After the dramatic events of the Battle of New Earth where their new technology proved its worth, the Terrans are feeling a lot more confident about the future and their place in the galaxy. The Taxons come begging for peace, with Crown Prince Frogar leading the mission mostly due to his previous experience with the Terrans. The Hareccans, realizing the odds are now in their favor beef up their offensive against the Taxons. Signing a peace treaty with the Terrans has now become a top priority as the Taxons need their experienced crews, or at least those that survived the battle of New Earth, back. Meanwhile, the Troodons continue to be a pain in the you-know-where, and the Hareccans are upset with the Terrans for pulling out of the Alliance and are sounding bellicose. Adding to the fun, one of the Terran warships that was out exploring finds three quite interesting humans who are not from the Terran’s original universe.
 

Andrew shook his head. “Well, perhaps you had best come and talk to someone a bit higher up the chain of command than a mere Lieutenant.”

The young couple looked at each other before turning back to the assembled Ostrayans.

“Actually, I should go and see if Uncle Xen is available. We are not any sort of official contract mission or anything. I was just practicing my gate-making. I’ll go and see if he is available. Can you stay here, Roly?”

“Um, sure, I guess.” The young man didn’t look like he was that certain her running off and leaving him there was a good idea. “Is that all right with you guys?”

Andrew glanced at Simpson, who shrugged slightly, indicating she was leaving it up to him. Great.

“Yeah, sure. Go ahead.”

The girl nodded and turned to the young man. “The gate’s been open so long I’m surprised Mother hasn’t turned up. I’ll just go and check if Uncle Xen is available and pop straight back.”

The young man nodded, and she turned and disappeared into the little hut and stepped through the slowly turning whirlpool.

“So, are you people still fighting the Japanese off?” Roland asked.

“No. The initial invasion caught us by surprise, coming as it did in the middle of our capital. All our best troops are up in the north, and it took a while for them to reposition down here, not that we had a big army anyway. The government launched a big recruitment drive, especially looking for people with mentalist talent like me, as they discovered the Japanese invaders had many powerful mentalists. There weren’t that many to be found because mentalist talents had been frowned on in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear war, and many had been killed.”

He shrugged. “Anyway, the Japs advanced fifty to sixty kilometers in most directions, more along the south coast. They reached the radioactive remains of the former capital, Melborn, to the northeast and worked their way north from there while we got our act together.”

He eyed the young man. “We matched their mentalists with our mentalists, and I personally found having a sniper with a high-powered rifle handy meant that I could attack their mentalists with energy and mental spells, although you probably call them impressions, yes?” The young man nodded. “So while I was attacking them with those sorts of impressions, my sniper would take them down if they were too strong for me.”

The young man nodded, looking thoughtful, and Andrew continued. “We received some help from our neighboring countries as well, which made a difference, and as they ran out of mentalists, between our experienced northern troops, our allies, and all the new recruits, we just rolled them up. In the end, they were using women and children carrying grenades, but a mental shield pushed to cover the women and children released their mental control, and most of the women and children threw the grenades away and ran for our lines as instructed.”

“Women and children,” Roland said, shaking his head and looking distressed.

“So we finished up with thirteen gods that represented the concentrated subconscious expectations of the various archetypes. We had the Gods of Virtue, Vice, Art, Mercy, Peace, Logic, and so on. Some have since died or have otherwise gone missing. My grandfather was known for his martial arts and served in the army for a period before the exile, and the collective subconscious decided he was the God of War. Like his son, my Uncle Xen, he can be summoned by someone who believes. These days we have several others that are termed baby Gods, like Uncle Xen, who’s the God of Spies. Teleportation was developed from analyzing what happened when my grandfather was summoned.”

The young man, Roland, looked at her in surprise.

“Really? I didn’t realize that. I knew it wasn’t something dimensional because I saw Ra’d do it, but I didn’t know that it originated on Comet Fall.”

“Comet Fall?” Andrew asked.

Destiny nodded. “That is what my home world is called these days because it is regularly subject to strikes from comets. We started out with a relatively advanced society, electric cars, and so forth straight after the exile, but then we took a comet hit around four hundred years after the exile, and the population was decimated. I was told that only a hundred thousand people survived. These days, I understand we’re over five hundred million and climbing. Because our founding population had a high instance of genetic engineering, plus some of the thirteen gods were around after the comet, the survivors relied on magic for many things that technology does on other worlds.”

“When we were rudely brought back into the multi-verse by the Empire of the One and the Earth attempting to conquer us practically simultaneously, we were still using horses and carts, and our most modern industry was a few steam engines. We still mostly use horses and carts, not having found any reason to change. Corridors enable transportation from one side of the planet to the other instantaneously.”

“Corridors?” Andrew was definitely at the boggled stage now.

“Yes. They’re made from bubbles. When you look at the blue, can you see those semitransparent bubble things?” Andrew nodded. “Bubbles have a natural time dilation of thirty thousand to one. If you’re careful, you can catch one and poke a hole in it without it bursting. You can then store almost anything there as they are not part of this universe. People normally attach them to something,”

At this point, Roland held up what looked like a strip of aluminum, which he pulled apart, revealing a bronzy-colored surface between the two strips of metal that expanded as he pulled them apart. Destiny nodded at them as he closed them back up.

“That is a sort of standard design for handles, although they can be anything. Anyway, another use is if you attach one to a wall, for argument’s sake, and stretch it to wherever you want the other end. Around the corner, cross to the other side of the city, or halfway around the planet. Then you put a hole in it and attach it there, stretch a few bits out, and attach them, and then you have a doorway at the other end. Comet Fall is covered in them. Several other worlds are now becoming increasingly covered in them as well.”

ongoing health issues meant I miss getting Ostraya up on Monday – sorry people.
its nearly at the end anyway… but I will try to get it back up like normal on this coming Monday.
For those of you who unaware my wife and I are moving to the country and building a house with some lovely views where I can sit on the verandah and create new and interesting stories for you to read.
Originally the build wasn’t supposed to start until March but has now been brought forward to late next month. How badly this will affect my writing I am not sure but it will entail numerous trips to the site which is 2.5 hours away – each way.
The Hareccan Problem should be out – maybe the end of this month but more likely early November.
Taroniah at Sea is going to be affected as will Kyron the Conqueror which I had hoped to have out early January and April respectively.
I may be able to keep to those schedules (particularly if do some actual work on my Xmas break) but the seemingly never ending random health interruptions are not helping.
Anyway – back to scribbling…..

Late – sorry folks – real life distractions


“That’s the in-between. It’s been proposed that it represents the dark matter that physicists say makes up most of the universe but which they can’t actually find anywhere. People who can see the in-between are what we call dimensionals, and one of the attributes of that ability is that they cannot see through the natural, permanent gates. You two should come to Embassy and have Xen Wolfson or Destiny’s mother Q test your dimensional abilities.”

“Q?”

“Everybody calls her Q at her request. Technically, she is Quail Quicksilver. Although there is some confusion about where that name originates as it is not a proper name in the witch naming system.” He turned to the young woman next to him. “Do you know, Destiny?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Mother is a bit vague about it. I’ll have to ask my grandmother, Rustle. I think it’s something that happened on Arrival when she was there just after the near miss with the comet, but I’m not entirely sure. In Ash, she is officially Quicksilver Rustledaut. I’ll have to see if Uncle Xen knows. Otherwise, I’ll have to go to Ash and ask. I probably should take you to meet the grandparents sometime anyway.”

“I’m aware no one seems to know who your father is, and your mother isn’t saying. I overheard her reiterate that in the Kitchen one day. Do you know?”

Destiny shook her head. “He was one of the Helaos, as I understand it. You wouldn’t know about them. I’ll explain later, Roly.”

Andrew suddenly realized that when the lad had said partner, he’d meant these two were a couple, not just a team.

“So you only have one set of grandparents to introduce him to.” He couldn’t stop himself from saying, although he grinned to make it less offensive, hopefully.

The girl grimaced, her hands in the air, but Lord Roland laughed.

“Which is a good thing. At least for me. Only one disapproving parent and one pair of grandparents. I’m getting off lightly.” Destiny hit him in the shoulder. “So your grandmother is named Rustle? Who’s your grandfather?”

The girl seemed to shrink a little. “Wolfgang Oldham, the Auld Wolf. The God of War.”

This revelation actually caused the brash young man to pale.

“He is a God? Your grandfather?” Andrew found himself asking, although the name Wolfgang rang a bell for some reason. “He’s not a real god.” The girl replied disparagingly. “Our world was settled by genetically engineered refugees banished to the planet by Earth. Well, an Earth. The final thirteen who were the most powerful and the most dimensionally capable Tellies,” she paused and looked at Andrew, who knew exactly what she meant, having read that term in his grandmother’s journal, so he nodded for her work to continue. “They were wired into their gate machines somewhat like they do in the Alliance. When that Earth decided to banish all the genetically engineered people, somehow or other, they managed to escape to the planet the last fifty thousand genetically engineered people were being marooned on, destroying the gate complex in the process. Because they had been wired into the machinery, they were brain-damaged when they arrived, and they became the focus of the collective subconscious of the population.”