"The Avatar is disabled!"
"Load thermobarics! FIRE EVERYTHING!"
Reality folded with a soft wail, and the air filled with lines of blinding light. The ice platform shook, and only Brahmos stood his ground as something forced its way into existence. A gigantic latticework of energy unfolded, beams locking into place as traceries of matter unfolded around them. The sound was tremendous, the sea subliming into vapour as it was shot through with unfathomable power. Then, with a crunch, the gate solidified. It was a ceremonial paifang, its exposed wooden surface covered with impossibly intricate carvings. And in its center... an impossibility. A whirling matrix of points and corners, a shape so multidimensional that to even glance at it was incredibly painful. As the shells and rockets from the Child of Thunder rained down, the gate swept forwards, folded itself around the airship like a crumpling piece of paper, and vanished with a thunderclap, taking the entire ship and the small ice sheet with it. A brief instant later, the thermobaric shells detonated, filling the space where the paifang had been with heat and pressure.
"Captain! We lost them!"
"Get signals to Si Wong and the Lagoon! Tell them to get on full aler-"
There was a screech of agony from the Attuned bay, a thickly insulated sphere buried in the center of the bridge. The Captain scrambled to her feet, and was forcing the thick hatch open before she was truly conscious of what she was doing. To her surprise, it opened from the inside, at the exact moment that the screaming stopped. A flushed, sweating face protruded from the dimness of the bay, the Attuned bender's face taut with pain and mental strain. He took several juddering breaths, and then spoke.
"They- they broke something. The chi. It was all w-wrong."
He collapsed, senseless, at the Captain's feet.
A wave of blank whiteness swept down the hull of the airship towards Ed and Al, consuming all in its path. Instinctively, Al clapped his hands together, trying to throw up a sphere of metal to protect them from the conflagration. Then the wave front hit them and everything went strange. The light curled in on itself, blackening and writhing. It was as if it had hit a vertical wall, billowing upwards and outwards but never going through or around the two brothers. The air filled with static discharge, but Al wasn't conscious of controlling any energy. He tried to speak, but there was no sound. And then the world folded away, superimposing itself on the surface of an impossibly twisted and kinked torus of three-dimensional space. The bent ring slammed towards them, bathing everything in un-light, and then with a great crash the wreck of the Wind Chariot hit the ground. Al felt himself falling, and then everything went beige and blessedly silent.
Brahmos strode out of the wreckage, and into the peculiar yellow-green radiance he had seen so many times before. Picking his way over the still-cooling chunks of metal that had been the airship, he addressed a hulking figure with gigantic fangs and glowing red-brown eyes concealed behind a slitted metal visor.
"You're in charge? What in the hell just happened?"
It nodded, bringing a pumpkin-sized hand with clawed fingernails up into a crisp salute. Its voice was a surprisingly gentle hiss.
"I am, sir. We ran into some sort of interference in the transfer. We lost the two- 'alchemists', was it? They didn't make it across. The strongest rebound effect I've ever seen."
"Did they transit back?"
It nodded again.
"They did. The process ended coherently, though we're not entirely sure where."
Behind them, Sokka shrieked a curse, his voice cracking.
"Would someone explain to me WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?"
Brahmos growled under his breath, and the hulking monstrosity in the visor gave a shrug and a sympathetic nod. It sighed.
"Newcomers. Prajna, they're all the same."
Brahmos stalked back into the wreckage, finding Sokka, Katara, Zuko, and an apparently unconscious Aang clustered in the ruins of the bridge. Zuko spoke first, blinking against the strange radiance that filled the air.
"Commander. What did you just do?"
Brahmos gave a curt bow.
"Fire Lord Zuko, I would like to welcome you and your companions to the Spirit World."
Iroh sat at the circular table, Bumi beside him on his right.
"So, my friends, we're agreed?"
The figure directly opposite him nodded, the pale light of the glowing moss in the ceiling making the thick crystal lenses that covered its eyes opaque. It sat with steepled fingers, its claws unfurled.
"Indeed, General Iroh. As of now, we are moving the Order of the White Lotus onto a full combat setting. If we can catch the Ember Group unawares..."
Bumi rose to his feet, his face unusually serious.
"With your permission, Zhujue, I would like to return to the mortal realm. The Omashu Project must continue."
The Zhujue nodded, his glowing eyes briefly visible through his goggles.
"Of course. We will arrange a paifang immediately."
Iroh got to his feet as well.
"I'm going to see my nephew. Zhujue, sirs, if you'll excuse me."
The doors to the war room slammed shut behind him, and he smiled sadly. In a way, he'd missed this. A war was always... he hesitated to say nice. Not nice. Not after what had happened to Lu Ten. A war was... refreshing. It changed things. Gave one purpose. A goal to work towards.
"Now!"
With a cough of explosives, the thick wooden gate blew inwards, fragmenting into a storm of smoke and wood chips. Hao leapt into the space, jinking past the crouched demolitions man, who had already raised his bow to cover him. The space beyond was stark and well-lit; a short, stone-walled corridor, with two doors leading off to the left and one to the right. Hao paused for a moment, then waved the group forwards.
"Clear!"
Sergeant Quatuq came in next, the magnesium lamp on his crossbow filling the corridor with harsh light. Cursing softly, he shuttered the lamp, and gestured Hao and the first fire team towards the closest door on the left. They assembled around the hatch, and at another wave from Hao, moved in. He kicked the flimsy door down, his crossbow up and ready, his finger tight on the trigger. They came into a compact kitchen, with a small woodstove and a compact table. And a fireball.
Hao ducked around it as the old man standing in the center of the room threw himself to one side, letting loose another sphere of flame that hissed past Hao's head. Hao fired his crossbow, and the explosive bolt snapped out, exploding with a soft thud on the rock wall behind the Firebender. His squadmates opened up as well, their bolts deflected by the sheet of fire the old man threw up as he lunged forwards, one bony hand going for Hao's weapon. He dropped, cocking the handle, then fired another bolt into the man's midsection. There was another dull explosion, and he staggered. The shot had grazed his robes, redirecting most of its shaped charge past him. He sent out another wave of fire, catching Hao and the man next to him full-on. The third man in the squad gave a sharp yell, leaping forwards and hitting the Firebender in the center of the forehad with the blunt end of his weapon's firing groove. He staggered back, dazed, and the soldier fired a second shot. It hit the man in the center of the forehead, and there was a brief moment of complete stillness before the shaped charge exploded, splattering what was left of his head all over the back wall of the room.
He got to his feet, wincing from the pain of the flash-burns that covered his face. Quatuq came in, his weapon up, quickly glancing over the carnage.
"Casualties?"
The squad sounded off, none of them reporting anything more than minor burns.
"Good. And you got the Firebender, too. Excellent. We've cleared the rest of the space; if there is a Tulpa cradle here, it's- wait a minute."
Hao followed his gaze, taking in the low table built into one wall of the room. The sergeant swore again.
"That table's set for two. There's another Bender here."
There was a shout from outside.
"Sir! You're going to want to see this."
The soldier was standing just inside the room at the far end of the hall. The space was in complete darkness, the light from the bright lamps in the hall only going a short ways into the dusty blackness. Wordlessly, the soldier removed the lamp from her crossbow, opened its aperture fully wide, and plunked it down on the smooth stone floor. She clicked the sparker, and the lamp hissed to life.
"Oh spirits."
The gargantuan space that revealed itself to them was filled with statues. Hundreds, maybe thousands of statues.
"Sergeant, is this-?"
Qualuq nodded slowly.
"No, this isn't just a Tulpa cradle. It's a Hub. A very large Hub."
At least one layer of spacetime over, a small tree rustled in a nonexistent wind, its thin bunched bristles contorting and folding. They were peculiarly coloured, almost hexagonal in cross-section; each side was a different colour. As the tree rustled, the needles twisted and folded, revealing a vivid, regular pattern of colour variances. The hulking figure ministering to the tree and several others like it noticed the shift, and signalled another hulking figure.
"Zhongwei, we've got an incoming signal from Hub Three. Emergency priority. I'm routing to the main screen now."
In the middle of the control center that was also a bonsai garden stood a stark, minimalist paifang, its wooden surface free of indentation or decoration. The creature tending the tree used a single claw to draw a line through the smooth gravel surrounding the plant. A point in the center of the gate flickered into brilliance, then displayed a distorted close-up of a young human male's panicked face.
"Tulpa Control! This is Hub Three Secondary requesting an immediate security activation! An Ember Group fireteam just killed the Primary, and they've broken into the Hub!"
The Zhongwei seated himself on a low pedestal overlooking another gravel rock garden, the stones arranged in whorls and loops. With a thin bamboo cane, he traced a series of jagged arcs through a specific quadrant of the surface. Several nearby bonsai pines quivered and twisted, showing new patterns.
"We've got a team on it. Whenever you're ready-"
Suddenly, a figure stood at the Zhongwei's side. It handed him a bark scroll. The Zhongwei glanced over it, glowing red eyes widening behind his thick visor.
"Prajna help us all."
When he spoke to the figure on the screen, he pitched his voice up so all in the garden could hear.
"I have just received a message directly from the council of the Zhujue. As of this moment we are returned to a total war footing against the Ember Group. Prepare for immediate maximum Tulpa mobilisation from Hub Three and all the associated Cradles."
A low murmur of astonishment rippled across the control center as the Zhongwei took his bamboo cane and drew a vicious slashing cut across the rock garden. At that instant, all of the bonsai trees flickered red, then back to a dull yellow-green. The murmur turned from one of shock to one of frenetic activity.
"Hub Three, stand ready for a full-scale activation. The Ember Group won't know what hit them. The Lotus blooms."
The man in the image nodded, utter shock plastered across his features.
"The Lotus blooms."
Hao gulped, pulling his crossbow closer to his chest and squinting against the harsh actinic light of the magnesium lamp. Nothing moved in the cavernous empty space before him. The Hub was filled with rank upon rank of statues, their forms all vaguely humanoid. The smallest were about as tall as two Komodo-Rhinos placed end-to end, while the largest, only barely visible in the gloom, would have given airships a run for their money. The ones nearest were vaguely birdlike, wooden skeletons with thick, many-jointed wings and blunt, four-eyed heads. Though they stood in silent repose, there was something eerily alive about them. Theirs was the stillness of a predatory animal, a creature about to pounce.
"Damn, sergeant. I mean wow. That is a lot of Tulpas right there."
The NCO nodded.
"We're going to need benders in SP and AP harnesses, maybe a few tanks, at least a full demolitions division. I'd like to take a few minutes to see if the second bender's in any state to fight, and then we pull out."
Hao edged closer to the low barrier surrounding the small platform they stood on, and looked down into the darkness. Each statue was also part of a massive pillar rising from the depths; each dormant Tulpa was supported by the one below it. How far down the pillars went, he couldn't tell.
"You're not worrying about one waking up?"
"Don't be silly. The most threatening thing here is the bender, wherever he is. The Lotus haven't had the capacity to awaken Tulpa for nigh-on fifty years."
Hao felt a faint breeze rising from below. Blinking against the dust that had been stirred up, he squinted downwards. There was a light in the darkness. A pulsing blue-whiteness. And it was growing larger- no, closer. Something was rising towards the platform.
"The defensive standby unit has been awoken, Zhongwei. Commencing revival for the rest... now."
Hao backpedalled from the edge.
"There's something coming up!"
"What-?"
With a whoosh of air, a great wooden creature rose up before them. It was both avian and human at the same time; its arms were flattened and elongated, their wide fingers more like control flaps than anything else. The body was flexible, ribbed with flexible leather and sinew joints. Its skin was alive with thin lines of faint blue light, all leading to the faintly vibrating reflective metal sphere embedded in its chest. And its face... A smooth wooden mask, broken only by nearly invisible seams and four glowing blue eyes, completely alien in their malign aliveness. Hao gasped.
"It's- it's-"
The sergeant finished the sentence for him, bringing his crossbow up and firing an explosive bolt, which tore itself to pieces against the hovering construct/creature's hull.
"Tulpa."
The Tulpa's head split open like a flower, separating into two vertical jaws and two horizontal ones, the eyes swinging back and away on flexible linkages. The inside of the creature's mouth was a dark tunnel, broken only by the thin fins and protuberances that sprouted from the insides of its four jaws. With a high-pitched whistling scream, two huge bellows in the creature's back folded outwards, and Hao felt his ears pop. He was rooted to the spot. Knowing what would happen next only made things worse. He had scoffed, once. There's no way you can do that with air. It has to be an exaggeration.
The whistling of the bellows grew to a fever pitch, then stopped. With a snap, the jaws and membranous bellows snapped shut, much faster than Hao's eyes could follow. In the next instant, all the air was sucked out of the space around him. Before his body could react to the shock of explosive decompression, the air collapsed inwards, creating a zone of incredible pressure and heat. The air grew incandescent as the space within the 'bubble' of high-pressure air became hotter than the surface of the sun for about a picosecond. When the air returned to normal, all that remained of Hao, the Sergeant, and the passage to the outside world was a collapsed wall of scree, and a sooty stain on what remained of the platform.
Surveying the scene for a brief instant, the Tulpa turned upwards with a flick of its wings, bellowed in another screaming breath, and blew the roof of the cavern off with a single withering schockwave of air. Sunlight flooded the space, only to be joined by a growing haze of blue-green as the other constructs in the Hub began to wake up.
It was only by chance that one of the projector operators on board the Ember Group reconnaissance airship Farsight had his projector loaded and pressurized. Nobody had expected they'd need to use the blasting shells in the projectors to destroy the supposed Tulpa cradle; he'd insisted it was better to be prepared. Thus, when a pale grey-brown winged shape rose in front of his projector's turret, it was only a second's work for him to pull the trigger. The projector coughed, spitting out a cloud of steam and an explosive shell which exploded obliquely on the construct's curved flank. Behind the operator, the loader was sitting transfixed in her bucket seat, the remains of the bowl of broth she'd been enjoying spilling, unfelt, onto her lap.
"Sound the alarm! Load another shell!"
Inside the belly of the Tulpa, the bender whose call sign was Hub Three Secondary winced as the creature/machine around him protested, several of the control elements flashing yellow and red. Had the Tulpa been awake for longer, its natural web of recirculating air shields could have deflected the shot entirely, but as it was it was still warming up from what was effectively a cold start. The bender felt a surge of power shoot through him as the benders in the Spirit World activated more and more of the Tulpa fleet. Deep below him, in the bowels of Hub Three, things were stirring to life which had not seen the light of day for more than five decades. A voice sounded in his head.
"Angle left. We will dispose of the airship."
"Understood."
Grasping the smooth wooden hand controls, he banked the Tulpa farther down into the cavern, out of the line of fire of the airship's guns. He could feel rather than hear the whistle of its shipboard alarms, and the explosion of shells around the rim of the cave showed as faint splotches of lights on the screens that lined the piloting chamber. He felt the Tulpa shift beneath him as a massive updraft of warm air filled the cavern. Very warm air. The construct began to judder in the force of the rising air, and he dropped towards the cavern wall, latching the creature on to a protruding rock outcropping and watching as an immense Tulpa rose out of the cavern on crablike legs.
Hub Three Secondary's Tulpa was an Air unit- a gliding, fast-moving attack vehicle. The Tulpa passing him was a hybrid Earth/Fire, a massive heavy assault unit. Its body was an oblong egg-shape, tapering down to almost a dozen pillar-like insectoid legs. Its torso was surrounded by five spade-like hands, each roughly the size of the Air Tulpa, and ending in stubby fingers which Three Secondary knew could spit torrents of fire and magma. A roughly conical head sat on top of its body, four craterlike eyes glowing redly. The entire structure was awash in heat- the Air Tulpa could pick up the turbulence patterns it was generating in the open space above it, and they were tremendous.
The stone Tulpa leapt out of the Hub, its immense legs setting the grassy hillside alight as they touched down. A line of explosions stitched their way across its hull- the airship had got its bearings, and was now in full retreat, all its aft guns trained on the giant construct following it. The Tulpa lifted a huge chunk of rock free from the soil, flinging it at the receding ship an missing. It paused for a second, receiving new orders, and then raised its five arms, settling down into a rough approximation of a crouch. The air around it began to hiss and swirl, as a cloud of frost appeared about the Farsight. The logic of those White Lotus members who had designed this particular Tulpa technique was quite simple; if a Firebender could transfer heat into an object and make it warm, couldn't they also remove heat from it and make it cold? The Tulpa was doing just that; the hull of the airship buckled and collapsed as its engines went dead and its hot air cells imploded. The air clouded and condensed, a vapour of liquid oxygen plummeting out of the sky. When what was left of the Farsight hit the gorund, it shattered like fine crystal. When the Tulpa was satisfied with its work, it released the stored heat in a wave of energy that turned the fine soil below it to glass and utterly annihilated what was left of the flammable plant cover around the rim of the Hub.
Yuralria glared across the table, her hands clenched in front of her. Across from her, Rei smirked, and placed a small object on the board in front of them.
"Wheel takes your Jungle. I think you've just lost, Yura."
Yuralria swore, then handed her the flagon of mead.
"I almost had you, too!"
Rei shrugged, still grinning smugly.
"Well, you know-"
Yuralria cut her off with a small wave of her hand, a gesture which caused the condensation on the jug to flick off and splash across Rei's face.
"I swear to Tui and La, if you keep going on about me 'improving my Pai Sho skills', I will fill your bunk with pond weed again."
Rei laughed, ignoring the water as she downed the last of the jug.
"Awww, c'mon. Don't be such a grumpy drunk, Yura. Besides, you're improving! No, really!"
Yuralria harrumphed, wiping the sweat from her brow. Both women were Attuned benders, their chi systems surgically altered to be receptive to the flux of their respective elements. An Attuned earthbender could lift only small rocks, but they were impossible to sneak up on because they could detect the motion of the calcium in your bones and iron in your blood at five or six kilometre's distance. A side effect of becoming Attuned was a vastly boosted metabolism; their bodies bent constantly, putting a massive drain on the chakras in the body, and requiring diets that were extraordinarily high in sugars and carbohydrates. What this meant in practice was that Yuralria and Rei were both somewhat overheated, despite the fact that they were lighty dressed and sitting in a small metal observation bunker very high up a mountain in the northern Fire Nation.
Rei suddenly sat up in her seat. Yuralria cocked an eyebrow.
"Problem?"
The Earthbender frowned, her roughly cut bangs hanging down in front of her dark eyes.
"Could be. A tremor, I think. Probably from the Cradle-hunting team that went by earlier. Still, I shouldn't be feeling it this far away."
"D'you want to trance? Try and check it out? I'll back you up. There's no need to write a report..."
Rei nodded, pushing her chair aside and settling into a lotus position on the tatami floor of the cell.
"Okay. Call it a hundred-click sweep, fifteen minutes unless something weird's happening. "
Yuralria reached up to the device strapped to the back of her neck. It was a thin semi-circle of metal, studded with various dials and half a dozen sealed metal tanks, each about thumb-sized. She cranked several of the dials around. There was the click of clockwork, a slight pain in the side of her neck, and her vision blurred. The device was an injection collar, designed to help Attuned amplify their abilities. If one tried to extend their sensitivity range too far without properly diverting the chi flow in their bodies, they could cause serious nerve damage, and occasionally bend local elements unintentionally. She sat back in the lotus position, feeling her arms and legs go slightly numb. An Attuned bender without a collar and mental conditioning could 'see' for around ten kilometres, maybe slightly more. With the proper equipment, she could 'see' for more than two hundred. She hummed a mantra, and the cues implanted in her subconscious pushed her into the half-awake trancelike state that was perfect for an Attuned scan.
"Where to, Rei?"
"Two hundred degrees, range maybe twenty, twenty-five?"
Her mind blossomed with a rough topographical map of the area, filled with the silvery swirls of moisture, tracing the contours of the land. Small bright dots were people, and she knew if she looked closely enough she would be able to see the blood flowing through their veins. She passed over the nearby village, through a glowing cloud that was a rainstorm, and then-
"Oh, my. Rei, are you-?"
"Yes. Yes I am. Something large and earthen, moving. But that pattern-"
"I'm not seeing the earth, but the atmospheric disturbances are beyond bizarre. Looks like multiple large explosions... and some frost where none should be. A lot of dead plant life too."
"Oh man, there are more things moving... They are big."
"What the heck is this?"
"I'm gonna check the guide."
Yuralria heard Rei stand up, walk away, and move into the lower portion of the observation cell. There was a ruffling of pages, and then...
"Hou Tu. Yura, we've got a problem. Oh this is bad."
Her eyes shot open, and her hand flickered to the switch which would cut off the drug flow to her brain. She staggered to her feet, stumbled down the steep flight of stairs and into the miniaturised communications center that occupied the lower level. Rei stood at a table next to the pneumatic tube system, scanning worriedly through a thick book. It was the Guide, a directory of all the elemental patterns an Attuned bender of any element could normally experience while in a trance, from the feeling of a small rockslide to a fully realized Avatar at full power.
"What is it?"
"I- I think the pattern is Blue. Maybe tending towards Crimson."
Any haziness from the drugs vanished immediately. A Blue pattern meant a high-powered Tulpa activation. Crimson meant multiple Tulpa, of varying elements, and possibly even a full-powered Hub.
"You're sure?"
"Positive. I've never seen anything like it. Get on the CE, I'll fire up the pneumos."
There was no need for any more words. Yuralria removed a shelf of maps from a shelf, settling herself at the Coding Engine table. Plotting the rough location of the Blue pattern, she punched the numbers, as well as the location code for the Lagoon onto a card and fed it into the machine's input slot. Gears clicked and whirred, and then a small bell tinged to let her know it was ready to encode a message. Grabbing another punch card, she fed it into the presswriter and typed out the abbreviated code that stood for 'Pattern Blue, High Probability Crimson'. The presswriterclicked and clacked, embossing the card and then feeding it into the Code Engine, which spat out one final punch card, a thin slip of paper filled with hundreds of pinprick-sized holes which could be read only by the big Coding Engines at the Lagoon. Behind her, and deeper down in the sublevel, there was a soft hooting noise, and a growing rush of air. Several dials on the pneumo board crept up into the green, clicking and clattering as high-pressure air rushed through the system. Rei came up the ladder from below, nodding.
"All set."
"Right."
Yuralria grabbed a message capsule, slotting the encoded card inside and dialling the lock on the outside to the Lagoon Central Switching Station's main address. Almost as an afterthought, she attached a small brass tag marked 'Urgent' to the lock. She pushed the capsule into the main tube receptacle, feeling it click onto the guide rails, then pulled the 'send' lever and watched as the receptacle slid into the body of the pneumo system and disappeared into the maze of the pipes with a foomph of compressed air. Rei had already climbed back up to the top level.
"It's sent? Good. Back to observing."
She followed her, casting one last glance at the Guide as she dialled her injectors back into trance mode. Pattern Blue. Something was afoot.
It took approximately fifteen minutes for the message capsule to reach the accelerator station several dozen kilometres outside the Fire Nation Capital. As it slid into the receiving tube in the station, the brass 'Urgent' tag caught a switch on the levers designed to register the pattern on the capsule's lock. The station's analytical engine registered the tag, instantly raising several alarms and clearing all down-tube traffic from the capsule. The engine shuttled the capsule into the main launch tube, circumventing several other capsules full of important, but by no means urgent information. The station's operators confirmed the message from the analytical engine and fed the main boilers to full power. Huge disk turbines spun to life, feeding more and more high-pressure air into the space around the capsule. Suddenly, there was an almighty pop as the control valves opened, followed by a second bang as the capsule accelerated past the speed of sound, and stayed there. It reached the main hub at Lagoon in less than three minutes. When the analytical engine there red the tag and decoded the message, all hell broke loose.
Si leaned forwards on the podium, turning his head ever so slightly towards the paleograph recorders. Taking a deep breath, he began to speak.
"People of the Ember Group, I have momentous news. As of approximately half an hour ago, we have resumed full hostilities against the Order of the White Lotus. Our attempts to suppress the current government of the Fire Nation and move into Phase Two of the Grand Plan have failed. Minimized force has failed. Direct action is necessary. We are currently at Conflict Readiness Level III, and we will be moving to ConReL II within the next twenty-four hours. Global surface leave is cancelled for all branches of the Group. We begin full military shifts from now on. Furthermore, I am reopening Operation Skyhook. We're going back to space.
Now. As per standard procedure for ConReL II, the vaults in the Si Wong base are to begin the revival process on all stored personnel. And I mean all."
A low murmur of concern washed around the crowded briefing hall. Si sighed.
"It pains me as much as it does you to have to revive the spectres of our past, but our survival justifies the means. I know that many of you disagree with the methods our predecessors used; they were brutal, and vile, and cruel. But they are necessary. We need Ember Overlord. The White Lotus have regained contact with the Spirit World. We have evidence of at least one full-scale Paifang transfer, as well as the activation of a fully functional Tulpa Hub. Furthermore, they have the Avatar and the Fire Lord."
Someone in the back of the room swore, making no effort to hide the fact. Si nodded.
"My thoughts exactly. Now, you have everything you need in the folders in front of you. Let's get mobilized, people."
Oi awoke to a soft knocking at his door, and a whispered voice.
"Sergeant. Sergeant!"
Oi rolled over, grumbling muzzily. The figure lying next to him pulled the covers higher over itself. Forcing one eye open, Oi glared at the luminescent display of the wall clock.
"'s four inna morning. Go 'way."
"Sergeant! It's urgent!"
He threw a balled-up pair of underwear at the door.
"It c'n wait. Go 'way."
The voice receded. He heard whispering. Wait. A female voice. Was that Sang-
There was a hissing noise, and he felt his ears pop as the door tore off its reinforced metal hinges. Light filled the room, forcing Oi to squint at the woman he knew was standing in the doorway. Sangmu's voice boomed through the enclosed space, its horrible cheer sending the man lying in bed next to Oi bolt upright.
"Gooooood morning, Tanker Sergeant Oi! Hands off cock and on with sock, oh invader of the buttocks of others!"
The other man gave an exasperated groan.
"Spirits damn it, Sangmu... now really isn't the time."
Oi's eyes had adjusted enough to let him see Sangmu's face. The woman had her usual 'I'm pissing Oi off' shit-eating grin on, but there was a serious cast to her eyes that Oi had seldom seen before.
"Vikram, it's all right. Sangmu. What's up."
She threw him a bundle of clean clothing.
"Message from the Lagoon. We're at war. Well, more war than usual. You've got ten minutes to pack an away kit and get to the kinetoscope room on level fifteen. Well, see you."
She turned as she left, her face perfectly innocent.
"And do put some pants on, would you?"
Three minutes later, Oi was in the elevator going up, strapping his belt on, Vikram's farewell kiss still cooling on his cheek. Time for war.
Al awoke with a sword in his face. A large, dirty beard with a shifty looking man attached to it was looking down at him, his manic grin showing far too many gold teeth.
"Good morning, stranger! Your money or your life, if you please?"
He glanced around. Hot summer sun beat down on a landscape of rolling hills and mangled airship components.
"Oh, balls. Here we go again."
-~0X0~-
Here's where our story really kicks into gear. War is coming. And it's going to be crazy. Trans-dimensionally crazy. Whacky and amazing and crazy. Whole lotta crazy. Can't stop ending sentences with the word 'crazy'. Oh, there we go.
I know there's a lot of unexplained stuff happening in this chapter, but don' worry- all will become clear in time. And by time, I mean two months. Which leads me to an important announcement: HtE will be on hiatus for all of July and August. To make up for the gap, I've added a little extra to this update, as you can see.
Thanks for your reviews, everyone, and have a lovely summer! Tell everyone you know to read this story! Hah, just kidding! No, but seriously, do!
EDIT: a few continuity tweaks. Nothing major.