“The ones that raided the train in India? Yes, my father was actually there helping mop up.”

“Well, here, one of the super soldiers ran the other way to all his fellows and managed to get away. He lived in India for many years before finally moving to Ostraya. He is my grandfather on the other side.”

“That would explain how strong you are.” The man shook his head. “Damn. Well, we have other Earths represented on Embassy with similar histories to your world, although in most, the genetic engineering was aborted or the subjects were sterilized. Generally, the ones that had a nuclear war had all the genetic engineering wiped out completely. I suppose you had better take me to your leader, as the saying goes.” He grinned at Andrew and then turned back to the other two. “You two had better go back. Can you tell Lon that you’ve discovered another Earthbook world and that I’m making diplomatic contact? He won’t panic too much, I assure you.”

Bonus scene

Andrew just managed to catch Jess as she was about to board the plane back to Nuzeeland. They had managed one glorious weekend away together since the end of the war. Most of the time, they had both been too busy with mopping up and then all the carry-on with Disco.

“Hey.” He said, smiling.

“Hi. Come to see me off?”

“Yes. Well, um, I came to see if you would come back.” He paused. “Permanently.”

She looked puzzled for a moment, then startled as he sank onto one knee.

“Will you marry me, Jess?”

“Um. God, I hadn’t even thought about that. Um. Yes!” He jumped up and hugged her, and then they kissed before she finally broke them apart. “I’ll need to go home, talk to my parents, and sort stuff out. And see what the Army thinks. They may not want to lose me just yet.”

“If they’re not keen on letting go, tell them to assign you to me, and I’ll give you advanced mentalist training. It’s not like they have anybody over there that can train you, given the way you Kiwis have been suppressing magic users for centuries.”

“I, well, I’ll try that if I have to. Actually, that’s not a bad idea, except I think I can maybe talk them into assigning me over here undercover to get lessons from you. Hmm, yes. If I have to, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll most likely use the need for training to act as one of the people assigned to Embassy, though. All those people with heaps of magic power or mentalist abilities.”

“Good.” They kissed again. “My only worry is that you’re a close relative. Do you know where you got your mentalist talent?”

“Oh. No, but I think it’s at least three or four generations back, so at worst, we’d be third or fourth cousins.” She frowned. “I will investigate once I get home.”

He smiled. “I love you.”

“I love you too, you lunatic.” She looked around. “I’ve got to go now. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

A quick kiss and she was gone. Andrew hoped soon was really soon.

Sorry – late again ….. busy start to the week

At that moment, it occurred to Andrew where he knew the name Wolfgang Oldham from. It was in his grandmother’s journal. Then the girl returned, and if he thought she was tall, the man who came with a was even taller.

“Hi. I’m Xen Wolfson from the Department of Interdimensional Security and Cooperation, Disco for short. Destiny tells me you’ve had problems with an invasion from one of the Japanese worlds from the Alliance, yes?”

“Yes, Tier Four Tomkya out of Tier Three Natori. Tomkya thought they could just move in and take over after the Plague hit their own world, and then later, Natori joined them when their Tier 2 was rendered incommunicado, and they were suffering from both the plague and the zivvy dissolver. We destroyed one gate early, leaving them with only one working gate. This limited the number of troops they could push through, and in any case, Tomkya didn’t have that large a population to start with. I gather the Japanese worlds are a lot harsher with local inhabitants when they take over?”

“Yes. Not that the Germans or the Russians are that much better, but we generally didn’t slaughter them completely, as happened on a lot of the Japanese worlds.” Roland answered when Andrew looked in his direction.

“Anyway, we killed a lot of them, thousands and thousands. They were using office workers and gardeners on the front lines as their losses mounted. It didn’t help that our mentalists were generally better than theirs once they got a bit of experience.”

“Destiny said you had mentalists, and I can tell you’re quite powerful.”

“Yes. There was a lot of genetic engineering going on before our nuclear war. In fact, some historians blame genetic engineering for the war. The first strike on American territory was at the Transworld travel complex, where they were using the tellies to power the first interdimensional gates. There are no surviving records of how far they got. In fact, there are very few records at all, but my grandmother left a journal where she mentioned a few details about what was happening when the war started. She had been injured and was in a hospital just far enough from the complex that she survived the nuclear strike.”

He saw the tall man and the girl following his account closely.

“That was about eight hundred years ago. My grandmother made her way through various countries and parts of the world until she finished up in Ostraya. She apparently died when I was young. I say apparently because she had faked her own death on numerous occasions over the centuries. In her journal, she mentions Wolfgang Oldham as being one of the other tellies working with the early transdimensional gates. Yes, I thought you would find that interesting.”

“This is another Earthbook world, Uncle Xen,” Destiny said, looking all excited.

Uncle Xen was looking thoughtful. “Do you know what your grandmother’s original name was?”

“AnnaKarina.”

“Oh, shit. Another one.” Uncle Xen said, looking alarmed.

“Have you heard of the Russian super soldiers?”

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.”

The Mentalist Lord and the girl looked around and then back to Andrew.

“Well, the Alliance split after the attack on the Three Hundred. The Japanese all withdrew from the Alliance and then sometime later turned around and attacked Home. They were defeated, and all the Tier 2s had their gate complexes destroyed, along with many of the Tier 3s as well. With no zivvy being made anymore, there is some doubt as to their ability to recover. The Alliance is currently reorganizing into large trading blocs under President Vinogradov rather than hierarchical Tiers. As far as I am aware, no Japanese worlds have joined or even been asked. President Vinogradov is trying to do away with the constant invasions, chipping, and slavery in general throughout the remaining parts of the Alliance where he can.”

Andrew cocked his head slightly. The man had been speaking English, but he had an accent.

“English is not your native tongue, so what’s your accent?”

“Russian or German. That’s the other two main branches of the Alliance. We’re far more intermixed than the Japanese are. I expect that trend will continue until it’s just all one Alliance rather than Russian and German sections.”

“And this, Embassy? Is that in the Russian or the German part of the Alliance?”

The girl quite clearly bridled at that assertion.

“Certainly not! Embassy is an empty world where all the various worlds can come and build an Embassy and discuss matters peacefully rather than resorting to violence as well as trade with other worlds.” She nodded at Lord Roland. “The Alliance only just opened its Embassy very recently. Before the attack on the Three Hundred, the Alliance was regarded as a serious enemy by all the other polities that have embassies on Embassy. Disco has given aid to several groups fighting the Alliance, although the Empire of the One was mostly responsible for spreading the Plague and the attack on the Three Hundred.”

Disco! Andrew thought with amusement. He looked at the foggy gate again.

“The Japanese gate I could see through, and they had machinery on the far side for creating the actual dimensional gate.”

The girl nodded with a smile. “Yes. There are several worlds that use powered gates, these days mostly just for exploration. Once they find somewhere interesting, they come to Disco and get them to open a permanent gate back to their home world. Our gates are created using magic and natural phenomena that are found in the in-between.”

This was getting stranger and stranger, although possibly not.

“The in-between?”

Lord Roland nodded towards the gate.

“You see a rotating circle with a fog in the middle, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So do I.” Simpson put in from the back of the ATV.

“I don’t.” Henderson put in. “I can see their lawn.”

Andrew looked at Simpson briefly and then smiled at her when she looked at him before returning to his two strange dimensional travelers.

“If you close your eyes, do you sometimes see a blue that looks like soda with lots of bubbles and things in it?” Lord Roland asked.

Andrew nodded.

“Not a vehicle bay with tanks and cyborgs?”

“Nah. Looks like someone’s front yard.”

That was odd as normally the gates were opened from a large warehouse-like complex with lots of machinery on the far side that was required to create the dimensional gate. Mind you, he’d only ever encountered one gate before they took it down, but the gate had definitely been inside a large building, and some of the Japanese prisoners had confirmed that all the gate complexes looked very similar as they had all been constructed to the same blueprint, apparently.

The guy was dressed in casual, indeterminate clothes and looked to be in his early twenties. The young woman was very tall, but he could see that despite her height, she was quite young, probably late teens. She was dressed in a dark grey jacket and pants outfit over a black t-shirt with lots of pockets. They looked neither Oriental nor part of the Triple Alliance, as far as he could see.

“Hello.” The man said in English.

They were both keeping their hands in view and appeared to be unarmed, which meant nothing, as they were both clearly mentalists. Andrew hopped down from the ATV and stepped to the side to make sure Simpson had a clear field of fire before walking forward a little. She had her rifle resting on the window sill of the ATV door but not pointed straight at the two strangers.

“I’m Lieutenant Harris of the Ostrayan Defense Forces. Who are you, please?”

The two looked at each other.

“Officially, I am Destiny Quicksliverdaut of the Department of Interdimensional Security and Cooperation on Embassy. My partner is, technically, Master Mentalist Lord Roland Fey, currently attached to the University of Embassy while he researches his Doctorate in Mentalist Studies at the University of the Alliance on Home.”

Andrew had no idea what the Department of Interdimensional Security and Cooperation was, but he knew what the Alliance was. He heard the click behind him as Reynolds took the safety of her rifle. Lord Fey held up his hands, palms out, in a sign of peace.

“You people obviously had negative interactions with the Alliance, yes?”

“You could say that,” Andrew answered dryly.

“Well, you have nothing to fear from us. I’m an academic, and my partner is a junior agent of Disco. She was experimenting with opening gates, and we saw the gate scars this world has and naturally started with the northern hemisphere, which is normally the center of civilization on most near Earths.” He looked around. “Your world appears to have had a nuclear war at some time in the past, and then, I take it,” and he nodded at the ruined buildings across the road. “One of the Alliance worlds attacked you. Is that correct?”

“Yes. From the surviving prisoners, we learned that the world they came from was called Tier 4 Tomkya. They decided to invade us when they were attacked by something called the Plague. Later on, they were reinforced by people from Tier 3 Natori after their Tier 2 world was grounded following a failed attack on the Alliance’s home world. Natori had trouble first with the Plague and then with the zivvy remover and decided to throw in their lot with their Tier 4 and move here as well.”

Simpson was already stowing her portable cannon in the back of the ATV and grinned at him as she jumped into the rear compartment.

“Henderson, you drive,” Andrew commanded, jumping in the passenger seat. Stevens piled in the back alongside Simpson.

In seconds they were racing up the main drag with the other ATV right behind them and turned right into Mercer Street while Stevens got on the radio to let their commander know what was happening. They roared under the uncollapsed section of the bridge there, then down the slope, past the park, and into North Gilong. The downed overpass had been bulldozed enough that the road was passable, and they raced past the burnt-out shops facing the old highway and then the cricket and football grounds. He closed his eyes and felt for the gate.

“Next right.”

Henderson did his best to get the thing up on two wheels as he turned into the side street, and they powered down the road heading for the bay.

“Slow down.” He ordered and felt for the gate.

There were a few civilians about, a work crew trying to repair one of the brick warehouses, presumably hired by the owners of the business who were trying to get things going again without having to do a total rebuild. They approached an intersection that had empty ground on either side, apart from a small rectangular shed on the left corner. The gate was there somewhere.

“It’s in or behind that shed.” He said, pointing.

There was no driveway from the side street, and there didn’t appear to be one from the street they were on either, so Andrew assumed that the entrance was further down. The lack of a driveway didn’t stop Henderson, who simply drove over the destroyed fence and up the dirt bank while Simpson brought her rifle to bear and Andrew threw a shield around the ATV. The second machine followed them but kept behind as per the doctrine they had worked out.

There was all manner of junk piled up in the yard at the rear side of the shed, piles of rusting somethings, old crates, and drums. Plus, two people who were attempting to work their way through it. They must’ve heard the ATV coming because they’d stopped what they were doing and were simply standing there seemingly defenseless, but Andrew could tell they were well-shielded. The male was a bit under two meters and had dark hair. The female was slim, tall, two meters or more, and had dark glossy hair that seemed to glimmer purple in the light.

Behind them was a large door on the side of the shed that was standing open, and through the door, he could see an apparently rotating lighted circle that looked a lot like a gate. Unlike the Japanese gate, which he could see through, he couldn’t see through the rotating gate as the center looked foggy to him.

“What do you see through the gate?” He asked, hoping someone else could see something.

 “Looks like a lawn or at least a grassy area,” Henderson answered.