Aeolus Investigations Episode 11

Available from Amazon.com.

At the end of Guardian, Lexi Stevens and her husband Ron Samue, exile themselves to the Dark Space on the other side of the Rift to continue the fight against the monsters her semi-goddess mother has been containing for ages.

Everyone, other than her sister Allie, now the Marshal of the Accord, thinks they will never get out. They made sure the Rift was permanently sealed behind them after all. Allie takes the stance that Lexi doesn’t know how to lose.

Allie turned out to be right. (Although it took magic to get them out.)

Witch, Chapter 1 – Another Working Vacation
Witch is available on Amazon.com.

Over the roar of the wind, Lexi with an exhilarated smile on her face, had to yell for Ron to hear her say, “Told you we’d get out, sweetie. No one knows where we are. We don’t even know where we are. We’ve finally got a real vacation.”

He was surprised she hadn’t spoken to him telepathically. On the other hand, they hadn’t been able to use their voices the entire time they spent trapped in the dark void so, he supposed, maybe there was a small thrill being able to do so again. “Right, kiddo. In that case, why are we in the middle of what looks like a battle, armed with primitive weapons, mounted on flying reptiles?” he yelled back. Being able to use a voice again is empowering. Swinging his weapon experimentally, he added, “I think my sword is bronze.” He banked sharply, leaned from his saddle, and beheaded one of the enemy reptiles as he spoke. Really sharp bronze.

“We’ll have to figure that one out later. Think of it as a working vacation, love.” She glanced at her arm and then over at Ron. “Ron, we don’t look like quicksilver anymore — I think our nanotech is gone. I can’t sense the cells anymore. Be careful.”

He yelled back. “Noticed that.” For the last five years, both he and Lexi had not only looked like quicksilver, they were able to shoot Zapper beams from their hands — and extrude metal claws from between the knuckles of their clenched fists. Cool stuff — a small thrill in an otherwise devastatingly horrible situation. That tech had been a gift from a version of Lexi from the distant future, intended to allow them to survive, and fight, in a void. She had warned them about the issue of a fairly massive time paradox if they managed to get out of the void with them, so they had been programmed them to exit their bodies if they did. That other Lexi thought it might kill them in the process and as far as Ron could tell, hadn’t really cared. The fact was, they were alive, they were no longer in the dark space, and the nano-cells were gone. He had no idea how they got out. He wondered if Lexi did.

Lexi called back, “It looks like our side is losing. Go after the little boy and get him out. I’m going for the girl.”

She stood up on her saddle, balancing on the back of the fast moving flier and shot three arrows into the heads of the three war-beasts angling toward the little girl, sending them, along with their riders, plummeting to the ground several hundred feet below. She grimly noted that no one wore anything remotely like a parachute. She was forced to drop to a squat as an arrow soared toward her chest. That wasn’t exactly easy to do on the back of the rapidly-moving flier, but she managed it, the arrow passing over her ducked head. She thought it may have been fired by a warrior on the side they were assisting. For reasons she wasn’t fully conscious of, she knew they were fighting for the “right” side — the side they would have chosen if they knew what the hell was happening.

Shortly after joining and taking lead of their investigative team thirty years ago, Lexi had been forced into a Helgan Honor Challenge — a fight to the death with swords. Since becoming Marshal, she put a stop to that nonsense. If they wanted to hack each other to pieces, that was fine, but they were no longer permitted to challenge non-Helgans. It had been just luck, or hell, maybe Violet — she tended to credit her alien mother with a good deal of the unlikely things she had learned to do — that she had already been an expert with a sword. So, she had survived the Helgan encounter and afterward, insisted Ron and Geena become experts with edged weapons. Geena, Ron’s mother and now her mother-in-law, had been responsible for their learning archery skills, fulfilling a childhood fantasy she had had of being an archer. I never really expected that particular training to come in handy. We just took it up to make Geena happy.

She surged upward from her squat, springing from her mount in favor of the one bearing the child. The girl looked young. Somewhere between four and six, Lexi estimated. She was hanging on to the flying reptile’s saddle, her hands tight in the bindings, for dear life, scared, but coping. Probably not her first time riding on the back of one of these creatures. The reptiles were about the size of a small pony. They seemed remarkably sturdy for flying creatures with large bat-like wingspans. They looked somewhat like pterodactyls, or illustrations of dragons. Their hides were shades of green although their faces were red or, in some cases, bright orange. Interesting, I’ve seen these creatures before — when Allie and I were in Peru and my nano-cells went wacky, locking me inside my own mind. The rider I saw then was wearing armor like this, too.

The child’s reptile was no more than fifteen feet in front of Lexi’s and thirty feet lower, moving at the same speed as hers. An easy jump. As she landed behind the very nervous child, the reptile grunted and glanced over its shoulder at her with a “you’ve got to be kidding” expression on its leathery face. That expression may have been conveying a dirty name too. Seconds later, an enemy arrow took it in its side.

As the beast faltered, Lexi grabbed hold of the suddenly screaming child and said, keeping her voice gentle, and despite the situation, calming, “I’ve got you, honey. Let’s have some fun.” That’s convenient. I’m assimilating new languages instantly now. She leaned forward and yanked the arrow out of the animal’s side and mentally sent, Take us forty feet to the right. Once we jump, glide to the ground. Good luck, my friend. It had the intelligence of a dog and was in pain. Nevertheless, it followed her instructions. She supposed it had the intelligence of a smart dog. It was hard sending the telepathic instructions, even that short distance. Really, she was only able to send mental images of what she wanted rather than verbalization. To the girl, as she stood with her arm around the child in preparation for another jump, she said, “She’s hurt, so we’re changing fliers. I have you and won’t drop you. Trust me. Ready? Here we go.”

Despite Lexi’s assurances, the girl screamed as the two of them flew through the air. As they landed with a thump on the back of a riderless flier keeping pace with the others, Lexi said, “See, I didn’t drop you. Try to calm down. I’m protecting you. I won’t let you be hurt.”

The girl nodded. “That was scary.” She paused and glanced over her shoulder into Lexi’s face. “Maybe kind of fun too. Can we do it again?”

Lexi smiled. “Maybe. What’s your name?”

“Fermata.”

“Fermata,” Lexi repeated. “I like your name. My name’s Lexi.”

“Ooooh. That’s a pretty name!”

The aerial dogfight continued for another fifteen minutes. By the time the enemy broke off and retreated, they were down to five fliers. The side Lexi and Ron joined still had sixteen men and nineteen fliers in the air. She saw no women on either side.

There had been some confusion and consternation on her side when she and Ron appeared out of nowhere on the backs of two riderless fliers and almost immediately went after the children. True, they weren’t clad in the uniforms of the enemy, but neither were they clad in the uniform of any other kingdom the airmen on her side knew of. Lexi was wearing the sexy black leather outfit she and Geena designed decades ago on a job that took them to Naragene Nine. Ron had on a matching male version of the same outfit. In and of itself, that was interesting — they had never made one for him.

Even riding with the children, the two continued pressing the attack against the enemy. The large man was deadly with his sword. The woman’s technique was, well, different. Even when they all discussed it over beer in a pub that evening, that was the best term they could come up with. Different. Nearly all of them saw her leap from her mount, leaving the princess to again hang on by herself. They also observed Lexi spin in the air, firing the last five arrows in her quiver through the necks of five of the enemy warriors while dropping twenty-some feet onto the back of a flier ridden by a sixth enemy. That man had the misfortune to be flying almost directly beneath her. She reloaded her quiver from his an instant before she knocked him out and lashed him to his mount with the reins.

Immediately, her newly acquired mount began gaining altitude and within moments she was above the battle. Another jump and she was again on the flier with the princess and four more dead men wearing the colors of the enemy were plunging to the ground below. That was what broke them. They had started with forty men, twice the number Lexi’s side had tasked for escorting the children.

Ron guided his flier closer to Lexi’s. The wing leader of the squadron drew his mount in close to the two of them. After executing what was clearly a salute, the man called, “Will you follow us back to our base?” Clearly he couldn’t quite believe that this wasn’t a second attempt to kidnap the two children. If he had to lead his men against these two, he didn’t expect a joyous outcome. And they already had the children.

Ron yelled back, “Lead the way.”

Lexi yelled, “I’ll probably change fliers another time or two. Fermata seems to be a thrill seeker.” They did change fliers twice more with Fermata squealing with excitement and delight each time.

The boy Ron was holding onto watched Lexi’s antics with his eyes wide. Ron said, “Sorry, son, I weigh to much to jump onto another flier. If you want to do that, you’ll have to wait until the lady can take you flying.”

The boy shook his head. “That’s OK. I think I’d rather just watch.”

Witch is available from Amazon.com.