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From Time To Time 28-23 - Jazz And Theia

  To be honest, I wasn’t sure my request to be taken to their leader would actually work. I was half-expecting to have to deal with the army of alien troops around us simply opening up with those guns. My body tensed, waiting to see what happened. Beside me, the other two were doing the same, all of us ready to go straight to plan b if these guys decided to play hardball. Even Seth was clearly set for a fight, though I only really knew that thanks to my Necromantic connection with him. From all outside appearances, the ghost-vampire seemed fully relaxed.

  Thankfully, after a moment of tense uncertainty, one of the aliens spoke up. He was a tall, red-skinned, very thin figure. Unnaturally thin, really. He had the basic two arms, two legs, one head of an average humanoid, but his limbs were barely wider than a pencil. Which looked a bit goofy when they were attached to human-sized hands and feet (though the hands had six fingers), but I really shouldn’t judge that sort of thing. To him, humans probably had very grossly thick arms and legs that looked goofy. His limbs were also clearly much stronger than they looked.

  “You wishing to see Leader Man?” The alien’s dark red face twisted with some mix of disbelief and more than a little distrust. “Why you thinking we are being stupid enough to be taking you there? You being dangerous, big fighters, big killing. You really thinking we let you close to our Leader Man?” He made a noise that sounded a bit like a laugh and snort. “We not being dumb.”

  Seth opened his mouth, and I didn’t need to have any connection to him to know that I probably shouldn’t let him say what was on his mind. Giving him a quick wave to be quiet, I focused on the alien who had spoken up. “Do I think you’re dumb?”

  As I echoed those words, my body began to shift. It was half-intentional, half-instinctive. I needed to impress these people, I needed them to take me seriously. I needed to intimidate them. Which meant putting on a show. And Flick wasn’t the version of me who put on a show.

  It was Jacob.

  After shifting my appearance, standing there before these people with my long, fancy jacket shifting under a soft, magical breeze, I made a point of giving a wide, sweeping gesture with my arms, spreading them out to either side so they could all get a good look both at my appearance and empty hands. My eyes remained locked on the man in front of me. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Jacob. I’m a fan of a great many things, and a foe of others. One thing I am particularly unfond of… is having weapons pointed in my direction.”

  A flick of my extended hands made twenty or so ghosts rise out of seemingly nowhere. The guards assembled in front of us were taken by surprise as their guns were taken from their grasps before they could react. They had been so focused on me that they couldn’t recover in time. Just like that, they were disarmed, and had their own weapons pointed at them.

  “You think this is a choice between having a fight or not, but we’re past that,” I informed them, using a minor spell to make my voice deeper and louder so it would seem to echo through the space, coming at them from all sides. “This fight is already over. You have a way to see your engine room from here? Do it.”

  There was a momentary pause before the spokesman snapped a quick word to one of the other soldiers, who pressed something in his hand to make a holographic image appear in the air between us. It showed what was clearly their engine room, where the dozen crew members who were supposed to be working to keep the ship functional were lying unconscious on the deck. Meanwhile, more of my ghosts were standing by the controls and other important systems.

  It shouldn’t have been that easy for me to send my ghosts in there to take over. But that was the problem (or benefit in my case) with these people apparently not knowing anything about Necromancy, or magic in general. They didn’t know how to defend against it. They had no spells that could block or interfere with that. It was very possible that their energy weapons or other things might have been able to hurt my ghosts, but like the troops here, those engineers had been taken completely by surprise. They were all knocked out before they could even start to react to the intrusion.

  As soon as these guys saw that and processed it, I spoke again. “As I said, this fight is over. My people control your engine room. If you try to take it back, they will destroy everything in there and let the ship crash while we teleport away. If you insist on trying to attack us, they will crash the ship. If you refuse to let me talk to the man in charge, they will crash the ship.”

  Offering the man a cheerful, yet dangerous smile, I finished with, “I’m not giving you a choice between fighting us or taking us to your leader. I’m giving you a choice between taking us to your leader or having your entire ship blow up around you and crash into the ground. Call off the attack, pause it, whatever you want to call it. I’m not here to negotiate with you. I’m here to stop this attack. I can do that by sending this ship plummeting into the ground with all of you on it, or I can do it by talking to your leader and coming to an agreement. Your choice, but make it fast, I bore easily. And this? So far it’s very boring.”

  Well, if they didn’t already see us as a huge threat, they sure do now, Locke noted a bit grimly. We’ve definitely made a target out of ourself. I just hope we can actually back it up if we have to.

  That’s the point, I replied easily. As long as they’re focused on us, they won’t devote as many resources to the Fomorians, which gives those guys more time to get to the rift and escape. And yes, I do realize just how fucking absurd this whole situation is. We’re doing all this to help save the Fomorians so they can make it through the rift to eventually turn into the monsters we know.

  The guy I was talking to finally seemed to come to a decision after taking a few seconds to process all that. He definitely didn't sound happy, the anger clear in his voice. “We being taking you to Leader Man. We being stopping the attacks. You being stopping all damage to engines.”

  My head bobbed. “Yes, that's the deal. So let's go, and we don't have to find out how well this ship can stay in the air after all of its engines fall out.” After saying that, I offered a smile, hoping Theia’s spell would translate my honesty properly. “And don’t worry, if all goes well, no one else has to die.”

  From atop her robot Allosaurus behind me, Jazz murmured a very quiet, “Let’s just hope that’s a thing they actually want.” Then she glanced my way, “Also, you’re even scarier than you used to be, and that’s saying something. You really have been through a lot since you went with Ehn.”

  There was a lot I wanted to say to that, but now really wasn't the time or place. Instead, I gave her a little shrug, feeling self-conscious. “I'm just trying to get through this without letting the whole universe fall apart. If that means I have to play hardball and make them angry, so be it.”

  “It’s okay,” Theia chirped cheerfully, still seated between the two largest plates on the robo-stegosaurus’s back, “there’s a difference between good scary and bad scary, you still fall at least seventy-six percent on the good scary side.” She seemed to consider that briefly while we started to move behind the skinny man and his troops as they escorted us out of this hangar bay before adding, “Maybe higher, but it’s too hard to tell right now. I’d need to see how you react to following through on a threat before making that sort of judgment.” Right after saying that, she brightened. “Oh, maybe they’ll be silly enough to try to lead us into a trap and give you a reason to destroy their ship after all. Then I could judge how you react to that.”

  Is this her way of threatening them? Locke wondered curiously as we were led out into a large tube-shaped corridor and toward a wide platform at the end. Or is she being genuine right now?

  I offered a mental shrug. I mean, both, probably. That's just who she is. Plus I’m pretty sure she’s making sure some of them actually target her if this whole thing goes sideways. Out loud, I replied to the girl in question, “Sorry, but I think I’d rather make you wait on that. With any luck, it’ll be a nice long time before you get to decide whether to raise or lower that estimate of yours.” And yes, I was doing my best to make the threat, or promise, very clear for the translator spell to do its work. I didn’t know how well these alien guys would be able to understand the implication.

  They did clearly get the point, given the uncomfortable, probably fairly nervous looks I saw pass between some of them. Yeah, they definitely understood, and most of them didn’t seem to want to push the issue. A few looked pretty twitchy, like they might try something, but a quiet word from that skinny guy was enough to make them keep it together. For now, at least. I wasn’t going to trust that that would hold. Instead, I had invisible ghosts flying just overhead, and tasked each of them with keeping a close eye on what seemed to be the most likely troublemakers. At the same time, the ghosts who had disarmed the troops continued to flank us while carrying their appropriated weapons at the ready. If one of them tried to start something, I wanted to shut it down as quickly and efficiently as possible.

  By that point, we’d reached the platform. The guy in charge of this group looked at us, taking a moment to consider what he was about to say before explaining, “You being stepping on circle and stand still. Then you being taken to Leader Man. It being safe, honor being given to you.”

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  I really didn’t know if we could trust that, to be honest. I had no reason to believe that honor meant anything to this guy or any of the people. But they knew that if anything happened to us, their entire ship would be destroyed. And since they didn’t know anything about Necromancy, I was willing to bet that they didn’t know killing me would take most of the ghosts’ power away. Still, I wished I had some sort of truth-detection power. It would be very useful, right now. But--

  “Well, let’s stop wasting time then,” Jazz put in, already starting to direct her Allosaur ride up on that platform. She glanced over her shoulder at me before adding, “Standing around staring at it isn’t gonna help.”

  Theia, on the other hand, hopped down from her mount for a moment and stepped over to the skinny man and held her arm out to him. Her voice was bright. “Please hit me, just a little. I promise there will be no retaliation, I want to show you.”

  He looked at me first, an obviously uncertain expression crossing his face. When I gave him a nod of approval, the man still seemed confused, but obediently gave Theia’s arm a smack. Just like that, he recoiled in pain, looking down at his other arm with confusion as he grabbed onto it.

  Theia, obviously showing no discomfort at all, explained, “What you attempt to do to me will instead happen to you. So if this is a trick or a trap, if you intend to disintegrate us, or do anything harmful, it will be done to you. Or maybe one of the others. Or maybe all of you.” Her gaze shifted to look at all of them pointedly. “Do you still want us to step onto this platform now?”

  There was the slightest pause before the guy in charge very carefully replied, “I being giving honor. That is being very important. You are not knowing me. I being Korculun. That being name of my people. We being very honor. We not being lie. When I giving honor, I never being lying. But if it being helpful, we is coming with you. You not being sent to see Leader Man alone.”

  Story says he’s right--err, telling the truth, Locke informed me, the description of the Korculun in the books we have matches what this guy looks like, and they really were big on honor. I mean, nothing says he can’t be an exception somehow, but it’s probably the best we’re gonna get. Plus with Theia’s little threat, and the fact that we don’t have much of a choice if we want to talk to Wreth and solve this whole thing, it seems like we should just go ahead and take the risk.

  Right, that was going to have to be good enough for me. I followed Jazz and the Allosaur robot onto the platform, with Theia behind me. Her stegosaurus trailed after, its tail with the very spiky metal thagomizer on the end swinging back and forth a bit in a way that narrowly missed hitting a couple of their troops. The Korculun guy came as well, as did the rest of our armed escort.

  About half of these guys were Fomorian themselves, but those ones all had cybernetic implants and replacements. It made me wonder how much control they had over their own actions. After everything I’d heard so far, would it be that much of a surprise if this Wreth guy had removed their free will just to make sure they couldn’t help their fellow people? He seemed like the type.

  The other half of both the troops escorting us, and the rest of the ship’s crew, were a mix of other species, including a handful of those first types we had seen before, the seven-foot tall, blue-skinned and four-armed ones who had started all this. Or, well, I supposed Wreth had been the one who started it. But the ones who had been here first on their hunting trip or whatever.

  No sooner had I taken that much in than I felt a little tingle as a humming started on the platform under our feet. Hoping we hadn’t made a terrible mistake and vastly underestimated how much these guys cared about their own lives (or that they were being controlled by Wreth enough that that couldn’t care about them), I braced myself. God, this was going to look really stupid in hindsight if we died like this. But hey, on the plus side, we were so ridiculously far in the past right now that there was no way anyone would ever find out what happened. So we had that going for us.

  The tingle stopped, and we were… in a throne room. No, seriously, that’s what it seemed to be. It was circular, like the platform we had just been on except much larger. The whole place had to be about five hundred feet across, with a blue sapphire floor, walls that seemed to be made of some purple gemstone, and a throne right in the center. About forty feet above our heads was a glass ceiling that showed a nice view of the sky. Which, judging by the clouds I could see, didn’t seem like--hang on, wait a minute. That couldn’t be… Okay, from my estimate after a quick check with my location-distance power, we were--yeah, that was weird. “We didn’t go anywhere,” I announced with a look at the other two. “We’re still standing in the same spot.”

  “A good guess!” The words came from the throne, which had been turned away from us. It started to rotate, but before it was even halfway, a figure leapt up and over it to land halfway between where we were and the spot where the throne was still gradually turning. “Bah, too slow, far too slow for greeting our guests! We must be more proactive for such important ones!”

  It was… well, a Fomorian, of sorts. This one was even shorter than the ones back on that sub, who had already been smaller than the ones I was accustomed to. He was even a bit shorter than me, only standing slightly less than five feet tall. His entire lower half was metal, as was one of his arms and a fair amount of his head including one of his eyes and his entire mouth. Only half his chin, his nose, and maybe a quarter of his cheek leading up to his left eye seemed biological. He really was a cyborg. A cyborg Fomorian, which was just--jeez, the universe was so weird.

  “But then, it wasn’t really a guess, was it?” The cyborg Fomorian cheerfully added, basically prancing up to us. His metal feet gave loud clinking sounds against the sapphire floor that echoed somewhat, almost like a spoon repeatedly tapping a wine glass very lightly. “No, no, you weren’t guessing at all. You were using a gift, a gift of a bond, yes? A gift of, hm, a blood bond.”

  Well that was--uhh, what? How did-- Somehow I managed to keep the surprise off my face, and I just knew he was looking for it. “You seem to be a very educated person, ahh, Wreth, I take it.”

  Sliding down off her Allosaur to stand beside me, Jazz made a noise deep in her throat, turning to put her back to me. I wasn’t sure if that was more because she was profoundly creeped out by the cyborg Fomorian, or so she could keep her eyes on the rest of these troops. Either way, I didn’t blame her.

  “Yesss yess, I am Wreth, that is me,” he confirmed with a wide smile that showed all metal teeth. “And I know much, but to answer your other question, we are in the same place you left, but not. I am not so naive or foolish as to leave myself vulnerable to attack. My place exists between one universe and three others. Four universes layered atop one another, or side by side. Parallel, you would say. If one place is attacked or damaged, it will be shut out while the rest are secure. If others become compromised, at least one should still remain safe enough to escape through.” He used his metal hand to wag his finger at us. “And before you get any ideas, I can shunt you all out of here with a thought, so if you don’t kill me with one shot, you won’t get another chance.” Even as the man said that, he was giving a wide, metallic smile. “Which, you should know, might be quite a bit harder than you think if you don’t know precisely where to aim, or what to use.”

  Okay, so this guy might not know anything about magic, but he was definitely high up on the technology scale. To the point that he was able to create a single room that was connected to four different parallel universes and link them so he could escape almost any possible attack. And that link was good enough that I was actually still connected to my ghosts back in the first universe. Close enough that I could even still look through their eyes. Now that was impressive.

  “You said something about blood bonding and gifts,” I put in, trying not to think about how bad this could end up going if it actually came down to a fight against this guy. “What did you mean?”

  If anything, the guy smiled even more, giving a creepy giggle at the question. “Ohh, I know. I know more than you think. Go. Go, go, go.” He made a shooing motion with his hands, which I briefly thought was directed at us. But no, he was telling the troops who had escorted us here to leave. “We’ll be fine here, just fine. Hold off the attack as requested. For now, call it a ceasefire.”

  While those guys were all transporting back as ordered, Chas floated closer to whisper in my ear softly. “Ahem, you should know, this isn’t my power.” His head bobbed toward Wreth as he continued pointedly. “He wasn’t here when I used it, so it wouldn’t be affecting him. He’s not really being translated by that.”

  “Of course not!” That was Wreth’s own indignant retort, proving he had excellent hearing as well. “Your liienfe is mere trickery and a poor substitute for true science and the power of the mind!” His finger jabbed against his own head. “I carry translation technology in here. It makes the words you hear sound like what I intend them to be, in your own words.”

  I’d noticed that his words didn’t actually match the movements of his lips, but thought it was just Chas’s power itself. If this guy’s tech was good enough to translate in real time like that right after meeting us, without any other aid besides probably what it had heard us say since we arrived on the ship, then… wow. As if I’d needed more proof that his tech was advanced. Whatever happened, I was really hoping it didn’t come down to a science fair, because he was clearly gonna take home the blue ribbon in that case.

  Shaking off that snarky thought as much as I could, I cleared my throat. “And the blood bond thing?” That was the part I really wanted to know about.

  “Scans, so many scans,” he cheerfully informed us. “I know so much about you thanks to those scans. You’ve been most helpful by coming onto the ship. I know you come from a time far ahead of this. I know you have many extra abilities your species don’t typically have. I know that two of you are of slightly different genetic origins than the third. I know so many things. All of which have been properly cataloged, of course. Can never have enough cataloging. So much information and all of it put in its proper place, stored for later, yes, very important to file those things away.”

  His chin lifted, both the biological and cybernetic eyes regarding us carefully as he continued in an eager, almost giddy voice. “But of course, not even the importance of proper filing and cataloging can match the truly vital data you can provide right now, just by answering one simple question. He raised a hand to point at me. “You. My scans say you have access to a ship whose power defies all explanation, the most powerful vessel I’ve ever detected. I can taste the technology on it. It’s left… impressions on you, in your very genetic structure. It has embedded part of itself into you, and you don’t even know it. Before you leave here, I’m going to take that access away from you. Then I’ll take that rift below us into the future, find that ship, and make it my own.

  “Let’s face it, this ship is nice, but I could really use an upgrade.”

  Joke Tags: This Is Getting Awfully Close To Pirating For Someone Who Doesn’t Want Savvy To Rip A Whole New Hole In Spacetime On Her Way To Join In The Fun

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