’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Nineteen ― Ill Met by Moonlight

 

¿Hasta cuándo, oh simples, amarán la simpleza, Y los burladores se deleitarán en hacer burla, Y los necios aborrecerán el conocimiento?

— Proverbios 1:22

How long, O simpletons, will you love being simple-minded, and you tricksters delight in trickery, and you fools hate the truth?

— Proverbs 1:22

 

 

Our feelings we with difficulty smother
When constabulary duty’s to be done
Ah, take one consideration with another
A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

The Pirates of Penzance
― William Schwenk Gilbert &
   Sir Arthur Sullivan

 

 

Barbara Big Horse walked back into her office, where the Group Captain was sitting down on her office settee, his sister and niece on either side of him while Judith showed him pictures of her husband, the children growing up, and catching up on the fifty or so years of history that had passed him by, thirty of which Judith had skipped as well when she left Earth for Quicksilver. The boys were lounging in that disjointed way boys have, as big as men, but not yet grown into manly self-possession. They were obviously bored to tears by the pictures, but were simultaneously excited by the presence of their famous uncle, not only an Air Force officer, but a Group Captain, which they knew was some sort of posh. Barbara had a file folder in her hand. “Group Captain? I have your orders here.”

She handed them to him, and he took and read them over immediately, a relieved expression sweeping over his face about half-way through, and then a look of puzzlement. He looked up at her in silent question.

She smiled. “Ah! I see you’ve noticed. In view of the foiled attack on Quicksilver Base and Admin Center, I took the liberty of requesting your secondment to us on extended picket duty right here in Quicksilver orbit, to stand watch against any other surprises those who tried — and failed — to subvert you might try again, and of course I don’t know where any other strategic reserves might be hidden, so you should remain on call for the foreseeable future.”

“But … ”

“No ‘buts’, Group Captain.” She smiled more broadly now. “You’re my prisoner now.”

He thought about that for a while, and then saw her point. “Yes, Ma’am!” he said. “It seems only fair, Ma’am, and safest.”

“Oh, more than fair, I think, if you’ll continue reading through that file. Since you’ll be in command of planetary defenses, ordinarily you’d have to hold at least one-star rank as Air Officer Commanding, but I wanted to give you an extra star, in case our enemy tries the same trick again, so you’ve been promoted to Air Marshal, with attendant rises in pay and benefits retroactive to first taking up your picket post here around Delta Pavonis, which will give you a nice little pile of credits to pay for your own beer, as I imagine you’ll want your contributions to your siblings to continue as before. Since being an Air Marshal isn’t nearly as much fun without a senior officer to kick around, I’ve put through another promotion for your former Wing Commander, who is now Group Captain Smythe with similar rises, et cetera, and I’ll let you handle telling him. You’ll probably need to adjust your other officer ranks as well, possibly recruit some locals, but I’ll leave that to your own good judgement.”

“Yes, Ma’am. With great pleasure, Ma’am! But my siblings, Ma’am?” He stood carefully, extricating himself from his niece, who’d latched onto his arm with considerable determination, and snapped to full attention.

“At ease, Air Marshal.” She grinned. “You’re among friends here, and yes, your brother is still alive, although getting on in years. Your support has made him fairly comfortable on Earth, but I can’t let you talk to him right this moment,” she said, the tone of her voice growing more serious. “I did all this for a specific purpose, you’ll understand. As Base Commander, I’m also the theoretical Planetary Governor, but we’ve never bothered about it here, because we’ve been ‘simple farmers’ for quite a while. By taking up my official rank, I’m taking up some of the boring bureaucratic ‘baggage’ that goes with it as well, one of which is responsibility for and control of my planetary defences, so I needed to give you a promotion, no matter what I did. I made the appointment retroactive as far back as I could manage, to give you as much instant seniority within Air Marshal ranks as I could manage on the spur of the moment.”

“So they’ll have to supply a Marshal of the local Air Force if they try to go over my head, as it were … It’s certain that they won’t find many Air Marshals with twenty years in rank.”

She acknowledged his observation with a nod. “Exactly. And our current Marshal of the World Federation Air Force is working closely with Senator Ortíz, I believe, so we’ve managed to keep your new rank secret for now. You’ll also note that I included the entire roster of Air Force officers of star rank and above in the file, with high-def vids so you can see both their faces and their characteristic movements. I’d like you to study them to see if any of their movements remind you of the artificial construct that was used in their attempt to gull you. For the moment, however, I’m ordering you to refrain from contacting anyone off-planet. I’d like to draw them out, so instead of saying anything about your visit here, I want you to simply ’disappear’ as far as anyone out there knows.” She gestured vaguely toward the sky.

He thought about that for a few seconds. “So when the impostor pressed the button to destroy my ansible, in that instant I simply vanished, as far as he knew.” He thought some more. “Won’t he try to do something with the airship?”

“I certainly hope so, and I hope that it’s only the beginning of many similar mistakes, but he’ll have to wait until he hears something from Quicksilver before he knows what to do next, since he’ll have no idea how long it will take you to prepare the ‘assault’ he ordered. I’ve had the compromised ansibles replaced, but I had the old airship control ansible connected to a airship simulator instead of destroying it, so we can not only see what they attempt to do with your airship, but try to trace back their ansible to its operator.”

“But can’t he just use the control terminal to ‘look around’ and see what’s happening?”

“I think not. In the first place, your old airship control ansible thinks that it’s connected to a airship still in orbit around Delta Pavonis, and all its sensors will relay appropriate vid and data feeds if queried. But a airship’s control ansible is a very specialized unit, because it requires a airship’s ‘bridge’ to command a airship, whether that ‘bridge’ is located on the airship or elsewhere, because the control interfaces remain the same. So he probably … or must have, ‘borrowed’ an existing one, and there aren’t all that many of them lying about.”

“So we’re depending on him not wanting to be caught sneaking around?”

“Just so,” she said, smiling. “But what’s life without a little excitement to keep us on our toes?”

Jack Webster was whistling as he walked into his old office building. The place still looked the same, the same dirty plastic flooring, designed to ‘hide the dirt,’ but as transparent as a whore’s makeup. He was looking at it through new eyes, though. One of the same cops was on the front desk, just as if this were any ordinary day. “Hi, Sandoval. Macleod in?”

Sandoval was obviously startled to see him. “Yeah, but … ”

“Can it, Sandoval.” He flashed his new shield as he walked into an open elevator door. “I’m going up.”

As he turned to press a button, he had the satisfaction of watching Sandoval grab his communicator.

On the thirtieth floor, he got off. Just down the hall was Macleod’s department, Forensics, and he walked through the automatic double doors as if he belonged there. He said a breezy ‘hello’ to Deborah, the fierce guardian of his privacy who ‘manned’ the front desk, but she knew that Jack was usually welcome, so she sniffed and let him pass. He knocked on Macleod’s office door, which was open. The placard said: Douglas B Macleod, MD, PhD, ScD.

“And what do you want, flatfoot, wee Sassenach that ye are?” Macleod looked up to glance at him, and was evidently in a good mood, because he was mixing metaphors.

“Dougie …” he said. “You cut me to the quick, and here I just stopped by to cheer you up.” he seated himself comfortably in the best of Macleod’s two guest chairs.

“Oh, aye? And what makes you think you could cheer me up?”

“Well, for one,” he said reasonably, “I’ve brought you a puzzle.” He tossed the data cube lightly on the desk.

Macleod looked at it with distaste. “And what might this be? Fan mail from some flounder?”

“Sorry, what?”

“Never mind.” He picked it up and inserted it into his desktop viewer, watching only for a second before he ejected it with a grunt of disgust and tossed it back. “It’s a fake, of course, and not a very good one.”

“How can you tell?”

Macleod looked at him as if he’d just taken first place in the Moron of the Week contest, then inserted it back into the viewer. “Look at the highlights in the avatar’s eyes. The lights in that room aren’t in the same position as the ones shining on those eyes. Didn’t they include the directions in that mail-order detective kit you sent away for?”

“Golly! There were supposed to be directions? No wonder I had trouble with that stupid thing. I didn’t like it anyway, because the rubber suction cups on those darts never stuck to anything, so the crooks were always yelling ‘Ya missed me a mile!’ even when I hit them, which wasn’t fair at all. No wonder they took up lives of crime. So you know it’s an avatar?”

Macleod’s scathing look could have been bottled as paint remover. “Ask me something hard.”

Jack smiled and tried. “Okay. That recording was made on an ansible terminal, since destroyed. Can you tell me where the content was transmitted from?”

“From where,” he said.

“What?” Jack was confused. Dougie often had that effect on him.

“Dangling preposition. Nasty habit.” He made an expression of distaste, looking dour indeed.

“Sorry,” Jack said

“What’s my budget?”

“What do you want?” He smirked, and rattled off his charging account number.

He looked up, all smiles. “Och! You always were a good sort, Jack!” He reached into a lower drawer and pulled out a bottle of single malt scotch and two glasses. “Let’s have a wee dram.”

 

 

By the time Jack left the office, he was feeling a little light-headed. Doug’s ‘wee dram’ had turned into three or four good slugs after he’d taken a good look at Jack’s departmental charge number. Jack had made some attempt to protest, arguing that Doug was trying to cheat him, but Doug had assured him that he was doing no such thing, since, to find that room, and the ansible that has sent that message, he’d have to invent a new technology or two, and search every vidshot available online, which would take an enormous amount of processing time, all of which cost real credits, but the resulting database and tools would be worth their weight in gold once he had them in-house, so he had no need to fiddle the books in his favor. ‘Well, then,’ he’d argued, ‘you should do it gratis, as a favor to an old friend.’ But Macleod had argued back that no one but Jack, in all his noble generosity, would fund such research. In the end, Macleod had agreed to name his new database after Jack, and they’d both acknowledged that the ‘Webster Interiors Database’ had a fine professional ring to it — and the acronym, WID, was absolutely golden, since it had ‘ID’ in it, and no one had ever used that acronym in the context of police work that they could discover — idiots all — and so shook hands on it with the slow determination that men approaching inebriation often demonstrate.

It wasn’t until he’d pressed the button and was traveling down again that he realized the having his name on a departmental database was going to frost a lot of people for many years to come and he began to laugh.

He was still laughing when he walked out the door of the elevator and almost ran into his old boss, Tom O’Hare, who was waiting for him with a few cronies as backup. “Well, hello, Mr. Ex-Boss. What an odd coïncidence meeting you here. I thought you had those fancy digs uptown. Slumming? Or slummed upon?” He arched one brow, his head back slightly in fastidious distaste. He noticed too that the lobby was empty, including Sandoval, who was especially conspicuous by his absence at the ‘security’ desk. ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ he thought. ‘This might just be a clue. Oh, goodie!’ A faint smile crossed his lips as a happy serenity blossomed within him — somewhere around his root chakra, he thought — and the Kundalini power rose up through his spine. Now he knew why the ancient Britons fought naked, because he was instantly as hard as a rock and wished his pants were just a skosh looser.

Both thugs came towards him, one from either side, trying to get behind him, as one said, “You’ll have to come with us.”

“Really?” he inquired brightly, just brimming with compassion and humanitarian feeling. “Why is that?” he asked, and deftly evaded their efforts to corner him by strolling behind the security desk. Now they were disconcerted. They’d obviously been expecting an easy takedown. ‘The more fools they, then.’

“Because Commissioner O’Hare here wants to talk with you.”

“But I don’t want to talk with him,” he said reasonably. “ I tried it once, and it was less than satisfying. I might add, though, that ‘O’Hare here’ is way too alliterative. It makes him sound like a Fusion Céilidh band, which is beneath his dignity.” He leaned toward them and whispered, “Confidentially, I think he’d prefer ‘O’Hare the Magnificent.’ ”Deftly, he palmed his neurolizer, just as a precaution.

Not deftly enough, perhaps, because O’Hare shouted out, “Watch it, he’s armed! He has a gun!”

 … and things went all to Hell in a yellow handbasket.

The lobby, it seemed, wasn’t quite as empty as it had appeared to be, because half a dozen armed men with assault rifles stepped out from behind pillars and doorways and started taking aim. Moving very quickly, he launched himself off one edge of the security desk, slid feet-first under the legs of the closest thug, neurolizing both as he slid past them, and then he was into the lobby and twisting up just behind O’Hare — who was still shouting about a supposed gun — and grabbed him around the throat. Unfortunately for O’Hare, one of the riflemen didn’t adjust quickly enough to their changed positions and pulled the trigger of his carbine. O’Hare happened to be in the way and he slumped.

It took a little extra effort to hold him up as a bulwark against more hysteria as he pulled his new shield, flashed it, and said, “I’m on the job, boys, and I outrank you all, Badge number I-008714. Phone it in. We can all stand down now and maybe you can keep your pensions, because this lying sack of shit told you that I was armed in an effort to turn you guys into his personal murder squad, but all I’m carrying is a Department-standard neurolizer, utterly useless at long range, and completely ineffective against armored men such as yourself.” He held it up.

The squad were looking uncertain now, so he upped the ante. “While you’re thinking, the Commissioner here is bleeding out with one of your slugs in him. Just think how that’s going to look on your report.”

Now they looked worried, but nobody moved.

“Still debating? Boy, boys, boys …” He shook his head in ironic sorrow. “I’m disappointed in you. My name is Jonathan Webster, Plenipotentiary Investigator for the World Senate, and I order you to stand down. I have my communicator recording this incident to secure storage, and I want those carbines on the floor now! or some of you guys are going to be headed out to the colonies through no fault of your own except an unfortunate inability to quickly respond to changing situations, not to mention having a dead Commissioner to explain.”

They looked at each other, then laid down their weapons and stepped back.

“Excellent, now one of you bright boys call for an ambulance, or you’ll have more explaining to do than you’ll be happy about. The estimable Commissioner here will probably survive for a while, but his shelf life is limited without that little ride to a hospital.”

Jack patted him down and pulled out a nice set of handcuffs, which Jack frugally snapped around his prisoner’s wrists, grabbed his cuff-holder on general principles, because many cops kept an extra key in them, and then rifled his pockets, person, and clothing for more goodies. He wound up with quite a pile. Another set of cuffs, four extra cuff keys, one in a pocket cleverly inset into his belt, another in the heel of one shoe, two neurolizers, one of them a very slick miniature version that looked exactly like a fountain pen and also had a slim cuff key hidden inside. ‘My, my, my, Tom. You’re just loaded for bear, aren’t you?’ he thought.

“By the way, guys, Commissioner Thomas O’Hare here is under arrest under UFCC 17-4235 and 17-4239 et seq, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder while lying in wait, and several other crimes I haven’t got time to reflect upon right now. I want you men to accompany him to the hospital and keep him in custody until he’s up to being transported for formal arraignment. He’s a tricky son-of-a-bitch, so I’d keep leg irons on him and a constant eyes-on watch. If you manage it, all will be forgiven, and it may even turn out that the Commissioner was wounded while trying to evade capture. It’s up to you.”

“Yes, Sir,” one said.

“Take your weapons, and keep them loaded. The Commissioner has powerful friends who may not be happy to see him in custody, so watch yourselves. Call for backup if you like, and I’ll authorize the overtime against my department.”

“Yes, Sir!” Two of them spoke at once, which was a very good sign.

“You know,” Jack said, “I’m starting to like you guys. Want a job?”

“Sir?” the first one said.

“How would you like to be seconded to me as bodyguards and muscle? I’ll give you a twenty percent raise, plus enhanced pension contribution, and I somehow doubt that O’Hare will want you back, considering as how he’s going to jail and how you accidentally shot him and all. Mind you, I personally don’t hold that against you, so what do you say?”

The first one, a Lieutenant by his patch, said, “Yes, Sir, I believe we’d all go for that. I believe I speak for all of us when I say we didn’t much care for the Commissioner, and we apologize for any earlier misunderstandings between us. We were told that you were a desperate criminal.”

“Think nothing of it, Lieutenant …” He scrutinized the man’s name patch, which was smaller, than his insignia, “ …Saunders. Cops respect authority, and if someone in authority tells you to do something, you do it. No hard feelings on my part, and I always enjoy a bit of a scuffle, just not guns so much. Remind me to buy you guys a beer sometime soon.” He stuck out his hand and, one by one, they shook on it.

 

 

The Washington Mall was beautiful in the warm November sun, wide open and still green despite the drought. The sweet smell of the hibiscus trees that lined the walkways were a poignant memory of his first visit here with his parents. He remembered being in the Museum of Natural History and seeing the holographic dinosaurs stalking down the corridors, laughing when their images merged with strolling visitors, and thinking that there had to be a planet of dinosaurs somewhere, and that he might see them. If there were such a place, no one had found it yet. The discovery of Gruntovoy came right around that time, a steamy place of warm swamps and and shallow oceans, would be the perfect place for them, he’d thought, because some of the early threedees looked like the pictures in one of his great-great grandfather’s dinosaur books, passed down from the days when there were still books, but the largest animal species on Gruntovoy turned out to be giant insects, things like dragonflies in the air, but with wingspans the length of a man’s arm, huge spiders on the land, and in the water there were things like big crabs and lobsters. There were no creatures there like reptiles at all.

It was then that he’d decided to become a policeman, in a twist of childish logic he could no longer understand, but he’d wanted to be a space explorer before, to seek out the thunder lizards of his dreams. ‘What do kids know anyway,’ he thought, and wondered where Macleod was. He’d called late last night and asked to meet by the Lincoln Reflecting Pool for some reason, which was odd, because he rarely left the laboratory, and he was late, which was typical.

So Jack wasn’t worried as he stood contemplating the refurbished Lincoln Memorial and its reflection in the small pool before it. It used to be bigger, he’d heard somewhere, until the Park Service decided that they needed more room for museums and buildings, and with all that water going practically to waste — even though it was salt water pumped from the Tidal Basin, so its reserve supply was exactly the same size as the Atlantic Ocean. — whittling it down in size was politically popular. He wasn’t worried, that is, until he saw Deborah, the woman from Dougie’s reception desk, walking down the path, looking furtively from side to side. She was better as a bodyguard than a spy. Subtlety was not her strong point.

He walked toward her. “Hi, Deborah.” He spoke softly as took her arm, smiling as if they were old friends, which they weren’t. “How’s Dougie?”

She wasn’t exactly happy to see him. “He’s kidnapped, is what. And it’s your fault.”

“Probably,” he agreed. No sense arguing, because she probably had it right. “But who took him?”

“Some sort of World Federation agents. They didn’t identify themselves, but they were wearing those black tactical outfits they like to prance around in and had black velcro patches covering their mandatory ID strips.” She turned to face him with her lips pressed tightly together, and shook her fist at him, although she had to look up. “You’d better get him back, Jack Webster, or I’ll punch you right in the nose. Just see if I won’t!”

Jack took the threat seriously. “I’ll get him back, Deborah. I promise. Did he ask you to give me anything?”

“He did, and serve you right if I didn’t, except it might help get him back quicker.” She gave him his original data cube, plus another, and a sheet of paper. The paper had an address: 1304 I St NW and a name: World Senator Irene Sarantapechaina (Sarantapechos), the Senator representing Greece and the Balkan States.

Things started making sense. Although never strictly aligned with the Chillings crowd, Greece and the Balkans had been opposed to any moves toward independence on the part of the colonies all along, because they were heavily-influenced by the Japanese Yakuza, who were aligned with Chillings and also had ‘interests’ in the sexual slavery and drug ‘industries’ that thrived throughout the Balkans region, selling into Europe, Turkey, and the entire Levant.

For a while, when Ortíz and Bihar had been playing politics with Quicksilver to gain influence — and eventual control of Quicksilver’s resources, things had been going their way, but now, things were going badly for them and Senator Sarantapechaina was the current Chair of the World Senate Committee on Defense, well-placed for mischief. “This helps a lot, Deborah, and I think I might just know where to lay my hands on your boss and my friend. You lie low for a bit and I’ll see what I can do.”

She sniffed and said, “See that you do, Jack Webster. You’re not so big that I can’t paddle your behind.”

Jack smiled. “Of course not, Deborah. I’d never think that, and I will get him back.”

She turned and walked away without another word.

He keyed his communicator and said, without preamble, “Sarantapechaina. I think we’re ready.”

The new data cube held a copy of Jack’s new database, plus a file containing the inferred parameters of the ansible that had originated the hoax, and the interior shot that matched the background behind the "Air Marshal," which was in Senator Sarantapechaina’s home over on I Street NW in among the new developments. He sent that bit over to Ortíz, although he imagined that Churco would be taking care of it, then called up Saunders, the head of his new security detail. “Saunders, Jack Webster here. How are things at the hospital?”

“Not bad. We had some black-ops types show up, but they turned tail when they saw how many rifles they were looking at.”

“How many, exactly?”

“Three dozen men. Six up, six down, and twelve on the floor. There were only six come calling.”

Jack thought about that for about half a second. “Good job, Saunders. Keep it up and you’ll go far. Did you recognize any of the black-ops guys?”

“Not by name, but I’ve seen one of them handling security over at the Russell Senate Office Building.”

“That’s where the World Senate Armed Services Committee meets, isn’t it?”

“That’s the one.”

“Excellent. Give yourself a raise. Ten percent, I think.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Keep thinking, Saunders. That’s why you’re making the big bucks. The better you think, the better I like you. Covering the floor above and below your charge was clever. A lot of guys would have had a man outside the door.”

“Well, Sir, O’Hare sent six guys, plus private muscle, to handle just you, so I figured we were playing in the big leagues.”

Jack laughed aloud. “Saunders, I like you more by the minute.”

“So, do I get another raise?” he said hopefully.

Jack laughed. He had to give the guy credit for having balls enough to ask, anyway. “Not yet, Saunders, but we’ll see. Talk to you later.”

Next, he called Ortíz directly. “Jack here. I assume that you or Churco have seen that file. I think we should concentrate surveillance around the Russell building, her home, Senator Tamotsu Tsukasa, who has ties to the Yakuza, and have Churco check on any airship control ansibles any of them may have ready access to. Oh, and perhaps you could get a lawyer or two over to O’Hare’s hospital room. They sent a rifle team already, but my rifle straight flush beat their two pairs, so I expect a legal challenge soonish. How’re we doing otherwise?”

“We’re on schedule for the evening news.”

“Good deal.” Jack said. “Now we have to see the cards in play.”

As usual, the episode started with the Quicksilver Nights theme, a hard-driving bass guitar and drum set providing the backbeat as the lead guitar wailed into the opening credits, a montage of quick cuts of famous Quicksilver landmarks and clips of Dan Nasquith as Harry Cliffordson, Captain of the Quicksilver Border Patrol, and Luz Calderón as Penny Bright, his loyal assistant, combating smugglers, criminals trying to hide their evil deeds in Quicksilver's wilderness areas, and other dangers, then the ‘above the title’ credits for the stars, Luz Calderón and Dan Nasquith, then the logo, a jagged rendition of “Quicksilver Nights” in red and black against a really long shot from space, the planet Quicksilver itself, then the episode title, “The Valley of Shadows,” and the opening scene:

Harry and Penny are on stakeout in the darkness of a Quicksilver night, the two moons are almost in conjunction, low on the horizon, as they're keeping watch on some shady operators moving boxes out of a shadowy building and into a nondescript space lander, all without showing a light, and obviously a smuggling operation, the series stock-in-trade.

Penny gets on her communicator and says, “Captain, we're ready to move in.”

Cut to a shot of Barbara, in her character as Captain Jill Daniels, head of the local police force, with whom the Border Patrol maintains close ties. “Roger that, Penny. We'll be right behind you.”

Cut to a long shot of Harry, crouched over as he quietly moves into position, gun drawn, and holds his hand out behind him to signal caution, and then, just as a beefy man in business attire exits the building, obviously the boss, he shouts, “Border Patrol! You're under arrest!” while he beckons those behind him to advance.

Floodlights suddenly wash the screen with light and the armed men of the police force and Border Patrol agents combined advance as the smugglers are sparked into action. “Make for the lander, men! It's every man for himself!” someone yells and they start shooting and running, dropping the boxes heedlessly as they run for the safety of the lander and their hoped-for escape to their airship and on into space.

Cut to a closeup of Harry as he takes careful aim and, in a quick series of effects shots, puts a bullet into the airlock mechanism, effectively stranding the smugglers on the ground. He shouts, “Give it up! You'll never make it off-planet without a working airlock!” and some of the smugglers start throwing down their weapons and raising their hands in the air, defeated, while a few fight on, including the boss, who's trying to sneak off behind some machinery lying outside the building, a fairly typical intro to many episodes, because they liked to start with an exciting scene, then solve a larger crime requiring clever detective work, and then finish with a heart-warming scene of tender compassion or comic relief, one or the other.

Cut to the victorious forces of law and order rounding up the usual suspects, while Harry and Penny engage in their usual banter.

Penny: “You know, Harry, with your hand held out behind you like that, it looked like you were trying to do your famous ‘chicken’ imitation.”

Harry: [Superciliously] “You mean like, ‘Henny Penny?”

Penny: [Sourly] “Except in your case it would be Goosey Loosey!”

Harry: “Yeah, well …”

Just then, there was a tremendous explosion, and what looked like a standard World Federation UAE-Class Destroyer flew overhead, followed closely by another explosion as people started screaming.

Dan looked up — completely out of character — and said, “What the Hell?”

Luz screamed, “Run! Dan! Run!” and they both ran off camera, away from the action …

 … as the airship turned to make another pass over what was revealed in the light of the explosions to be a town being bombed to rubble. Unlike most threedee shows, the camera didn't move to follow the action, so the production values were terrible, although the terror of the population, some of whom were apparently blown to bits in front of the camera's unwavering view, was eerily realistic.

Then, the airship landed, and the assault ramp came down with a thundering crash, awkwardly off-center in the camera's view, and too distant for a dramatic effect, even as a battle-group of fifty armored Marines came pouring down the ramp and ran into the town, gunning down anyone still moving …

 …as the picture was replaced by a “We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.” still. It was just the end of the hour and a commercial started to roll.

The calls started almost immediately.

In another room, Senator Irene Sarantapechaina was talking via vid link to Senator Tamotsu Tsukasa, who was seated at a low table in what looked like a restaurant with several men. On a threedee screen behind them, a Japanese news reader was talking with the sound turned off — you could tell, because automated closed captioning in Japanese was scrolling as his mouth moved — while an inset showed snippets of the strange footage from Quicksilver Nights, edited down to capture the ‘good parts.’ “Well, gentlemen, I think this calls for champagne all round,” she said.

Copyright © 1993, 2010, 2011 by Jeffrey M. Mahr

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah