Chapter 20 – The 11th day of July, 299 years after Aegon's Conquest

Paradise.

There was no other word for it. At home the media had been full of tales of war and doom, of brutal knights and fierce monsters. Even the darker rumours of demons and invisible men, but so far Elliot had seen none of that. Sure, the city stank like one giant public restroom. He had to get used to life without a phone or the internet again, and they normally walked everywhere given the state of the cramped, winding streets, but these were minor issues. Fix the sanitation and the Wi-Fi and the place would be half liveable. All that was beside the point, however. It was still a paradise.

A few Hershey bars and any woman in this city would open her legs for you.

Soldiers were curious creatures by nature, and it had not taken them long to make this discovery. Officially, fraternisation with the locals was still forbidden, but their lieutenant didn't give a shit and Elliot was quite sure he had been partaking himself on occasion, the 'happily married' bastard. In between long shifts spent guarding the embassies or escorting convoys down from the Ring, they had made a regular routine of sneaking off to the Street of Silk a couple of times a week. Admittedly, there was no lack of ugly whores in the city. Many didn't look like they'd ever seen the inside of a bathtub and were crawling with lice. Some were outright missing teeth or hair, and few seemed well preserved past the age of thirty, but they were no common soldiers here. They were flying men, bringing rare gifts of chocolate, coffee, potatoes and vodka, and there were plenty of choice establishments without these problems. The Blue Pearl and Seastars were good, but most agreed that Chataya's took the cake.

He wasn't sure how old the girl was. Her skin was so unblemished she might still have been in her teens. Her eyes were purple and her hair platinum, unnatural colours on Earth and Jesus Christ it looks good. Back home, Victoria's Secret would have signed her up in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, his situation had been the complete opposite. He'd been borderline incel all through his teen years. He'd swipe on Tinder all day and barely get a match, and then they usually looked like they were related to Jabba the Hutt. Even joining the army hadn't helped all that much. So when the chance came it had taken little incentive for him to volunteer for this job. He barely spoke to his parents anymore, not when they never spoke to each other, and his whore of a sister had gotten pregnant, married, divorced and addicted to ice all in the span of two years.

Fuck them all. But things were finally starting to look up for him. Here he was, on a new world, fucking the girl of his dreams for a block of chocolate and half a bottle of Smirnoff. They'd had a glass each at the start, then she'd taken the bottle and started splashing it all over his body, licking it off each time with a tongue so long and flexible he half-wondered if the slavers had deliberately bred things this way. The same could be said about her tits. That size, without sagging at all…at home he would have sworn they were implants, but there was no such thing on Planetos. A pre-silicone society he laughed, and the tits still look this good.

Paradise.

This girl was new. He had already worked his way through Chataya's whole roster, but the selection had grown larger just recently. A few days earlier a ship from one of the slaver cities had pulled into the docks, its captain claiming to bring a peace offering from the city's magisters. The offering had consisted of a hundred of the 'finest bedslaves' as a gift for the flying men. The 'gift' had been refused of course, and the fat rose lord had ordered the ship to depart, but the captain had left the slaves at the docks anyway. Within days, the whorehouses of King's Landing were overrun with silver-haired beauties.

Paradise he thought again.

In moments like this he even entertained longer-term notions. He wondered what it would be like to have kids with purples eyes, or silver hair. I could take one of these bitches as my wife he thought. Normally he wouldn't have imagined marrying a whore, but when they looked that good…She didn't speak English either of course, but that was just fine with him. He needed her to fuck and cook and look pretty. Speaking was entirely optional. It would be a mercy, really. Better she fucked just one guy than a hundred, and I'd look after her well.

Could he smuggle her back home somehow? Convoys through the Ring were well-searched of course, but the military convoys often got waved through. He was on a six-month rotation, so he had maybe another two months left in this city, way too soon for this state of affairs to end. Come back in a few years and the place will be ruined he thought. He needed to strike while the iron was hot. Could they smuggle one of them back in a Humvee? They were four to a vehicle. He'd need to conspire with his fellow soldiers, but that wouldn't be the hard part. They had all partaken. He knew Alek was in the next room right now, getting his brains fucked out by Alayaya, the owner's daughter. From his testimony, Westeros was even better than the Philippines. Like Asia, but with white girls. They should put that in the tourist brochure.

It was just the two of them tonight. At first they had been more cautious. They usually came in a group of four or five. A couple would choose their women and take them upstairs, while the others waited in the common room, chatting and drinking and playing games with the other whores, weapons secure. They even brought condoms. He didn't want to catch the Planetosi equivalent of AIDS from some whore, even if she was a complete ten out of ten.

Their schedule had changed recently however, so it had ended up being just the two of them tonight, and Chataya knew they were regular customers. His M4 was propped up in the corner, with his clothes and boots, just out of hand's reach. The vodka was giving him a nice buzz, but even tangled up with this bitch, he didn't overdo it.

The girl's tongue was down about his groin now. Feeling so soft and wet he knew he wouldn't last long. He positively shuddered with the climax, it felt so good. The girl kept licking away, swallowing his load like it was honey. Goddamn they are well trained. He was starting to understand why America had such a hard time letting go of slavery. After that, everything went downhill for a hundred and fifty years.

The girl said something in a language he didn't understand, but Elliot did not worry. She left the room briefly, while he just lay there, utterly content, bordering on blissful. She returned a minute later, then reached for the vodka bottle again. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her pouring a fresh splash for each of them.

"Ok" he said, checking his watch, as she handed one to him. "But this is the last one. I gotta get up in eight hours." They chinked glasses and he threw his back in two swallows. He placed the glass down, admiring her figure. Oh yes. She really was built like something out of a porno. This one could be my wife…If only he could smuggle her back…He could get used to…used to waking up to this sight every…every morn…zzzzzz.

And that was the last thing Elliot ever saw.

######

The rocket glinted in the morning sun.

A large crowd had gathered for the occasion, from both worlds. It should have been momentous, but Fifield had other things on his mind. The Electron wasn't overwhelmingly large, only sixty feet high and so thin a man could just about wrap his arms around its body. It was hard to believe an object no heavier than a school bus could make orbit, but they had come a long way from the days of Apollo.

The launchpad was a makeshift affair, hastily erected in just a few weeks once a proper road had been built. The payload weighed no more than he did, a tiny spysat, little more than a high-resolution camera with a transmitter attached. The Electron would get it there however, and within a few days it would map the planet more extensively than months of aerial surveying. Fuel limitations meant that, just shy of a year after the Ring's opening, sixty percent of the surface of Planetos still went unexplored. More than technical issues, political ones had risked delaying the launch. The rocket was American, but who would have access to the data it sent back?

Every nation back on Earth was demanding access, which they were by and large willing to grant, but then there were other interested parties. Should they share a newly made world map with King Stannis and his council? What if the information leaked out? To the slavers in Essos? Or to the ironborn, busily ravaging the Westerlands as of a few days earlier? What if some fresh continent was revealed, a few thousand miles to the west. Would the Lord Reaper be dispatching his fleets there next year?

But all these were old issues. Newer ones kept Fifield distracted that day. At T-minus ten minutes he observed the line of black hummers pulling up on the edge of the field. He watched over as his American counterpart stepped out. Sullivan looked tired. Likely he had been up half the night.

"Did you find them?" Fifield asked. It had been three days since a pair of US embassy guards went missing, failing to turn up for morning rollcall. They had been turning the city upside down since then.

Sullivan nodded grimly. "Oh yeah, we found them."

"How bad?"

"Dumped in the river, but that was just the bodies."

"What do you mean?"

Sullivan looked around for eavesdroppers. "Their heads were missing."

"Ah."

"We found them just an hour ago, on spikes, fives miles west down the Gold Road."

Fifield did not try and hide his disgust. "Lannisters?"

"Probably. We've arrested the madam, Chataya, and all the prostitutes."

"She said they left around midnight?"

"Yeah, and she's lying. Forensics had a look. There's fingerprints everywhere, led them right to another tunnel hidden in one of the bedrooms. Someone used it to sneak in. Took them by surprise, then smuggled out the bodies. We're not sure if they were still alive."

"Where'd it lead?"

"Some stable, a quarter mile away."

Fifield nodded. "What is it with this city and hidden tunnels?"

"I don't know, but thank god the Westerosi don't watch NCIS. If they'd worn gloves, they might have gotten away with it. Someone worked with the madam, and we're gonna find out who, once the prints match."

"Lets hope there's no more in the embassies" Fifield said, thinking back to the previous year. The manses recommended by the Small Council had indeed contained a few secret passageways. On at least three occasions in the first weeks of their occupation they had caught young children hiding in tunnels and crawlspaces, eavesdropping on the embassy staff. They hadn't bothered to complain to the king. The children had scampered off and they had simply blocked up the entrances and left it at that. Varys and his little birds. We have our bugs and they have theirs. He wondered what had happened to the former spymaster. There had been no word of him since the battle months earlier.

"Your people know they shouldn't be wandering off like that, right?" Sullivan asked, glancing at the rocket.

"They have been told."

"Good. If you're gonna fuck things up, do it in new and creative ways. Don't just copy our mistakes."

Fifield looked around. Pockets of highborn Westerosi sat around, servants holding umbrellas to keep off the sun. He spied Margaery Tyrell and her ladies. It was a warm day, perhaps one of the last gasps of summer here. Some of her companions wore green dresses cut so low he could spy belly buttons. "It is hard to prevent fraternisation in a place like this."

"Well, we just got a hell of a wakeup call. No one's gonna be sneaking off for a while."

"Curious they didn't keep them alive" Fifield commented. "They would have made valuable hostages. No one has claimed responsibility yet?"

"It was a warning" Sullivan said confidently, staring over at the crowd of Westerosi. "There's no negotiating with some people. They smile at you by day and sharpen their knives at knight. Lord Tyrell claims to know nothing. Ser Jacelyn has his gold cloaks searching for answers, but who knows if any of them can really be trusted."

The two men stood there, watching as the countdown neared zero. It had been no simple thing trying to explain to the Westerosi exactly what they were trying to do. Flying machines were one thing. An orbital-class rocket quite another. Lord Tyrell had appeared flummoxed but had raised no great objection to its launch. Sullivan had just described it as a 'very high flying machine' and left it at that. Curiosity had still attracted half the court for the occasion. Lords Florent and Celtigar were present, and Ser Stevron of course with a retinue of Freys.

Ground control was a series of tents erected nearby. A loudspeaker counted down from ten. The announcer was from New Zealand, where the rockets normally launched. Something about the kiwi accent almost bothered Fifield. Somehow it made things seem a little less grandiose. After one they observed a great plume of smoke, and half a mile away the rocket started to rise on a visible flame. The sound hit them moments later, a roar that put a jet engine to shame. There were some cries of alarm from the Westerosi. A few of the more sensitive ladies covered their ears and turned away, but it wasn't as bad as Fifield had imagined. He had half hoped the ground would start shaking, but it wasn't exactly a Saturn V they were launching. The rocket shot up rapidly, arcing off to the east.

Most impressive, my lords!" cried a voice, when the sound had faded.

Fifield looked around. Quite unnoticed, a small party had turned up on the edge of the crowd. The man at the front was a curious looking fellow. From his garments he was obviously highborn, dressed all in black, his armour patterned like scales, except for a maroon cape that hung about his shoulders. He had pale skin, with black hair and matching beard. A sword hung from his hip. Most notably, he wore an eyepatch over his left eye, like he'd stepped right off the set of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

He strode over to the ambassadors. Guards turned to observe the newcomer warily. Behind him stood a quartet of men, most obviously not from Westeros. Two of them had skin as black as pitch. One was a squat, hairy Ibbense so thick around the waist he was almost round. The last one was a massive brute, with a noticeably sloped forehead and odd, mottled skin in shades of brown and white. Fifield and Sullivan exchanged a glance.

"Well met, my lords. So you are these vaunted flying men!" the stranger proclaimed. Fifield looked him up and down.

"Well met my lord, is that a Greyjoy Kraken?" he asked politely, spotting the sigil on his chestplate.

"It certainly is that, ser" said the man. "I have the honour to be Euron, of House Greyjoy, captain of the Silence. Who might you be?"

Fifield introduced himself, then took just a moment to place the name. "Ah yes, you are a brother of Lord Balon Greyjoy, of the Iron Islands, are you not? I have met your niece and nephew, Asha and Theon."

"Ah, very good. How fares my dearest niece and nephew?"

"I think they fare well, my lord. We have received both of them in Melbourne, through the Ring."

"Did they make mention of me? Pray tell."

Fifield and Sullivan exchanged a glance. "They said you hadn't been in the islands for some time. That you were on a lengthy voyage. Is that true?"

"Certainly 'tis true, ser. I have been to Asshai and back, and a hundred places in between."

"Trading, my lord?" Sullivan asked innocently.

Euron Greyjoy gave a jolly sort of laugh. "Why, of course! I am but a humble trader, my lords, with iron as my coin." He rubbed his fingers together, cracking a wide smile. Fifield noticed his lips were an odd shade of blue. A small crowd had gathered around now, to watch the exchange. Euron looked around, as if thriving on the attention.

"I was sailing the Smoking Sea when I first caught word of this miraculous Ring" he proclaimed, glancing to the north, where the arch of that apparition was just visible, poking over the nearby hills. "At first I did not believe word of such. The sailors who spoke of it? I had all their lying tongues removed. But again and again we heard this tale, along with great songs of flying machines and war and woe. Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me, and here we are, witness to this miracle at last!" He gave another jolly laugh, spreading his arms wide as if embracing them all.

The ambassadors exchanged another glance. Fifield looked over the men standing behind their captain.

"Is this your crew?" he asked. "They do not appear to be from Westeros."

"Why, of course not!" Euron. "The soft green lands do not breed good sailors. I seek mine crew from all points of the compass, from north and south, east and west. Only the hardiest of men can endure the seas on which I sail."

"Is he from Sothoryos? Fifield asked, curiously. They had spent months studying and cataloguing the different ethnic groups here on Planetos, from Ibbenese to Naathi to YiTish. More variety could be found in Braavos than King's Landing, but they had scarce encountered any Sothoryi.

"Why that he is. A more sturdy breed of men you will not find, ambassador. Simple of mind, yes, but strong of body. Most fierce when aroused. I have seen this one break a man's spine with his bare hands" Euron promised, looking down on his charges fondly, with all the enthusiasm of a used car salesman.

"I don't believe we have met anyone from Sothoryos yet" Fifield said, turning to the big man curiously. He did not reply, staring back at him with eyes that looked vaguely hostile, if not envious…hungry, almost.

"They do not speak" Euron said, with a wave of his hand.

"I see."

"But truly, I have sailed fair, from halfway around the world. I am so close to my destination, yet now I hear of obstacles that may lie in my path. Pray tell, may I ask, what is needed to be done to enter this great Ring, and witness the hidden city of Melbourne beyond, for myself?"

"Well, it may very well be possible my lord" said Fifield, trying to hide his doubts. "You would need permission from your liege lord, who can in turn seek the approval of the King."

"My brother? He is a thousand leagues away" Euron said. "And has no great love of me, I am afraid."

"Then you would need to ask either the King or the Lord Hand, yourself."

"The fat flower lord?" Euron laughed. "A weakling, with a flower for a manhood. He is the guardian of the Ring?"

Another exchanged glance. "Well, that is the process we have adopted, my lord. We recognise King Stannis and his Hand as ruler of these lands. If you wish to pass through them to the Ring, they must vouch for you as a good and loyal subject, or else an honoured guest of the Iron Throne."

"So I must bow before the fat flower, and proclaim myself a loyal subject?" Euron asked, as if bewildered. "You ask a painful thing of me, bowing to a man so low, but I am nothing if not eager to please. If I did this thing, then I would be granted entry?"

"Well then the next step would be to come to the embassy, where we will consider issuing you with a passport and visa documents" Fifield explained.

"Consider? And what things would fall under the consideration of the flying men?" Euron asked, now sounding genuinely curious.

"Well, we would be happy to deal with anyone honourable and fair, who seeks to learn new things, and does not engage in the most savage practices. For instance, we would not grant entry to a slaver, not unless they were willing to free all their slaves" Sullivan answered.

Euron laughed again. "A slaver? I have heard this, that you do not trade with slavers. The Masters of the Free Cities are in uproar, all the way from here to Qarth. They curse your name and spew their bile, but I laugh at their foolishness."

"So you are not a slaver my lord?" Fifield asked.

Euron laughed again. "Of course not, my lords! Euron Greyjoy has no use of slaves. Why, I free the slaves! Hundreds I have freed in years of sailing. All men who sail under my banner do so willingly. I give them that choice the moment they set foot upon my deck. Those that do not wish of it, I free." He cracked a broad smile, revealing a golden tooth. "I free them and give them over to the Drowned God. For you will see, ambassadors, Euron Greyjoy is nothing if not a godly man."

With that, the Ironborn captain walked off, still laughing. His crew followed in his wake, silent as shadows. The crowd watched them go, whispering among themselves.

"That one's going to be trouble" Sullivan opined.

Fifield grunted his agreement, watching Euron Greyjoy's retreating back.