It lives! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Legion of Falling Stars is back once more, after a very long period of time during which I, quite literally, lost the plot. I found it while leafing through a few old notebooks several weeks ago, and then academic considerations struck me full in the face. Hooray for university; how would I occupy my time otherwise? /dark sarcasm. Well, enjoy this double foreboding, and feel free to say rude or pleasant things about my writing as strikes your fancy.
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Aisha awoke. The first thing she noticed was pain: she analysed it as non-lifethreatening and therefore beneath her contempt. The second, that she was once more in the temporary offices of Starwind and Hawking Inc., the mostly-legitimate JoAT business of her temporary allies - and finally, the third, that the man who had saved her life sat scowling at the wall over her low futon bed, once again idly toying with the torc that encircled his neck.
'Who are you?'
'I'm the man who saved your life; quiet, please, I'm thinking.'
Mildly taken aback by such a cavalier dismissal, she fell - quite uncharacteristically - silent. Covertly, ears twitching, she studied the brooding man. He looked unremarkable, looked like any other member of his upjumped-monkey race, apart from his eyes. They were, she noted with some approval, cat's eyes - eyes worthy of the large felines of the Terran homeworld or even of a Ctarl-Ctarl - and even bore a fiting hint of an expression of barely-contained anger. He was muttering to himself, about things she in all her years of experience had never heard: 'Respawn points', 'manasink fields', and 'kinetic compressors', and lists of unfamiliar terms which might well have been names...
'...don't have RESPAWN technology, so it has to be Boardie, or Drax, or Kirith. And whoever it was had to bring it here, which rules out the Kirith since they can't Worldcrawl between universes. And I'm the only Drax here, according to Central, which would suggest that it has to be a Boardie. Unless... oh, no...'
It was intolerable! He was ignoring her, her, Aisha ClanClan, as if she were someone ordinary! Clearly, she had to say something incisive and cutting at once.
'Saved me?' damn!...
'Yerss, if you remember, you only had half a lung left when we first met? As I recall, you were really quite close to continuing your existence as a fireside fur rug in the Castello Elf-boy. Now, Atana, if you don't mind, I'm trying to work out who it is that's currently in need of a righteous kicking. I'm sure Suzuka will fill you in on the extraneous details, such as who I am and what I'm doing in your universe, but it would help me immesurably if you could see your way clear to telling me what in the name of all you find holy you were doing attacking that Scots git in the first place.'
Aisha blinked, several times, in abject bewilderment, and decided to fall back to the more simple issues.
'Did you just call me a Tana? What is that, some kind of insult?'
Ah, it was good to fall back to the more simple issues when events were running away from you. She puffed out her fur slightly, looking - had she known it - like an angry housecat, only to subside again at a mild rejoinder from the black-clad figure.
'Atana. Means 'warrior', or more rightly 'warrioress', in a language more copyrighted than you can possibly imagine. It was intended as a compliment, so don't get bitter.'
He sighed.
'Alright. The point is that the little pointy-eared gimboid that shot you took a number seven caster shell to the chest courtesy of everyone's favourite shoot-first-ask-questions-never Outlaw not more than an hour ago, and was seen some twenty minutes later strolling down to the cornershop for a packet of fags and a Daily Mail.'
'Wha...?'
'Fine, I lied about the cornershop. But an undeniably dead Eya baron is now undeniably alive once more, which can only happen through some decidedly advanced technology which - I can fully assure you - is unavailable in any part of this universe. Hence, someone must have brought it here. And since Central always knows every extrauniversal movement that takes place, they know who this person is. And they didn't bother to tell me. Now, I have my suspicions. But it might help somewhat if you told me why you're tied up in this, so we can find out what this Lanreau and his shadowy ally are after. Yes?'
Aisha considered the situation with her own special brand of results-achieving directness and animal cunning - not that she was an animal, of course, and nobody had better say otherwise! - and weighed up the two conflicting currents of thought. On the one hand, her superiors had entrusted her with this mission, a top secret mission, a mission that could well propel her back into their good graces and (considerably more importantly) into the position held and lost of Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. As such, she had a duty to reveal it to nobody. On the other hand, of course, her opponent had turned out to be better-equipped than she had expected, and perhaps some help would - she conceded, reluctantly - be a useful thing.
The answer came to her suddenly, brilliant in its simple deviousness. Yes... a compelling thought, and one that was worthy of a towering intellect such as her own! She put it into practice at once.
'I'll tell you what I know, since you did sorta help me out back there...'
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Aisha awoke. The first thing she noticed was pain: she analysed it as non-lifethreatening and therefore beneath her contempt. The second, that she was once more in the temporary offices of Starwind and Hawking Inc., the mostly-legitimate JoAT business of her temporary allies - and finally, the third, that the man who had saved her life sat scowling at the wall over her low futon bed, once again idly toying with the torc that encircled his neck.
'Who are you?'
'I'm the man who saved your life; quiet, please, I'm thinking.'
Mildly taken aback by such a cavalier dismissal, she fell - quite uncharacteristically - silent. Covertly, ears twitching, she studied the brooding man. He looked unremarkable, looked like any other member of his upjumped-monkey race, apart from his eyes. They were, she noted with some approval, cat's eyes - eyes worthy of the large felines of the Terran homeworld or even of a Ctarl-Ctarl - and even bore a fiting hint of an expression of barely-contained anger. He was muttering to himself, about things she in all her years of experience had never heard: 'Respawn points', 'manasink fields', and 'kinetic compressors', and lists of unfamiliar terms which might well have been names...
'...don't have RESPAWN technology, so it has to be Boardie, or Drax, or Kirith. And whoever it was had to bring it here, which rules out the Kirith since they can't Worldcrawl between universes. And I'm the only Drax here, according to Central, which would suggest that it has to be a Boardie. Unless... oh, no...'
It was intolerable! He was ignoring her, her, Aisha ClanClan, as if she were someone ordinary! Clearly, she had to say something incisive and cutting at once.
'Saved me?' damn!...
'Yerss, if you remember, you only had half a lung left when we first met? As I recall, you were really quite close to continuing your existence as a fireside fur rug in the Castello Elf-boy. Now, Atana, if you don't mind, I'm trying to work out who it is that's currently in need of a righteous kicking. I'm sure Suzuka will fill you in on the extraneous details, such as who I am and what I'm doing in your universe, but it would help me immesurably if you could see your way clear to telling me what in the name of all you find holy you were doing attacking that Scots git in the first place.'
Aisha blinked, several times, in abject bewilderment, and decided to fall back to the more simple issues.
'Did you just call me a Tana? What is that, some kind of insult?'
Ah, it was good to fall back to the more simple issues when events were running away from you. She puffed out her fur slightly, looking - had she known it - like an angry housecat, only to subside again at a mild rejoinder from the black-clad figure.
'Atana. Means 'warrior', or more rightly 'warrioress', in a language more copyrighted than you can possibly imagine. It was intended as a compliment, so don't get bitter.'
He sighed.
'Alright. The point is that the little pointy-eared gimboid that shot you took a number seven caster shell to the chest courtesy of everyone's favourite shoot-first-ask-questions-never Outlaw not more than an hour ago, and was seen some twenty minutes later strolling down to the cornershop for a packet of fags and a Daily Mail.'
'Wha...?'
'Fine, I lied about the cornershop. But an undeniably dead Eya baron is now undeniably alive once more, which can only happen through some decidedly advanced technology which - I can fully assure you - is unavailable in any part of this universe. Hence, someone must have brought it here. And since Central always knows every extrauniversal movement that takes place, they know who this person is. And they didn't bother to tell me. Now, I have my suspicions. But it might help somewhat if you told me why you're tied up in this, so we can find out what this Lanreau and his shadowy ally are after. Yes?'
Aisha considered the situation with her own special brand of results-achieving directness and animal cunning - not that she was an animal, of course, and nobody had better say otherwise! - and weighed up the two conflicting currents of thought. On the one hand, her superiors had entrusted her with this mission, a top secret mission, a mission that could well propel her back into their good graces and (considerably more importantly) into the position held and lost of Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. As such, she had a duty to reveal it to nobody. On the other hand, of course, her opponent had turned out to be better-equipped than she had expected, and perhaps some help would - she conceded, reluctantly - be a useful thing.
The answer came to her suddenly, brilliant in its simple deviousness. Yes... a compelling thought, and one that was worthy of a towering intellect such as her own! She put it into practice at once.
'I'll tell you what I know, since you did sorta help me out back there...'