ΔV Pt. 10

"No," DuPont snapped. "The outward fleet beamed us a message through the com-bounce. The Chinese and the Indian fleets and the Russian fleets are gone -- it's like every single one started shooting at each other at the same time. And recently...all of you have been keeping up to date on Dr. Rachna and her paranatural experiences?" He managed to speak the words with enough force and conviction that no one felt any qualms about admitting that they had -- that they had read the reports that Vidya had been talking to, seeing, the ghost of her dead husband. That her husband's ghost was a provable, measurable fact.

"Dr. Rachna says that yesterday, he was...dragged away. Within twenty four hours, every fleet in Stark orbit opened fire on one another, every ground based communication system has gone silent, the Outward fleets are in complete confusion, and I cannot for a second believe that the two are not related,' DuPont said. "We need to open communications with the Russians. Now."

The officers nodded.

"But..." DuPont sighed. "In case it was a first attack, in case the Russians did pull the trigger back home...I need us all to be ready." He transfixed the missile commander. "I want you to prep an orbit for hard burn missiles -- they won't need to try a second pass. Just go at them. They're down a drone carrier, it should even the odds." He looked at their lasarm officer. "Make sure the turrets are prepped and the dead man switches are on a hair trigger. And..." He looked at Helen, his mouth pursing. "Lord Winsom. I need you to throw your weight around down on Arcadia. We may need their help..."

Helen gulped, but nodded. "Yes, sir."

"And Mr. Sibusiso," Captain DuPont added, a note of finality in his voice. "Get to work on logistic operations based in Arcadia. I need to know what we have, what we can make, and what we have to scrape for. I want to know how to best plot orbits from here to Ganymede. And..." He paused. "I want to know what our options are."

"Sir," their helm officer said, his voice quiet. "What do you think happened on Earth?"

"I don't know," DuPont said. Then, shaking his head. "You have your orders. Dismissed -- Mr. Sibusiso, stay, I have a question for you."

Lucas froze, midway between standing and sitting. Helen nodded to him and shot him a look before she hastened off. As she fled, and the rest of the officers bustled out to do as they would, Lucas finished standing, feeling like a total moron for just standing there. DuPont stepped over, his voice soft. "You've spoken with that...with Mr. Librarian, right?"

"Just Librarian, I think, sir," Lucas said, his voice hesitant. "He's a repository of their knowledge, their lore. Psychic. You know, like in all the old movies." He grinned, nervously. "It's really, it's, uh, it's a trip. As they say." He coughed. "But yes, we've asked him quite a few questions -- uh, come to think of it, I should have asked him if it was okay for Lord Winsom to leave in such a hurry. The elves, um..." He trailed off at DuPont's grim expression. "What is it, sir?"

"I...damn it, normally, I wouldn't even bring this up, Lucas," DuPont said, pinching the bridge of his nose, his dusky brown features growing darker -- in mood, if not in complexion. "But we're orbiting a world with dungeons and fucking dragons, where magic is real, where you can cast magic. So, I can't leave anything to chance, not when this is on the line." He let his hand drop and transfixed Lucas with a fierce expression. "Right before the MAD signal was launched -- literally, before the laser light had time to travel from the Sun-Stark L1 point to the buoy to us -- I woke up. I did the math on the travel time to check."

"Did you have a dream?" Lucas asked.

"...a feeling..." DuPont said. "It was there and it passed in an instant: An urge to go to the bridge and activate a program we have. Lucas, the Enterprise has wargame routines on her systems. They're made to fight, well, wargames. One of them is a basic MAD system -- to fire the nukes at...at targets down there." He sighed. "The Enterprise has the programs for the projected enemy MAD strike targets. And I swear, for a good solid minute, I was laying in bed, convinced I should run the enemy MAD target list into our firing computer."

Lucas took a moment to think through what that might mean.

The image crystallized -- but he didn't want to see it.

The cities of the elves, situated so near what was San Francisco, turning into burning forests. The forests, shattering into splinters and blown into dust by a shock wave as city killing megatonnage detonated overhead. Blazing like stars.

Lucas worked his jaw. "C-Captain...I have an idea."

The shuttle that took them down was, by now, used to this transfer orbit. The elves had even beaten out a runway, and situated near the lake that they had chosen for the landing site, they had a fuel producer thrumming away, using a portable nuclear power plant to turn the local water into hydrogen and oxygen for the liquid fuel of the shuttle, when it wasn't using the ramjet, while another, larger system, purified and compressed water for shipment up for the Enterprise's tanks. Marines were busy working taking the purifier apart, piece by piece, for shipment back to the Enterprise.

After all.

They had magic now.

When Captain DuPont stepped out, it was with a look of growing wonder. Lucas realized that he hadn't seen the ground for himself before. He took a moment standing beside DuPont, watching as the worry and graveness that had creased DuPont's face clear away, like clouds parting before the sun. Slowly, DuPont whispered. "We should have called it Eden..."

"Eden was ours, before Adam and Eve ruined it," Lucas said, his voice grim. "Arcadia isn't ours. Right?"

DuPont snorted. "Tell it to the Russians."

Librarian, with several elven guards following behind him, strode from Lord Winsom's manor to the runway. His long, purple fingers were laced together and his palms pressed together as he advanced. "Greetings Lucas," he said, his voice reserved -- but Lucas felt a strange, wooden feeling in the air. It reminded him of the feeling of having a serious head cold. His ears felt stuffed. His head felt muzzy. And he didn't feel a single hint of anything from Librarian. His brow furrowed as he considered that, while Captain DuPont held out his hand to Librarian.

"Greetings, Mr. Librarian," he said. "I am Captain DuPont, of the Enterprise."

Librarian took his hand.

"I need to speak to Isabella," DuPont said.

Isabella furrowed her brow after having heard what DuPont and Lucas had said, cocking her head slowly to the side. Then she chewed her lower lip. "I was active during the troubles..." She said. "I suppose I would recognize him anywhere he was. But...it's so unlikely. The Dark Lord was banished. If he was returned, he would return here, and you wouldn't not notice. The Dark Lord's return would be obvious. Terrifying. The dead would walk the surface of Arcadia like a plague -- tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of tormented souls, given form and purpose by his dark powers." She shuddered slightly.

"Can you check?" DuPont asked.

Isabella's palm spread. She focused.

Then she leaped to her feet, screamed, and bolted from the room.

"Well..." DuPont said, stiffly, after a few moments of silence.

Lucas placed his palms over his face breathing slowly out through his fingers and he slid his fingers down and then let them drop. "The legend say that they banished the Dark Lord to a world without light..." He said, slowly. "Light. And in one of the lessons, Isabella described mana, the fundamental power of magic as...light."

DuPont looked at him.

"They banished the Dark Lord to Stark," Lucas whispered. "And we blew open a portal to Arcadia -- and we let the magic back to him. Captain. The Dark Lord..." His eyes widened. And in his minds eyes, he saw the shambling undead that Isabella had described -- the armies of rotting corpses, of gleaming skeletons, marching through his home, through the forest and rolling hills of Kentucky. The sticky humidity causing them to be matted, crawling swarms of flies. They were marching towards his home. He looked at DuPont.

"What the fuck do we do?"

DuPont breathed slowly out. "Well...we call Captain Markova."

***

Annie stepped from her bed, aching with the pleasure of sex. It had been fierce. Brutal, even. Dale, his face gleaming with sweat, his pale skin aglow with his passions, had slammed into her, pinning her to the bed and rumpling the sheets. His balls had left her ass aching. Nearly bruised. She walked slowly to the edge of the balcony -- they had chosen an apartment in San Francisco. The Enclave had been too open, too easily targeted by munitions from the still extant United States airforce. Several naval groups had managed to evade the submersibles that had been raised from first and second World War -- an aircraft carrier, a cruiser, a frigate. The submarines were powered by dark magic, but there was a limit to what dark magic could do with technology that was almost two centuries old.

Annie shook her head.

She had to worry about munitions being dropped onto her house and her family now.

Annie shook her head. Cum slowly slid down her thighs and she wanted to cry.

There was a razor sharp, knife edge rasping along her soul. The reports.

They had secured industry and power and food production centers on every continent. People were cowed -- terrified by the armies of the undead. But resistance simmered -- roared, in some places. Military units had managed to escape into the wilderness in numbers that Dale had predicted, but she had been shocked to the core.

Dale placed his palm on her shoulder. Squeezed her. He smiled, slightly as she looked at him. "Okay, Annie?"

"I...no..." Annie whispered. "T-The space fleets. I didn't see that coming..."

"I have their souls instantiated," Dale said, his voice soft. He cupped her cheek. "Once we secure the outer system, I can raise them and show them the better world we're making." He looked into her eyes. "I am keeping a count. Every person that dies, our forces tell me..." He reached down, finding his discarded pants. He pulled his phone clear and smirked, wryly. "The spell is chained to this..." He showed her a number -- ticking up.

She looked at the number and shivered as she saw how many digits there were.

Dale, seeing her expression, put his phone on the table, face down.

"I hate it," she whispered. "I hate what we had before, but I hate this too."

"I do too," Dale whispered. Then, quietly. "Tomorrow, we're going to meet up with the sentient ghosts and begin setting up the automation. Skeletons tilling the fields, makers for everyone..." He chuckled, quietly.

"Right," Annie frowned. "The sentient ghosts...those are the ones with enough, uh, intelligence and focus and willpower and personality to be more sentient than the others. Right?" As Dale nodded, Annie smirked. "It'll be kinda neat meeting some old sentient ghosts..."

Dale looked grim. "Not all of them."

In the hard light of day, Annie stood, dressed in her jeans and T-shirt, and shouted: "You have gotta be fucking kidding me!"

Sitting at the far end of the table, looking entirely unperturbed, was the spectral form of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. He was tapping a real cigarette against the table and looked at Annie with the cold, calm eyes of a trained murderer. Annie looked at Dale. Dale was seated at the table, his fingers rubbing his temple. Annie looked back at one of the architects of the fucking Holocaust. Then she looked back at Dale. Then back to Heydrich again.

"Fraulein," he said, casually.