[Story] Short Stories

High tech intrigue and Cold War
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Booted Vulture
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Re: [Story] Short Stories

Post by Booted Vulture »

Siege wrote:, or even what Kroner does when he's not plotting to blow up the world.
Trick Question. Kroner's always plotting to blow up the world.

Gosley: What are we going to do tonight kroner?
Kroner: The same thing we do every night Chandra, try to blow the world.
Gosley: kk Kroner. Just so long as you don't plan to blow up america...
Ah Brother! It's been too long!
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Siege
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Re: [Story] Short Stories

Post by Siege »

Genoa
2014


The Apennine foothills swept down the Polcevera valley in a tumble of lush subtropical wildwood that ended, abruptly, at the outskirts of the old city in the near distance. Genoa, city of bankers and merchant-princes. Coveted by popes and by Bonaparte; scoured by Carthage, the Ostrogoths and the Black Death. A city that bent and buckled, but never broke. The surrounding hills were home to Roman ruins, medieval fastholds and fantastic villas erected at great expense by slave-traders and condotierri, Genoese dukes and Savoy noblemen, fascist warlords with delusions of Imperial grandeur and still later by mafioso and the robber barons of modern industry.

I wondered which of those labels best applied to Fulvio Dante. None seemed to quite fit the twiggy European bureaucrat in his three-thousand-Euro suit. He was not ruthless the way a renaissance duke must have been, didn't crave for the glories of Empire like Mussolini did. But that didn't mean he wasn't dangerous, even if his smile was radiant as the sun over the Mediterranean.

“Mister Ramsay!” The Italian beamed a row of intensely white teeth at me. His English bore faintest trace of an accent and he shook my hand with fervor. “Just the person I wanted to see. Let me thank you for meeting me at such short notice. I know your schedule must be murder.”

I suppressed a wince at the Italian's inadvertently poor choice of words and smiled back, hundreds of hours spent at upscale receptions and cocktail parties turning a hollow gesture into a well-oiled reflex. “I'm frankly not certain your office asked to speak with me specifically sir. But here I am, at your disposal. Anything for the chiefs of the continent, hey?”

To his credit Dante didn't stop smiling when I threw the barb his way, but for just a moment his eyes went disturbingly cold. I'd seen that stare before, but the men who'd worn it hadn't come in suits. In that instant I knew Fulvio Dante was every bit as dangerous as I'd been told to expect.

Fulvio Dante had money – that much was abundantly clear to me. The accoutrement of his villa was best described as 'extravagant', a blending of hoary antiques and blisteringly modern design that somehow managed to look tasteful instead of tacky, a feat that could only be managed with a supreme sense of style or an expensive indoor architect. And then there was the villa itself. High up on the hills, its foundation was Roman, but today a pair of neomodern wings enfolded a 16th century manor. Feet in the old, but eyes at the future. Western Europe in a nutshell, then. Much like Dante himself.

“Oh, but I did intend to speak to you,” Dante began. The coldness had gone from his eyes as suddenly as it had come, to be replaced by predatory intensity. “I wish to convey a message to your boss. But Sir Edmund is a busy man. The Albion Petroleum Combine does not run itself, and we are not on friendly terms. If I asked for him he would send one of his assistants to snub me. I therefore requested to speak with one of his assistants, he surmised I wished to intimidate the person he sent, and therefore dispatched the most incoercible person he could. That person was his Operations Manager – you. And now, whatever I say will travel from your lips to his ears.” A fleeting smile, vague but triumphant. “Englishmen. Stubborn, but so very predictable. Quod erat demonstratum, as the ancients would say.”

“Well,” I frowned. Latin had never been my strong suit, but I was pretty sure I didn't like the implications this Machiavellian bozo was throwing my way. “If you wished to speak to my boss... You could've just phoned him. On his phone.”

The smile widened to include an indulgent hint of teeth. “I wouldn't wish what I have to say to go recorded, Mister Ramsay.”

That at long last perked my interest. Because the Assistant to the President of the Western European Council was an old hand in European politics. Former Chair of the WEU Institute of International Law, former High Commissioner for North African Integration, former Director of the European Security Initiative. A new blend of man, or perhaps the very oldest kind, ever careful to avoid the spotlight but always to be found near it, as befitted a scion of one of Italy's venerable diplomatic families. European nobility had lost their lands and their titles had fallen out of fashion, but real power in Europe was never in territories or patents of peerage, or even money: it was knowledge of people and systems and secrets. And knowledge was easy to come by if you were born into the old webs of influence that littered the continent. Men like Fulvio Dante were a pain in the arse, but they held vast influence and if they wanted to say something it usually paid to listen. So I sighed and pretended meekness. “I'm sure Sir Edmund will be thrilled to hear what you have to say.”

Dante nodded and waved me to a pair of Louis XIV chairs on the balcony. I sat down on the gilded beechwood with a part of me mortified to damage these no doubt priceless antiques, realized that was probably Dante's intention, and instead chose to focus on the stunning view of Genoa harbor. We sat in silence for a moment until the Italian began. “There is a concern,” he started, “about Albion Petroleum's operations in Iran.”

I raised a quizzical eyebrow. “What kind of concern might that be?”

“Concern about the more clandestine aspects of your presence in Iran.” Dante gave me a pointed look. “Concern that your activities might damage Europe's long-term interests. Concern that you are aiding and abetting acts deemed illegal by international law.”

Counter-interrogation training kicked in. Feign ignorance. He cannot possibly know. I produced a picture-perfect smile of amusement. “Clandestine? I'm positive I do not know what you-”

“We know about the base near Birjand,” Dante interrupted, his tone conversational as if he were talking about the weather. “We know about the black flights. We know Albion Petroleum has allowed Reaper teams to infiltrate Afghanistan from your facility. We know about the Soviet prisoners the US Army holds on that oil platform you think nobody knows exists.”

I opened my mouth to object but Dante silenced me with an ice-cold look. “Don't insult my intelligence, Mister Ramsay. We have indulged your spy games for as long as it was beneficial to us. But new information has come to light. We have reason to believe the wind is changing. Our predictive models...” Another hint of a smile. Dante steepled his fingers. “Well. Let's just say it is imperative you roll back your involvement in American affairs. That way your company would retain its excellent stock value. And you just might stay out of prison.”

My head spun. How the hell did this bureaucrat know about the Omara platform? Only three people in the entire company knew about it. I was one of them, and I sure as hell hadn't talked. That left two others, one of whom hadn't left the platform. The other was my boss. Was there a leak with the Americans? Jesus. This was a mess.

“Now,” Dante continued, oblivious or simply indifferent to my inner turmoil. “I'd like you to tell Sir Edmund what I just told you.” He looked me directly in the eye. “And then I want you to tell your other boss. The one at Vauxhall Cross, Mister Ramsay.”

I froze. Completely. No-one was supposed to know I was with the Circus. There was no way Brussels knew I'd been reactivated. Was there? Christ. Had RAID found out? How much did they know? And how did they know it? “I'm not sure I follow,” I managed weakly after far too long a pause.

“I'm positive that you do,” Dante's tone was knowing. He stood up, indicating the conversation was over. I followed stiffly as he escorted me to the exit. The Aston that carried me to Genoa didn't look nearly as inviting as it had on the way here. I was so confused I didn't say goodbye to the Italian. He didn't seem to mind. I had opened the driver side door when Dante spoke up, again with the teeth.

“Mister Ramsay,” he said. “Remember. The Empire is always watching.”

I turned to face him, feeling more queasy than I'd had in a long time. “I rather suspect Washington and Gandhi disagree with that, sir.”

A razor-thin smile. “Not that Empire.”

Those three words haunted me all the way back to the airport where a leased jet was already waiting to carry me back to Heathrow. Somehow they struck me as important. If only I knew what the hell they meant.
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
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Siege
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Re: [Story] Short Stories

Post by Siege »

Ultrashorts! Ultrashorts of dubious canonicity!


????
????


Space blurs and dilates between monolithic blocks of onyx, opens into a yawning structure of deformed space-time that bridges the lightless void. Air howls out from a puncture through unseen dimensions, into an empty sky. Then specters emerge. A solitary point-man first, then two soldiers at his flanks, and finally two more to bring up the rear. They all wear soft armor and combat webbing over low-pressure survival gear, and their faces are insect-like under flash protected goggles and respirators patterned in black camouflage. They hustle forward with sleek rifles at the ready, thick rubber soles dampening footfalls on a floor of Cyclopean basalt that has been undisturbed for aeons. Reality shimmies and contorts behind them as the gate soundlessly folds shut, its aperture receding back into higher-dimensional topologies few humans knew about, and even fewer understood.

Silence falls. The Shadow Key team positions itself around the dormant gateway with the solid precision of military training. They are alone on a raised hexagonal plateau of stygian rock. A blood-soaked titan star hangs in the sky, so low it seems to only narrowly miss a serrated range of mountain peaks high as Martian volcanoes. Ahead of them a petrified forest sweeps down the rift valley to an empty lake bed. Beyond it rise the ancient ziggurat spires of a dead city.

An oppressive silence settles over the cadaverous vista. Shadows creep across the landscape. Then the point-man grunts. “Looks like no-one's home.”

The remark elicits a few humorless chuckles. “Shut up Mercier,” calls the team leader. Colonel Torben Frisk's already gaunt features are turned nearly skeletal by his taut protective mask. “Check your tanks.”

The radio crackles as the team members tersely sound off the oxygen levels remaining to them. It is the routine procedure for teams leaving Earth, and its warning is implicit: if they are not home in four or five hours, they never will be again. They will run out of oxygen and die here, on a dead world orbiting a husk of an alien sun. Air is life, and in this place the tanks on their backs hold the only supply.

“Doctor,” the Colonel turns to one of the last men to come through the gateway. “Can you get a location fix?”

“Negative.” The short and stocky man shakes his head. He holds a small ruggedized computer that's fruitlessly trying to match the heavens against known stellar patterns. Doctor Gregor Leidenfrost is one of the few people with what could charitably be called the proper training for this kind of situation. He has a doctorate in experimental astrophysics and a ConEurope handling clearance for level six artifacts. The German academic points a gloved finger at the sky. Beyond diaphanous clouds of frozen oxygen a thin band of distant, barely visible stars whorls across the sky, apart from the red sun the only light in an expanse of pitch-black darkness. “But I suspect zat is ze Milky Way.”

Frisk whistles, a thin sound through the tac-link. “If that's the Milky Way, then where are we?”

The astrophysicist shrugs. “Edge of a dwarf galaxy. Or an ejected system perhaps. Certainly tens of thousand light years from home.”

“Tens of thousands-” whispers the team's newest member, a young Italian who served as a paratrooper before being drafted into Shadow Key. Like all members of Europe's most secretive exploration teams he had to sign the Shambhala Compromise before he was even allowed to read what was in that document. It's wasn't hard to figure out he might be second-guessing that decision as he shakes his head and stares at the sky. “Gods.”

“I hope not.” The German's voice is dry as the solar wind. “Anyway. It matters little how far away from home ve are. We could be on ze moon for all ze good it would do ven our air runs out!”

“Thank you for reminding us doctor,” the Colonel warns. “Get to work.”

There are worlds beyond the Earth. This has been known for some time. Less well known however is that they and it are connected by ancient gateways, left by precursors of whom only the faintest of traces remains - circular toe marks fossilized in Precambrian mud, timeworn temple ruins buried in remote and inhospitable places... And disconcerting eldritch relics, like the Gates. The Shadow Key egress facility, deep below a European Security Initiative maintenance and engineering center in a recessed Vosges Mountains chasm, is built on top of one of them. From here, soldiers set out to pierce together the secrets of the precursors from the tantalizingly few clues they left behind all over the galaxy. They live amidst alien vistas of horrible beauty punctured by scrupulously enforced quarantines and, occasionally, sanity-shattering horror. Because there are things amongst the stars that do not suffer humans in their presence. Which is why all Shadow Key operatives carry weapons. And suicide pills.

But this dead place does not appear to a haunt for elder things. It is a graveyard world and has been for a long time. So the team begins to set up its equipment: antennae, radiation detectors and other, less easily identifiable devices. “Zere is lots of electronic interference here, most likely from ze red giant,” murmurs Rosenzweig and his fingers fly over the keyboard. “I'm not sure if I- Ah. Zere it is. Colonel, I have established a secure link to ze UAV. Ve should be getting a picture... now.”

The laptop screen fills with an aerial picture, hazy with static, relayed by the stealthy Kestrel drone launched one hour ahead of the team. It soars over the calcified remnants of what must once have been an immense alien jungle, and beams back imagery across an encrypted link. “Slightly to ze left, and then up...” the doctor murmurs as he manipulates the controls and swings the drone around. “Let's see if we can get a better look at that city first. Zere we go...”

Multi-focal optics bring the alien city into view. It looks like nothing so much as an inverted vault, disturbingly vast bricks of windowless stone laid out in alien patterns, rising from the banks of the dry lake in an obviously artificial and equally obviously inhuman way. The cameras on the drone click and zoom, switching between close-ups and wide shots as transmits a continuous stream of footage that is hungrily soaked up by the computer. The doctor's attention is riveted to the details of the alien scene -- until the drone banks again, and something briefly in the periphery of his screen the catches his attention. A minuscule frown etches onto his forehead. “Hold on. What was that?”

Gloved fingers race across the keyboard. The drone's camera's whirl around. A handful of miles beyond the tumble of cyclopean architecture a great geodesic dome rises to the sky. It looks stunningly out of place, an intrusion of order and rationality upon the primordial chaos of this alien tomb. The Colonel leans over Leidenfrost's shoulders and squints at it underneath his mask. “That doesn't look like like QP make. I'd swear it looks like... Hmm. Can you zoom in on that?” He points to rows of black dots in front of the massive dome.

The drone dutifully zooms and a second later the scene shifts -- and how. Suddenly the Shadow Key members are no longer on an uninhabited alien world. Because they are watching people, humans in protective suits not unlike their own. They see bunkers and outhouses, trucks and a row of very familiar aircraft, parked alongside a runway. The concrete casing of a portable nuclear reactor, adorned with a seal depicting an eagle holding an olive branch and a bundle of arrows over a golden omega symbol. And atop the dome... For a moment, Leidenfrost can only stare at his screen. “... is zat ze Stars und Stripes?”
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
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Magister Militum
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Re: [Story] Short Stories

Post by Magister Militum »

I thought XK-Masada was in the galactic bulge, or have the Americans been expanding into other eldritch dead worlds for presumably nefarious reasons?

Oh, and I have returned.
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Re: [Story] Short Stories

Post by Ford Prefect »

SURPRISE EUROWEENIES :v
FEEL THESE GUNS ARCHWIND THESE ARE THE GUNS OF THE FLESHY MESSIAH THE TOOLS OF CREATION AND DESTRUCTION THAT WILL ENACT THE LAW OF MAN ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
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Re: [Story] Short Stories

Post by Siege »

I can't believe I didn't put this up before.

Written by Arty, way way way in the days of yore.

Conspiracy Nuts

Bittermead Britty's pub
Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom


"And they're working wi' the Loch Ness monster, I heard tell from a friend o' my down in Liva'pool. He says Nessie's real, and it's communicatin' with the aliens and giving them all our secret technology and that!" the crazy fellow with the bandana said. He was a regular patron at Bittermean Britty's, much to the chagrin of the other patron.

"Well, your half right," a young fellow said, who was sitting next to him. This one was new; no one had seen him in here before tonight. "Nessie does indeed exist, but I don't think the aliens are working with her.

"How do you know it's a 'her'?" one of the de-bunkers sitting around the crazy and the young fellow asked, an amused smile on his face.

The man, who was in his early twenties and had a flat Midwestern American accent, smiled right back at him. "Well, because she's given birth of course. Here, take a look at these." He pulled out a stack photographs, with the distinctive white packet at the bottom showing them to be Polaroids. The debunker took them, and showed them with some flourish to all the other patrons sitting around the two men they were attacking.

"Let 's see here, " he said. The man stared at the first picture for a long time. "It's fake," he said after a minute. "It's got to be."

"Really?" the young man said, smiling at his quite insane partner, who was smiling like an idiot. "Are the shadows not lined up? Are the eyes not reflecting the camera? Hm?"

The debunker passed the picture around, and looked at the next one. His mouth moved up and down, like he was preparing it to point out any deficiency in reality that it might detect. "You can tell from the fact that it was feet instead of flippers that it is not a "lost" Elasmosaurus as some have theorized," the man with the flat accent said. "Either that, or the creature has actually evolved over the period of however long it has been in Loch Ness. That's not likely, however, because Elasmosaurus is believed to have flourished in saltwater, not freshwater which the Loch consists entirely of.

"Where did you take these?" the debunker said. "Just a a few kilometers from here, really. The creatures have spread out from Loch Ness, as would make sense; the Loch is too small to hold an entire family of the creatures."

"Okay smartass," another man, this one with a healthy bottle of gold in his hand, said "how'd it reproduce to make said family?"

"There's never been just one. Whatever these creatures are, they have been there for a very long time. If you look at the seventh picture in the stack I just gave you, sir, you\'ll see Polaroids of recovered bones found at the bottom of the Loch."

The drinker asked again "Mr..."

"Twennysex is my name, sir."

"Mr. Twennysex, I am a retired marine biologist and cryptozoologist. In fact, I did a study on Nessie. These...bone structures, well, I'll admit you did your homework on them. They are consistent with the size and mass a creature like this would have. But something like that would have some kind of bouancy organs, like fish do."

"Yes, I imagine they would."

"Then if that is the case, when these creatures die, would do their bodies not float to the surface, as sharks and most fish do?"

The flat-voiced man shrugged. "We\'re still trying to work that one out. They idea is that the bouancy device might be based on a sphincter muscle, and at death that muscle relaxes as do all the other ones. Not unlike when a person dies, bowel and bladder-"

"I think that\'s quite enough, Mr. Twennysex," the Biologist said, chuckling a bit. "That's a possibility, sure."

At hearing a man of science chuckle and agree (?) with this Mr. Twennysex and his insane friend, they lost much of their own skepticism. For a moment, they considered the possibility that, not far from where they were sitting, something was indeed living in the waters of Loch Ness. And if that were true when they thought it all a hoax...what else was true as well?

"Yes, Mr. Twennysex," a voice, also flat and Midwestern, came from behind the gathered crowd at Bittermead Britty\'s billiards table. "That is quite enough."

Two men, both dressed in formal but comfortable-looking black suits with silk-looking white ties and reflective sunglasses, were standing at the door. They had on wide-brimmed black fedoras that drooped slightly on the right side white gloves, and the third button on their suit jackets on the right where not black like the others, but reflected and refracted light like crystals. Twennysex saw the men, kept smiling, and stood up from his chair. "Messrs. Foor and Sevanti, hello. It's been a while."

"Is that man there Mr. Uneitty?" the one on the right said. He was a bit shorter than his partner, and had curly black hair that covered his ears and fell just below the top of his sunglasses. "We'd like to speak to the both of you for just a moment, please."

The Biologist and the de-bunker stood up as well, looking concerned, though Mr. Twennysex continued to smile. "Relax, friends," he said. "We're just going to talk to these men. Come, Mr. Uneitty."

The two men in black at the door nodded simoultaneously, and they both watched as Messrs. Twennysex and Uneitty walked between them, Uneitty wringing his hands and cursing under his breath.

"Well," the de-bunker said. "What's this all about, then? Who are you people with?"

"You," the taller men in black said. "We are with you. Don't forget that." he walked forward and stuck his hand out at the de-bunker, who flinched back instinctively. "Will you please give me those Polaroids?"

"No," the de-bunker said. "And you're not going to take them from me. You obviously don't want these getting out, but whatever they are, I'm going to make sure they do."

The man in black made a "hmm" sound. "If that's what you want to do. I'm not going to make you do anything you don\'t want to."

Everyone watched as the two men looked at each other. The de-bunker looked scared, confused, unsure. The man in black was calm and content with anything the other man was about to do. Sighing and chuckling a little, the de-bunker handed the man in black the stack of Polaroids. "Sorry about that. I guess I got a little carried away. Here you go."

The man in black smiled, and his partner said from behind him "Let's talk to our associates now, yes Mr. Sevanti?"

Sevanti nodded. "Just a moment, Mr. Foor. I'll be right out."

Foor hesitated, but took Twennysex and Uneitty out the door, out of Bittermead Britty's.

Mr. Sevanti rolled up his sleeves up to his elbows, and said "I'm sorry to do that. If you'd like, I can show you something you can't prove to others, but can't disprove to yourself." Most of the patrons clustered around the billiards table, including the de-bunker and the Biologist, stayed were they were, looking curious.

"Sir?" Mr. Sevanti said to the Biologist. "Do you have some spare change on you?"

The Biologist shrugged, and reached into his coat pocket. He felt something there, and pulled his hand out, looking a bit perplexed. He opened his palm. In it was a large coin, bigger than an American silver dollar. It was green, and at first most of the observers thought it looked like very old copper. However, the jade-colored coin gave off a slight shine under the Bittermead Britty's yellow lights. It had a picture of the planet Earth on it, and two stylized letter F's facing each other on either side of the planet. "May I see it, please?" Sevanti asked. The Biologist handed the coin over, looking dually glad to get rid of it and sad to see it go.

Mr. Sevanti took the coin in his hands, and snapped his wrist. The coin disappeared from view, and in the microsecond that followed when Sevanti\'s hand returned, palm down, the coin was nowhere to be seen. "No one in this universe," Sevanti said "will ever see that coin again." He tipped his fedora, and walked out the same way the other three men had.

Ten minutes later, the four men were standing by a black Cadillac car, on a cliff overlooking one of many Scottish Lochs, though this one had, to their knowledge, no presence of Nessiteras rhombopteryx, or Loch Ness Monsters. The tow pairs of men stood facing each other, Twenneysex and Uneitty with their backs to the Loch, Foor and Sevanti facing towards it. A large and full moon lit the scene, and since the night was young, the moon was low to the ground still. The white rays reflected off the gentle waves of the Loch.

"Messrs. 26 and 180, you have betrayed and attempted to expose the Fellowship," Mr. Foor said.

26 smiled that maddeningly calm smile of his. "Is that so, 4? Have we betrayed it, or has the Fellowship betrayed humanity? What do you think, Mr. 70?"

70 remained silent. "Heh," 26 mouthed, dismissively. "Well, I guess I'll have to speak for both myself and Mr. 180 when I say we deny your accusation."

"Mr. 180 can speak for himself." 4 said.

"Not really, 4. The gray-wipe took most of his rational thinking ability. I'm surprised you even still consider him a Fellow; he can't act as one anymore."

"Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, you pansy areswipes!" Mr. 180 said, the only one in the group without a flat, identical voice. His was quite the Scottish brogue.

"Yes, a pity that," 4 commented. "Unfortunately, I'm afraid it is you tow who are, to use such a vulgar term, fucked." With but a glance to one another, Messrs. 4 and 70 reached into their pockets and, with lightning-fast speed, stuck syringes with glowing orange liquid into 26 and 180's chests. 180 screamed and cursed again as 70 injected the syringe's contents into his chest, by 26 just winced for a moment, before going back to smiling.

Simoultaneously, both men pulled the syringes out of their victims, and kicked them both still standing over the cliff. They fell down several meters, and impacted with sickening splats on the sharp rocks below. 70 imagined he could still see 180 struggling down there. 4 imagined he could see the venom of the Congo Elephant Spider taking effect already, dissolving 26's smiling face into watery tendrils that could never be identified as the waters of the Loch disperesed them, probably wiping out much of the ecosystem there as well.

70 turned to 4. "Was that really necessary?"

"Was it necessary of you to show off that little coin-trick in the pub back there?" 4 replied.

"They all looked so disappointed. The story will spread as an urban myth, be disproved by someone, and belief in the unseen will decrease by one more fraction across humanity. But those lucky few will always remember it. Or, they'll imaigne they were drunk, and imagined it. No harm, no foul."

4 shrugged. "I suppose so. Wait in the car please, Mr. 70. I'm going to call this in."

"Why?"

"You don\'t have to, of course; I'd just like some privacy, that's all."

70 sighed, knowing what saying something that way meant. He turned around and opened the doors of the Cadillac with a click of the keyring.

Mr. 4 took a small device out of his pocket, and clipped it to his ear, much like a hearing aid. "Connect me to the Dealership, please."

There was a faint hissing sound, and then a man's voice came on. "Speak."

"Mr. Toyota, a good day to you. I must speak with Mr. Chevrolet. It concerns the failed gray-wipe and his partner."

There was a brief pause, and then another, almost identical voice came on. "Mr. 4. You have succeeded?"

"Marginally, Mr. Chevrolet. The two Fellows had to be killed. No evidence."

"Unfortunate, but satisfactory, Mr. 4."

"I feel there is something else, Mr. Chevrolet."

"What is that, Mr. 4?"

"It is about Mr. 70. I would like him watched. He seems to be in the first stage of sympathy exhibition."

There was another pause, this one probably Mr. Chevrolet thinking, though what such a creature thought was unfathomable to a simple Fellow like Mr. 4. "We will take this suggestion under consideration. Return to the Apartment. You will be debriefed there." The connection ended.

4 got into the Cadillac, and said aloud "Take us to the Apartment, please." The car started up, and began to move without 4 or 70 touching the steering wheel. That there was no steering wheel was a good reason for this.

"So what did Mr. Chevrolet say?" Mr. 70 asked, arms crossed and head down, looking to most others like he was about to fall asleep.

"To come home, and that we did what we had to." Mr. 4 smiled at his partner reassuringly. "Don't worry. All is well now."


The Planet Celeste
United Sovereignty of Earth


Josh Brigby stared at the coin that had just popped into his drink, almost going down his throat as he was about to take a sip. With a bit of regret, he poured the tasty Zigonian drink with a name he couldn't pronounce without an extra tongue onto the ground, and picked up the coin that had fallen out.

It was green, like jade or very old copper ("what kind of backward nation still uses metal coinage" he asked himself aloud. "Well, besides the Brags maybe?"), and it glowed. He was scared for a second that it had been irradiated, but then he remembered that radioactive things glowing was just an urban legend, something out of a C.J. Monotow movie.

It had a picture of Earth on it, which was funny because he knew for certain that the USE didn't use coins, especially not anything like this. There were two F's on it, one facing backward, on either side.

"Huh," he said to himself. "Weird."
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
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