuck in the mud."

"You're right." They stood in front of the house for a moment, studying the scene. Sheng said, "Looks to me like there was quite a crowd here and they left recently. The tire tracks are still sharp-edged, they haven't softened with erosion. There was a cold rain two days ago, judging by the mud, so these Tigermen were here after that."

"The detective speaks! What else?"

"Expensive vehicles, too. I'm not as good at identifying treads as I should be, but going by the size alone, these were mostly ATVs. Not a good sign. We're not dealing with one mastermind and only a few thugs."

"A Tiger Nation," Ashley suggested. "Not great news. Let's circle the house."

Behind the building, two aluminum garbage cans were full and there was a black plastic bag next to them, tied up tight. Sheng poked it with his boot. "Yeah, we're going to have to rummage through that before we leave. It's amazing how even otherwise sharp crooks leave receipts and envelopes in their garbage instead of destroying them." He turned back to the house itself.

"Ranch style," he continued. "Brick walls. I'd say built in the early 50s. The usual low-pitched roof, large windows, sliding glass doors. Not really popular in Florida, but then Shogren wasn't from this country."

"If you say so." Ashley had not relaxed her vigilance in the slightest. While her partner looked at the house, she kept turning in all directions, searching the trees behind them and watching the corners of the building, expecting Tigermen to come charging at them at any second.

"Door's unlocked." Sheng entered into a long kitchen that had been left with all its hanging pots and pans, coffeemaker, microwave on the counter and even some untouched fruit in a bowl on the round table. Coming in behind him, closing the door silently, Unicorn opened the refrigerator door a crack. There were still some items in there, but it was not stocked.

For the next full hour, they moved through the house. The living room had five blankets stretched out on the rug, with pillows or rolled up towels at the end of each one. The bedroom had two more blankets on the floor, as well as unmade sheets and blankets on the bed itself.

"I like this less and less!" Unicorn grumbled. "At least ten of these varmints were staying here. Add another one on the couch. I didn't mean 'Tiger Nation' as a literal phrase, I was hoping there was only a few of them."

She watched how Sheng searched quickly but systematically, tilting or moving furniture to look underneath, checking for any items that had been dropped and forgotten. From his lack of comment, apparently nothing he found was of any significance. Ashley herself checked the underside of drawers and in other classic hiding places, but with no better luck.

It was the biggest room by the front door that gave them the most to think about. All the furnishings had been removed. Deep parallel scrapes in the polished wood floor led from several directions toward the door. One coil of heavy-duty orange extension cord had been left behind, as well as a few scraps of cardboard and loose wrapping paper.

"Whoa, seems to me like this is where that Zhune equipment was used. They dragged it out without trying to protect the floors," Ashley said. "I bet it was because of Jeremy killing that Tigerman back in New York. They knew some Humans had learned about them and they ran for cover."

Sheng made a non-commital sound, as he was kneeling to examine scorch marks around an electrical outlet near the floor. "It has to be Zhune artifacts doing this. They need so much electricity that there's a danger of starting fires in the wall."

"I vote we stop for a minute," Ashley said. "First, I need a bathroom break. And a few protein bars, I haven't eaten since breakfast. Also, I think we should report to Sable."

"Okay. Yeah, you're right," he said, straightening up. "I brought some sandwiches. We can eat them while we take a break. Sable always worries about us on a mission, but I'm sure she's even more concerned right now."

Unicorn couldn't keep a saddened tinge from her tones, "Because of what happened to Megan. I get it. Let's go sit in the CORBY and take five."

Going back through the house and out the rear door again, they both found themselves moving slowly, facing in opposite directions so they were almost back to back. "Drat it all, Sheng," Unicorn said in a low voice, "I don't remember us ever being so timid. We've tackled the most bloodthirsty nightmares the Midnight War could throw at us."

"Why are you whispering?" asked Sheng. He approached the CORBY's tail, which did not have rotor blades but instead two vertical vanes using high-pressure air streams to help control flight. With all his training and experience, as keyed up as he was, he was still taken off guard. A huge bulky form scrambled up from under the stealthcopter's tail and crashed into him with bone-breaking impact, immediately swerving to leap up beyond head height and pounce down on Ashley. She cried out more in surprise than pain, feeling her gunhand pinned down to the ground by more than two hundred pounds of weight, the other foot pressing down on her chest and keeping her from drawing in a breath.

"Hey!" shouted Sheng from where he had jumped back on his feet. "Eat the bigger one first."

In a split-second, faster than an untrained eye could have followed, the Tigerman spun and vaulted across the intervening distance, ready to rip and slash. He dove right into a fist at the end of a stiffened arm as rigid as a bar of steel. Sheng had braced himself and didn't budge as the brute cracked its face against that fist.

Not expecting that at all, the monster fell back a step, shaking its head. Sheng closed in and swung a wide looping overhand punch that started down by his knees. That blow hit like a hammer swung by a determined blacksmith. Blood splashed out from a broken nose. The creature loped back out of reach and swung around to escape.

But Sheng Mo-Yuan ran and actually tackled the brute, catching him off balance and throwing him down on his back. Straddling on his knees over the Tigerman, Sheng blasted furious alternating left-right hooks to a face that was beginning to lose shape under those impacts. "You started this!" Sheng yelled as loud as he could, "But I'm going to finish it!"

Before he could be killed, the creature thrashed about, got Sheng off him and was up on his feet again. In the last second of his life, he saw a small dark figure aiming a strange looking handgun at him. Then the sharp crack of the explosion sounded as his head flew apart into fragments too small to be recovered.

The echoes of that blast echoed from the forest behind them. Ashley lowered her gun and shouted, "Hell yeah! We're the top of the food chain for a reason."

Sheng loomed up over the corpse, with its mangled neck a mere stump and the head obliterated. "Ash? Can you hear me?"

"Barely. I hope I'm not permanently deaf. That shot nearly broke my little wrist, these resonance firers have some recoil."

"Use the infrared in your visor," he snapped. "Right now. We need to see if there are any more in the woods sneaking up on us."

After a few tense moments, they both relaxed very slightly. Sheng said, "Nothing."

"Me neither. That ambush was my fault, buddy. When we were in the air, I searched the house for heat sources. But I didn't check the woods around the house. My bad."

"Next time, we'll know better. Cirkoth guard me, that was actually scary. I lost it because I was mad at myself for being afraid."

Bending down over the headless body, Unicorn scoffed. "I'm not going to bother looking for a pulse. Man. Sheng, we have a lot to tell Sable about now. Let's sit in the CORBY and I'll call her. She's gonna be glad to hear we're both okay. Such a mom."

Before turning away from the dead thing, Sheng noticed how the splashes of blood were steaming in the frigid night air. "Why did this one remain behind? Why was he waiting out of sight?"

"Because this Tiger Nation knows who is after them," offered Ashley. "Next time we catch up with them, they'll be ready for us. I have that sinking feeling we're headed for a full scale, no-fooling battle."

4/6/2022

"Everywhere At the Same Time"

10/22/2002

I.

"I am the Unicorn!" Ashley hollered so echoes rebounded from the ceiling beams in the crowded bar. She had hopped up onto a chair in front of the table which had no room on its surface for any more overturned shot glasses. In the smoky haze of that room with its red neon lighting advertising COLD BEER and BIKERS WELCOME, she stood revealed as a gorgeous young woman with long platinum-white hair, perfectly cast features and a slim body displayed in white ribbed sweater and snug white jeans. "There has never been anyone like me!"

"You can say that again, sweetheart," one of the men grumbled. "If'n Reggie wasn't snoring, I'd worry he was dead. Gimme a hand with him, bros." Two other men helped lift the insensate Reggie from his chair and carried him toward a back room which held a broken-down couch. The crowd at the WEST SIDE INN was two-thirds male and one-third female, all ranging from their twenties to early thirties with a few grizzled barflies secluded in the corners. The jukebox had gone silent as everyone became enthralled by the way this tiny blonde gulped down whiskey shots without effect while her challengers inevitably staggered away in defeat. In the center of the table was a plastic bowl normally filled with pretzels but now overflowing with bet money.

Unicorn leaped nimbly down to stand next to her companion. "Hey Science Nerd, how much dough is in the kitty?"

In nearly exact contrast, Megan Salenger had black shaggy hair, olive skin and dark thoughtful eyes. She was wearing a black sweatshirt and dark jeans to complete the reversal. "I count six hundred and eighty-three dollars and eleven cents."

"Well then there now," Ashley laughed. She swung around to face the staring crowd. "Boys and girls, the drinking contest is officially over and as the winner... of course!.. I declare that my winnings will right this minute be donated to the grill. Free hamburgers and sausages and French fries for everyone!"

Megan carefully counted out Ashley's winnings to the two men at the bar. One of them tied on an apron that was less than immaculate and began slapping meat patties onto the steel grill between the shelves of bottles and the cash register. Patrons were jostling each other and calling out their preferences as Megan stepped back away from the cluster of bodies.

A college age redheaded woman, with four piercings in every ear and a baggy sweatshirt with NEVER SAY NOT ONCE handwritten across its front, tugged at Megan's sleeve. "That was awesome. Dude! How can a chick that size pack away so much booze? I caught a buzz just watching."

"Ashley has many talents," Megan answered, disengaging herself. "Excuse me, please."

Back at the show table with its thirty shot glasses and empty bottles, the Unicorn was wrestling into her down-filled ski jacket. "You know, Trom Girl, you could do that much drinking, too. You have the same healing factor I do."

"I don't see the purpose in such an activity," the Trom Girl answered mildly. Megan picked up her waist-length KDF field jacket, which had an internal power source and which would keep her comfortable under worse conditions than a chilly Manhattan night. "Your idea of fun escapes my understanding."

"Aw, I think you'll get it someday, Megs. On the tagra tea diet, our bodies process alcohol the same way we'd process cyanide or botulism. It all just passes harmlessly through our innards, which reminds me, that WAS still a good amount of liquid I gulped down tonight. Let's hit the little girl's room before we split."

Escorting her friend to the two doors marked COLTS and FILLIES, the Trom Girl said, "I will remain out here. Since I did not drink two gallons of whiskey, I do not need to urinate."

Unicorn punched Megan lightly on the bicep. "Aw, we need to go out next Friday night, too. I know this karaoke bar in Tribeca..."
When Ashley re-emerged, she pointed at the wall clock in mock horror. "MAYY-agan! You know we were supposed to leave at eleven, why didn't you say anythng?"

Zipping up her field jacket, the Trom Girl replied, "It was after eleven when we got here."

Seeing the two teammates putting on their coats, a half dozen men drew closer. "Please tell me you two aren't leaving! Break everyone's hearts, why don't you?"

"We are both on duty in four hours and nineteen minutes," Megan replied with a noticeable lack of sympathy.

"At least give us your names," said the tallest one there, a rather good-looking athletic type with a brown ponytail. "A phone number wouldn't be a bad idea, either."

Ashley reached up and touched his cheek. For an instant, her impudence faded and was replaced by a wistful tone. "Don't I wish, cutie. But the Science Nerd and I lead crazy lives and there's no telling when we'll be free again. It's the heavy burden of duty we carry, I guess."

"Goodnight to you all," Megan interrupted, yanking her friend by one arm. "Drive carefully."

Two blocks away, Unicorn stopped in mid-stride and glanced back over her shoulder. "Megan, let's choose two of those guys and bring them back with us. You know, just for coffee. And to talk."

The Trom Girl could not keep disapproval from her voice. "Bringing unauthorized persons into the headquarters building will of course alert our duty officer. That's Sable tonight."

"Drat darn heck. Yeah, that's true. This is worse than trying to sneak a boy upstairs when your dad's on the couch in the living room," Ashley sighed. "Too bad the KDF is such a prude organization."

"It is not an issue of morals. You are an adult and entitled to a personal life. But we have many enemies who want us dead or captured for torture. We have to think of the team's security first." Megan took the blonde's arm again. "I have not given much thought to dating, let alone entering a serious relationship, Ashley. It's difficult for Tel Shai knights like us. The Midnight War gives most people nightmares if they learn about it."

"You're right. I guess. I'll tell you something you mustn't forget, Megs. You're Human. You were raised by those cold, emotionless Trom super-scientists but you're not like them. You have feelings. I'd bet anything that when you tumble for some guy, you're going to be in L-O-V-E Love with little hearts flying around your head."

The Trom Girl did nor answer immediately but, after walking a few steps, she quietly said, "Only time will tell."

As soon as they saw Megan's cherry red Jeep Cherokee parked ahead, both women heard their Links buzz at their belts. "Oh, come ON!" groaned Ashley as she unclipped the flat device and held it up. "Hi, Sable? What's up?"

"Also responding," said Megan into her own Link.

"I have a report from one of our observers of an Eldanar warrior woman seen in the city," came the steady familiar voice of their captain. "Seems there's a brawl at the LOST SOULS bar within walking distance of where you two are. No casualties apparently, just some bruises and damaged furniture but I would like to know more. It's winding down right now."

"Got it, we're on our way," Unicorn said. "But seriously, I didn't know the Eldanarin HAD warriors, let alone fighting women. They're so, you know, snooty and dainty and New Age and stuff."

Sable's voice sharpened noticeably, "There's only one in modern times that I've ever learned about. One of Hagen's Seven Swords, an Elf named Perendir."

( the rest of the story )