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Legal disclaimer: I do not own the Biker Mice From Mars or the Swatkats, they are the property of their respective owners, and I make no profit from this material. This was written solely for the enjoyment of other Biker Mice From Mars and Swatkats fans. Talon and Reno Astera, Tzuka Ryudo and Nick Gordon are my original creations and are my exclusive property. All rights are reserved.
"Machinato Vitae"
(A Biker Mice From Mars Short Story)
***
"Hey, uncle!"
Modo looked up at his nephew’s call and his terminally gloomy expression lightened slightly. "Rimfire. Whadda ya need? Better not be anythin’ that requires two hands." Glaring down at his cyborg arm as Charley and Harley bent patiently over it, trying to repair the heavy damage it had taken during their last battle, his discontented expression deepened.
Rimfire looked at the twisted mass of burned circuits and mangled servos and his eyebrows rose dubiously. "I need ta find Talon. We… think she’s got a message."
Charley and Harley both looked up at that.
"What do you mean, you think she’s got a message?" Charley asked, setting down a sautering iron and staring at him in surprise.
Rimfire shrugged. "This weird silver sphere appeared out of nowhere about twenty minutes ago and is hanging in the air above the base. It keeps trying to fly down the tunnels, and it’s got an ILEA symbol on it, so Stoker figures it’s gotta be somethin’ for her."
Modo and Charley grinned while Harley looked disconcerted.
"Yeah, that sounds like life around Talon." Charley patted Harley’s shoulder and said reassuringly, "Take it easy, girl, livin’ with Tally-kat, you get used to six impossible things happening before breakfast." She turned to Modo with a rueful expression. "We might as well go see what’s up. We aren’t going to be able to do anything with your arm until we get some replacement parts. Most of this is just too badly damaged to be repaired. You’re gonna need a complete rebuild."
Modo’s gloomy expression deepened. "Great. How long will that be?" Charley and Harley exchanged uneasy glances.
"Well," Harley said finally, "we don’t have the facilities to cast the parts you need, and most of Karbunkle’s work was one-shot experimental tech. To tell you the truth, Modo, I just don’t know."
"Great," he grumbled, but realizing it wasn’t fair to take out his annoyance on the two girls who were trying so hard to help him, he said wearily, "Thanks anyway, sweethearts. I know you’d help if you could." Closing his eye, he reached along the little line in the back of his head that led to Tally’s, and tugged gently on it.
*Yes, Teddybear? You ok?* Tally’s pet name for him always made him smile, and Rimfire, Charley and Harley breathed a little easier as the despondent expression on Modo’s face lifted.
*Long as ya never call me that except in here, cuddlekitty.* His mental chuckle bounced along to Tally, and he finished, *Stoke thinks ya got a call. Meet me at the main entrance in five?*
*See ya there.* And she blew him a mental kiss, a quirky habit of hers he still hadn’t gotten used to.
"She’ll meet us there in five." Modo reported, opening his eye. Harley fitted a sling around his damaged arm, and they all headed up to the surface, Harley tagging along curiously. Stoker was standing at the main entrance to the underground base, and a small silver sphere about the size of a softball was hovering in the air about fifteen feet in front of him. As it tried again to zip past him, he swatted it with a quick tail-lash, and it hurtled back in the air, catching itself and returning to its original hovering spot. Throttle and Talon, with Vinnie in tow, showed up a minute later, and at the sight of Tally, the silver sphere shot past Stoker almost too fast to see, and dropped lightly into her hands.
Tally’s expression went from playful to deadly serious in nothing flat, her hands did something to the orb, and a tiny circular panel in the top opened, a small hologram of a handsome, rugged-appearing male human appearing above the lens behind the panel.
"Mina, I’m in trouble and need your help. Get here as fast as you can, or there might not be a planet left for you to come back to." The human’s expression was tormented. "The Machinato Vitae itself is in danger. I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t desperate, starchild. Hurry, we need you."
Tally’s face went bleak and the sphere went dead in her hands. She turned to Throttle and he put an arm around her shoulders reassuringly. The small crowd around her gazed at her curiously, but Throttle was the first to speak.
"What is that thing, babe? Friend of yours in trouble?"
Tally nodded. "Deep trouble, from the sound of it." Her fingers tightened around the sphere. "This is an inter-dimensional distress beacon. I left one on that world the last time I was there. I have to go, love. If the Machinato Vitae is in danger, Jack needs my help badly."
"If you have to go, then you have to go." Throttle smoothed a strand of hair away from her troubled face gently. "Don’t worry about me, I understand. Is that your friend’s name, Jack? And do you want me to come with you?"
Talon smiled so lovingly up at him for his ready understanding the rest of the crowd looked away, uncomfortable at witnessing such a private moment. But before she could answer, Stoker took a step forward, holding up a hand warningly.
"Hold it a second, kid. I can stand to lose Tally for a few days, even a week, but not you, not now. You and Modo are the only ones who know the route through the cavern tunnels to the Plutarkian’s old prison camp, and he’s on the sick list. I can’t let you go."
Tally’s face went very thoughtful as Throttle’s went angry.
"Actually, if I take anyone with me," she commented slowly, "I should take Modo." Throttle, Stoker and Modo all stared down at her in surprise.
"Why, babe?" Throttle asked her, startled.
"Modo can’t get his arm fixed on Mars, and Stoker needs you here, lover. But I could use some backup, and… Jack is special, even on his world. He’s what’s called an ‘Old-Blood Mechanic’. I know that doesn’t make any sense to you, but if there’s anyone in the entire omni-verse who can fix Modo’s busted wing, it’d be an Old-Blood Mechanic, and Jack Tenrec’s the best there is."
Throttle shook his head in resignation, but he was well aware of the problem of Modo’s arm, and couldn’t argue the necessity of his presence in the FF’s next liberation raid either.
"Looks like you two are takin’ a trip, big fella. Take care of my lady while you’re gone, will ya?"
Modo, who had brightened amazingly over the course of the conversation, straightened his slumped shoulders and said gruffly, "You didn’t havta ask, bro."
"We should go as soon as possible. The time stream in that universe flows faster than the one here." Tally looked up at Modo confidently. "You can still ride Lil’ Darlin’ with that sling, can’t you?"
He nodded, and tightened his flesh fist. "We can be ready as soon as I can get her up here."
"Let’s move, then. Jack wouldn’t ask for help if he weren’t already in way over his head."
Twenty minutes later, Modo sat astride his bike just outside the tunnel entrance, and Throttle kissed Talon one last time as he set her gently on the back of Modo’s bike.
"Stay safe, darlin’." He thumped a fist on Modo’s shoulder. "Get better, bro."
He backed reluctantly away from the two of them and the crowd went silent as Talon raised her hands over her head and dropped her mental shields. Grounding herself firmly into the clan-bonding within her that stretched across a dozen dimensions; she accessed the dormant power of her clan’s mass-mind and cleared her thoughts, fixing her concentration firmly on the feel of the particular dimension she was aiming for.
A myriad of images filled her mind, and the crowd fell silent as it experienced the backwash of her unshielded telepathic projection. The wet earthy feel and taste of thick, green, old-growth forest, the sharp tangy smell of saurians and the salt air of the sea, the dry dusty taste of the desert plains. Sounds next; a strain of deep brassy music and the roar of an engine, an allasaur’s growl and the scream of a pteranadon, a husky voice and a light feminine laugh, crashing waves and a faint hissing susurration that was somehow familiar. Sight came last, the lambent light of two moons as they rose, interposed with a punishing sun on dry hills and rocky mountains, tilled fields small among the great sweeps of prairie, that gave way to thick forest and heavy jungle near the endless expanse of the rolling ocean. And a face, the face of the man in the hologram, rugged and worried, but strength and determination looking out of those eyes, a man who walked in an untamed and wilder world than theirs by far…
*Trans-dimensional jump access activated, destination: Dimensional Code-Key ‘Cadillacs and Dinosaurs’,* Talon’s thought rang clearly, as she merged with the waiting power of the mass-mind. A bubble of blue fire coalesced around Modo’s bike, encasing them completely, and the linked mind pulled the bubble loose from the fabric of the universe around it, and shifted it away. The very air around the sphere twisted and warped, and the bubble flared incandescently bright, seemed to turn in on itself, and was gone.
The crowd of mice, jaws agape and eyes wide in sheer wonder and amazement, stood silent, still experiencing the overwhelming feel of knowing that strange, lush world so well.
"Some girl you got there, kid." Stoker said in a stunned tone, gaping at the spot where they had been, the fantastic images that had been washing over his mind fading like smoke with them.
Throttle cocked an eyebrow blandly at the older mouse. "Jealous, Stoke?"
"Hell, yeah." Stoker clapped a hand on Throttle’s shoulder companionably, not fooled for a second by Throttle’s calm expression at the sight of his new love vanishing right out of reality. "Let’s get goin’ ourselves. We got a prison camp to liberate, and your kitty’ll kick my steel tail clear to Phobos if we aren’t done by the time she gets back."
***
For Modo, it only seemed as if the bubble surrounded them, his stomach rolled once wildly and the universe… twisted. Almost before he had a chance to feel sick, the bubble flared again and was gone, and as Modo took a breath, a hundred different vivid scents assaulted his keen Martian sense of smell. His eye took in a repeat of the scene that had filled his mind as he felt Talon fix her concentration on their destination, only a hundred times more real and vibrantly alive. Mars, stripped of its vegetation and wildlife, smelled only of the acrid dry scent of the endlessly blowing marsdust; and could never be so wet, clean, and thick with life as the air of this new world. Even Earth smelled, to Martian senses, mostly of the humans’ endless reshaping of their planet. But this world… it tasted and smelled and felt so wild and green and untamed, Modo felt his whole body respond to it with a surge of revitalizing energy and strength.
Talon, perched behind him and steadying him just a fraction through their link, pointed across the sweep of the plains to the rocky foothills that met the sea, as he looked down at her in delighted amazement.
"There’s where we’re going," she told him, and Modo turned the long-range scanners of his helmet in that direction and discerned a complex of buildings carved into a hillside, with a deep gorge completely surrounding the only accessible side of the rocky cliff. Modo turned to Talon, his deep voice rumbling quietly in amusement. "Nice place, sis. How’d you end up here again?"
Talon grinned. "Long story, teddybear." Sizing up the rough terrain and distance they had to travel, Modo snorted and wrapped his tail around her waist for added safety as he gunned the bike’s engine.
"We got time. Spill it." She laughed, but began her tale as they roared down the ridgeline to the plains, headed for the distant cluster of buildings.
***
Hours later, the sun was low in the sky and Modo was glad to see they’d nearly reached the gorge separating the complex; it was a garage, Tally insisted, despite the fact it still looked like a fortress to him. His bike roared up the long open road to the garage, and he pulled to a stop in front of the gorge.
Talon hopped off the bike and yelled, "Yo, Jack! Mustafa! Hannah! Anybody home?" There was no answer, but the heavy steel drawbridge hummed and extended out over the gorge. Talon got back on the bike and they headed in as night fell. As the lights in the garage sprang on, Modo stared around in admiration, thinking Charley would have loved the place. Everywhere were pieces of clean, streamlined machinery, polished and tuned in perfect order. One long row of what Modo’s incredulous eye identified as classic Cadillacs lined the longest wall; and even as he heard a door open on his blind side and turned to look, an animal’s bellowing roar made him yank his blaster as he turned and point it at a gigantic lizard charging straight towards Talon.
"Modo, no!" she yelled, and to his horror, ran toward the beast. "Hermes, baby!"
The beast snatched her up with those ridiculously small arms, which Modo noticed were nevertheless decorated with claws a lion would have respected, and he wondered frantically if he wasn’t getting too old for this. Talon put her arms around the beast’s head and hugged it tightly, kissing, kissing! it’s muzzle fondly.
"Aw, do you remember me, shnoogie-boo? What a good little dino you are."
Modo holstered his gun and sat back down on his bike as he watched kat and dino cuddle shamelessly, the girl purring and the dinosaur… doing whatever it was dinosaurs did.
"What is it about chicks and animals?" A wry voice said behind him, and the same tall, black-haired human from the distress beacon hologram walked down a flight of open metal steps and offered him a hand. "I’m Jack Tenrec, you a friend of Mina’s?"
Modo doffed his helmet and had the satisfaction of seeing the human’s eyes widen as he stood up, but the hand remained extended, and he had to give this Jack points for taking a seven-foot cyborg mouse in biker leathers so calmly. He shook his hand and answered, "We call her Tally, but yeah. We got your message on Mars, in my dimension, and she dropped everything and bolted for here."
"Yeah, ILEA’s tend to use a different name in each universe, her name’s Marina here. You might wanna call her Mina while you’re here…"
"…’cause all her friends do," Modo finished with an answering wry grin. "I’m Modo. My bros and I are the Biker Mice from Mars."
Jack chuckled, despite the obvious worry and strain in his face, and as he bellowed, "Hermes, put her down!", and walked toward the orange-skinned dinosaur, Modo took a minute to study him too.
Jack Tenrec was a big man, tall and lean with a heavy-boned, ropy build without a spare ounce of fat. Short, carelessly cut black hair, with dark brown eyes in a face tanned like leather from constant exposure to the punishing sun outside. He had big, capable hands, with the myriad small scars from the nicks and cuts of a mechanic’s work; wore rough jeans and boots very similar to Modo’s own, with a heavy bladed knife in a boot sheath, and had a tattoo on one arm matching the insignia on his shirt. After a minute Modo puzzled it out; a leaf in a tire or a wheel, he thought. Different.
As Jack tugged on its metal collar, the dino released Tally, with a ridiculously high-pitched squeak for something that large, and Jack hugged her warmly as Hermes nudged them protestingly, begging for attention.
"Where is everybody? And what the heck’s going on?" Talon asked immediately, although her hand reached out and petted the dinosaur soothingly as she and Jack walked back towards him. Modo fell in beside them, the dinosaur sniffing him curiously, as they climbed the steps out of the giant garage bay and deeper into the fortress.
"I’m only here because I knew when you arrived, you’d head straight for the garage. Hannah and Mustafa are at our problem site holding things down on that end. We’ll head out as soon as it’s light. It’s migrating season for the cutters, and it’s too dangerous to go out after dark."
"What’s a cutter?" Modo interjected.
Jack looked over at him. "Something like Hermes," and the critter nudged him at the sound of its name, "Only about fifteen feet taller and four or five tons heavier." Modo’s eye widened, and he made a mental resolution to stick very close to his bro’s girl until he got her home safely. Throttle would never forgive him if he let Talon get eaten by a dinosaur.
"So what’s Scharnhorst up to this time?" Talon asked, as they emerged into a large room sparsely furnished with heavy, sturdy chairs and couches of carved wood, softened with battered cushions. One huge window stretched the length of one wall, and Modo realized they’d walked completely through the hill the fortress… the garage was cut into, and were looking out over the ocean. Talon dropped onto one end of a large couch, and the dino collapsed on the floor in front of her with a pneumatic whump. The critter was easily large enough to rest it’s head on the couch as she sat, and as Hermes angled his head into her lap, whining for attention, Tally hauled his head around a bit more comfortably and began scratching his eye ridges.
Jack’s disgruntled look, as he dropped into a big chair beside her, told Modo her guess had hit the bulls-eye. Modo sprawled a little wearily on the other end of the couch, and noting Jack’s heavy boots propped up on the scarred table in front of them, shrugged and put his feet up too. The heavy wood furniture and worn cushions were surprisingly comfortable.
"I’d better start at the beginning." Jack looked over at Modo, and told him, "Scharnhorst is one of three governors of the City in the Sea," and he pointed out the window toward the only illumination on the horizon, a cluster of flickering lights situated right out in the ocean. "She has no appreciation or tolerance for anything but what she wants, and she’s perfectly ready to destroy anything that gets in her way." Jack’s disgust was palpable, and he snarled, "The Machinato Vitae means nothing to her."
"Machinato Vitae?" Modo prompted curiously.
The human’s rugged face softened a fraction, and he replied, "Machinato Vitae means ‘machinery of life’, and it’s the code an Old Blood Mechanic lives by. When civilization fell, and the dinosaurs returned to reclaim the earth, most of humanity perished. A few scattered tribes managed to cling to survival, and a small group of humans with the last of the knowledge of technology forged a new way of living in harmony with the altered ecology, and called that process the ‘Machinato Vitae’. Those were the original Old Blood Mechanics, and all their descendants have tried to teach the remaining humans how to live in harmony with nature and technology." He glanced down at his scarred hands and continued, "There aren’t many of the Old Bloods left now, and Scharnhorst uses that as an excuse to run roughshod over the Vitae, and everything else too."
"What caused civilization to fall?" Modo interjected.
"We don’t know."
This blunt answer caused Talon to put in, "When civilization fell, anyone left alive was too busy surviving to have time to write a history book about it. But if you want my guess, I’d say that second moon in the sky is a pretty fair bet. It is possible for a planet’s gravity field to capture a wandering hunk of space debris and pull it into orbit, but the new moon would alter the planet’s rotation, and a slight change in a planet’s orbital path means a huge change in it’s climate and environment. But no one knows for sure, it’s been over six hundred years since the cataclysm and the fall of human civilization."
"So what’s this Scharnhorst done?" Modo glanced over at Tally, wishing idly he had a camera to catch a picture of her with a snoring dinosaur in her lap. Nobody back home would ever believe this story without proof, that was for sure.
"She found an old nuclear reactor and tried to restart it to power the city."
Talon’s jaw dropped and she gaped at Jack in horror. "Is she insane? Any nuclear reactor that old would be so damn unstable…" she trailed off, her shock giving way to furious thinking. "Not to mention nobody has any idea of how to maintain it."
"Exactly." Jack snarled angrily. "The nuclear pile was too depleted to go critical immediately, but Hannah’s been monitoring it, and the reactor core is starting to destabilize. If it goes…"
"Nuclear holocaust." Talon’s grim answer made Modo sit up straighter, beginning to realize the desperation behind Jack’s urgent call for help. "We have to shut down the pile immediately."
"That’s why I called you. I have barely enough knowledge to understand what’s happening. But know how to shut down a decaying nuclear reactor with six hundred year old, half-functional machinery? No chance. You were the only person I knew who’d have any idea how to stop the damned thing. All I could do was record that message on the distress beacon and pray you’d get here in time to stop it."
"Good call." Tally said, her eyes wide. "We’d best head out at first light."
"Yeah." Jack looked over at her and half-smiled himself at the sight of Hermes snoozing in her lap. "We should get some rest." He turned his steady regard toward Modo. "You need anything, friend?"
"Ooh, yes!" Tally’s comment overrode his negative headshake, and Modo shrugged with a tolerant grin.
"I need your help, too, Jack. Modo’s arm needs a repair job. I was hoping I could lean on you for a rebuild."
Jack stood up and looking at Modo’s arm curiously, lifted an eyebrow in a silent request as he stepped closer. Modo slid the sling from his arm, and as Jack sat down on the arm of his chair and examined it, the mechanic whistled in sheer amazement at the heavy damage.
"Kwahoon! What hit you? A mac stampede?" Without waiting for an answer, Jack flexed the metal arm, studying the movement and arrangement of the servos and feedback circuits. "Yeah, I can rebuild this. It’ll take a couple of days, but no problem."
Modo let out a relieved sigh. "Thanks, man. Losing the same arm twice sucked. Losing the same arm three times is overkill."
Jack chuckled, his dark eyes assessing him appreciatively, and thumping Modo on the shoulder, said congenially, "I can repair that enough for you to use it tonight, if you don’t mind losing some sleep. A full rebuild’s gonna havta wait until we get that reactor shut down."
"No problem. If I’m gonna run with dinosaurs, I’d better have both hands ready for trouble."
Jack laughed again, with that same wry humor, and told him, "The dinosaurs are the least of this place’s dangers. Wait’ll you meet Hammer and his crew of poachers."
Modo grinned wolfishly. "Wait’ll they meet me." Turning his gaze to Tally, he said firmly, "You’re goin’ to bed, though, kitty-kin. You need sleep."
"Yes, Mom." She patted the dinosaur’s head and shifted out from under it, stretching out on the couch wearily, her hand still resting on Hermes’ muzzle. Jack picked a heavy blanket off one of the other chairs and spread it over her.
"Hermes." The dinosaur opened an eye and looked at Jack. "Watch her, boy. Guard." Beckoning to Modo, the two of them left her drowsing already, the dino sleeping beside her protectively.
"Heck of a watchdog ya got there. Where’d ya get him?"
Jack led him down a different tunnelway than before, and as they came out in a smaller repair bay, Jack told him, "I raised him from a pup after his momma was killed by poachers. He’s really a big baby, but he looks pretty damn impressive, and he wouldn’t hesitate to rip anyone apart who threatened Mina or Hannah."
He stopped in front of a workbench scattered with tools of various kinds, and motioned for Modo to take a seat on one of the tall stools by it.
"Put your arm up on the workbench," he said absently, flipping on a set of overhead lights and twisting a smaller adjustable work light to shine directly on the arm. Picking up a screwdriver, he went to work on the servo-mechs, asking, "So where’d you meet Mina?"
Remembering the prison break that had netted Throttle a new girlfriend as well as his freedom, Modo chuckled and began explaining the Plutarkian invasion of Earth and Mars.
***
The next morning, Modo shook Talon awake before dawn, Jack handing her a cup of the steaming spice tea he and Modo were already drinking.
"On your feet, girl. Time to move out. We let you sleep as long as we could." Jack frowned slightly. "Modo told me about what happened to you and his bro. No overdoing it, you hear me? You let us take of any problems we run across, understand?"
Tally pushed a few stray wisps of hair, escaping from her heavy braid, away from her face and grumbled, "I was looking forward to skipping the kid-glove treatment for a while. Thanks, bro, I’ll remember this." But she accepted the cup of tea and nodded a disgruntled acknowledgment to the duo as she took a drink. Rising to her feet, they headed down toward the main garage bay, and Lil’ Darlin revved a welcome, causing Hermes to sniff the bike interestedly.
"He’s housebroken, isn’t he?" Modo asked, casting a suspicious look at the critter.
"Well, mostly," Jack admitted, and then chuckled at Modo’s alarmed look. Realizing he was having his tail pulled, Modo patted the dino gingerly and it moved away readily enough, only nudging his shoulder slightly as it passed. Jack hit a switch on the wall, and as the main door opened and the drawbridge extended, he and Tally climbed into a beauty of a red Cadillac. Modo chuckled as he read the vanity plate; it read ‘ZNOZOIC’. Hermes headed out over the bridge and as the Cadillac’s engine roared, Modo pulled out beside it, flanking them as they started down the long road, the drawbridge closing behind them.
"Don’t get separated, we gotta head through some really wild territory!" Modo acknowledged Jack’s yell with a wave, and internally wondered just what a guy who kept a dinosaur for a pet would consider ‘wild territory’.
He got his answer soon enough. As they headed down the plains, parallel to the ridge of mountains, Modo’s incredulous eye was assaulted with one astonishing sight after another. A flock of pteranadons swooping overhead vied with a herd of ungainly bronotosaur-looking things Jack called sambucks, and to Modo’s amazement they drove right through the center of the moving herd, the Cadillac’s horn causing the huge creatures to give way with only expressions of mild curiosity. Hermes ranged out around them, the animal’s tireless pace causing Modo to respect its wiry, reptilian strength even more. Around mid-morning they passed another herd, of triceratops this time, led by a big male with a broken tusk, who raised his head as they passed and bellowed what sounded strangely like a greeting. Jack honked the horn in return, and then proceeded to tell him and Tally a preposterous story of driving that same herd to new grazing territory after a volcano eruption ruined their old one. Modo shook his head, bemused. Dino-herding sounded a little crazy to him, even with Cadillacs.
They stopped briefly when the sun reached its zenith, parking the bike and Caddy under a gigantic tree, easily the largest Modo had ever seen. Only the sequoias of Charley’s world would have come close to this monster. Hermes dipped his head into the small stream feeding the tree, and drank thirstily, raising his dripping muzzle to sniff at the breeze. A chittering growl broke from him, and both Jack and Talon stiffened at the sound and swept the surrounding underbrush with searching looks. Unable to read the dinosaur’s body language, but reading Jack and Tally’s just fine, Modo slid his gun out of his holster and stepped a little closer to his friends. Whatever it was observed them for a moment longer, then the feeling of being watched faded from Modo’s antenna, and mouse, kat, dinosaur and human relaxed together.
"What was that?" He asked, warily holstering his blaster again.
"Trouble," Jack replied briefly. "Let’s get moving."
The sun was halfway down to the horizon when Jack stopped as they crossed a ridge and pointed to a cluster of abandoned ruins half-cloaked in vines and vegetation.
"There. That’s the reactor." Long-range helmet scanners gave Modo a much better look, and he felt the light touch in the back of his mind that meant Tally was looking through his eye with him. The buildings were draped in vines, but surprisingly intact-looking, at least to him, after six hundred years. He caught sight of a fallen sign and focused his attention there, picking out ‘Indian River Nuclear Power Plant’ from the faded lettering. A woman stepped out of one of the buildings and Modo felt a sudden surge of interest that made the presence in the back of his head laugh.
*That’s Hannah Dundee, teddybear, she’s from the City of Wassoon, the only other known outpost of human civilization. And she’s single…* Talon’s teasing singsong made Modo bump her unceremoniously out of his head, her laughter echoing behind.
"C’mon, we’re almost there." Jack called, revving the Cadillac’s engine.
As they headed down the slope, the dust of their passage evidently attracted someone’s attention, as the stunning black-haired woman in the white jeans and red top lifted a hand to shield out the sun’s glare and looked in their direction. She was a beauty, Modo thought idly, tanned like Jack a rich red-brown, a gloss of blue shining on her dark wavy hair and a lean, athletic figure. But there was a lively intelligence looking out of those dark eyes, and the faint lighter lines around her mouth told him this was someone who smiled a lot. He hadn’t met anyone he’d been interested in for years, but this strange world was revitalizing him in more than one way, apparently. And Talon did say she was single… Hannah. Pretty name.
As they pulled up in front of the buildings, Hannah had been joined by a blocky man with skin of deepest black and a bandana tied over his head, making him look rather like a pirate, who clasped Jack’s hand in welcome, a wiry, very pale man with a rakishly unkempt mustache in a cowboy hat, and another dark-skinned man with glasses and a thin, rather scholastic look. Modo leaned back on his bike and let Jack and Talon step out of the car first, the pretty brunette catching Tally’s hands and kissing her cheek, a salute she returned happily. The burly pirate picked Talon right up off her feet for a hug and whirled her around, tossing her to the cowboy for a second dose, and even the scholar came forward and clasped her hand warmly.
Hannah was the first to look over in his direction, and came toward him, her walk distracting him for a delightful second or two.
"Are you a friend of Mina’s?" she asked, and mindful of his manners when meeting a lady, Modo removed his helmet and stood up, towering over her.
"Yes, ma’am," he responded, and as Hannah held out a hand, smiling at him in amazed, transparent delight, Talon came up behind her and introduced them.
"Hannah, this is my new bro, Modo. He’s from Mars in a parallel dimension. Modo, meet Hannah Dundee, scientist and diplomat of the City of Wassoon."
Hannah took his hand wonderingly, and Modo blushed a little under her fascinated gaze.
"A pleasure, ma’am."
"Please, call me Hannah. I’ve never met anyone from another world other than Tally. Your fur’s like velvet…and you have a tail, too… what a wonderful species…"
Modo realized he still hadn’t let go of her hand, but before he or Hannah had a chance to blush this time, the other men came up and introduced them selves. The pirate was Mustafa, the cowboy Kirgo, and the thin scholar turned out to be one of the City in the Sea’s other governors, Toulouse.
Toulouse ushered them in hastily and led them down a hallway, the faded color of the paint still faintly visible on the walls, and a general feel of industrial bland that reminded Modo of Limburger’s tower. Shuddering at the thought, he shoved the idea away and turned his attention to Toulouse’s rambling explanation.
"Of course we were aware of the potential dangers, but Governor Scharnhorst assured us the pile had deteriorated sufficiently to be useful, even its reduced energy level would have been more than enough to power the city. We assumed she had the situation under control."
"Good assumption." Talon retorted irritably. "When are you gonna learn that woman can’t be trusted to tell her tits from a mountain range?" Modo choked a little at Talon’s blunt assessment, but given the seriousness of the situation, couldn’t really deny the truth of her comment.
Toulouse cleared his throat uncomfortably. "We’re taking the matter under advisement."
"Oh, joy." Talon said sourly. "I feel so much better knowing that."
She strode through a pair of swinging doors, the words ‘Reactor Control Room’ still discernable on the doors. Hannah pointed to a control console over by a bank of dusty, dilapidated computer equipment.
"We managed to get part of the old computer system up and running, but it’s a mass of unrelated information, and none of us has any idea even where to start looking for what’s wrong."
Talon sat down in front of the screen, gingerly testing the chair to see if it would hold her weight. As she set her fingers gently on the keyboard, the screen in front of her flared to life, the picture a bit shaky and bland of color, but there. Hannah and Mustafa flanked her, with Jack and Toulouse watching over her shoulders, and Modo stood directly behind her, as computers weren’t his area of expertise and he knew it. His big fingers had trouble not hitting two keys together.
Talon tapped out a sequence, and the screen images began to shift and flicker as she searched through the index. "Ok, what do we have here… system status… that’s what I want…" Her face was intent on the screen, and Toulouse stared down enviously at her flying fingers as he watched over her shoulder. She shifted through the screens with amazing quickness, and a hiss of satisfaction proclaimed her success. "Bingo. System operational status, self-diagnostic program running."
Part of the old computer bank behind them came to life, and the screen began to fill with a new set of data. Talon didn’t skim here, she perused the figures and graphs carefully, and bit her lip in concentration as she did. As she clicked her way slowly down the stream of information, her face lightened slightly.
"We’re in luck," she said finally, "this is a pressurized water reactor, so all we have to worry about is the core and the reactor coolant system itself. That’s a break I wasn’t expecting. All we have to do to shut it down is… sink the control rods into the core, cap the reactor, and seal off the coolant system. Kwahoon, we might just live after all," she commented in faint surprise. Everyone in the room stared at her in uneasy confusion as to whether or not she was kidding. Tapping away at the antiquated keyboard delicately, Tally kept up a running commentary as she picked her way through the ancient system.
"Hummn, reactor core active, we knew that… steam turbines non-functional, no surprise there… coolant system eighty percent functional, could be worse… emergency venting system offline completely, not good… core degradation seven and a half percent and rising, very bad… control rod system… control rods twelve percent operational…" She stopped and backed up a screen. "Twelve percent operational? What the hell?" Talon’s voice rose and she tapped out a separate sequence into the program. "Ok, here we are, condition of the control rods… oh, hairballs…"
"I hate it when she says that," Kirgo muttered, "she only says that when she’s really thrown."
"Here’s the problem. The control rods are contaminated to the point they’re not dampening the reactor core. Emergency protocols for this situation are…" the screen of the ancient machine flickered and everyone in the room held their breath as the image steadied. After an endless few seconds, a new set of diagrams and blocks of text popped in, and Talon skimmed through them quickly again. "…complete systematic rotational replacement of control rods?" She blinked in surprise. "Ok, we can do that… location of replacement control rods?" The screen took even longer to load this time, and Talon bit off a cry of dismay. "On order, delivery date, August 11th, 2012! Oh, hairballs!"
"I really wish she’d stop saying that." Kirgo mumbled irrepressibly, and Toulouse glared him into silence.
Talon rubbed a paw over her face. "We need new control rods, gentlemen and lady, and we need them fast. At the rate the reactor core’s decaying, we have seven days, eight at the most, before it reaches critical mass and we all start glowing in the dark."
"What are control rods made of?" Jack asked, leaning closer over her shoulder, careful not to jostle the ancient machine.
"Offhand? Cadmium, boron carbide, silver, indium, and hafnium." Talon gave the keyboard a few final taps and let it power down.
"Silver?" Hannah said alertly. "There’s a silver mine in the mountains above Wassoon. We can get it there."
Jack cracked his knuckles. "Silver’s a soft metal, I can refine it back at the garage if we can get the raw ore."
"One problem," Mustafa growled, "there’s no way to get a vehicle over the mountains here, you’d have to go back north through the pass above Verizano’s Point to get across the range to Wassoon. That’s three days rough travel north and another two days back south, once you’re on the other side of the mountains, plus comin’ all the way home. We don’t have that kinda time. The only thing that can go straight over the mountains here is a horse or a…"
Hannah’s eyes gleamed, and she turned toward Modo, "…or a motorcycle! If we can cross the mountains here, we can get the silver ore and be back at the garage in three, maybe four days, with a day or two for Jack and Mustafa to refine it and get it back here, at worst six days total. We could do it."
Talon turned her gaze toward Modo. "You’ve seen the terrain here, bro, can Lil’ Darlin’ make it over the mountains?"
Modo met her gaze steadily. "With this much at stake? We’ll do what needs doin’. I’ll need a guide, my bike’ll carry two but no more."
"It’ll have to be me, I’m the only one from Wassoon here, so I’m the only one who knows where the mine is." Hannah explained quickly.
"She’s right." Talon stood up. "Ok, here’s the plan. We outfit Modo and Hannah for the trip and get them moving as fast as possible. Jack and Mustafa will go back to the garage and start setting up the smelter and forge. Kirgo, Toulouse and I will monitor the reactor while I figure out how much silver ore we’re going to need for the new control rods, and I can reach all of you telepathically if we have any unexpected upsets or changes in the plan. Any comments, questions, suggestions?" There were none, and the group headed for the vehicles to speed Modo and Hannah on their way.
***
Half an hour later, Jack lashed a pack of supplies to Lil’ Darlin’, and topped off her gas tank. The bike revved a thank-you, and still disconcerted by the idea machinery could be alive and aware, Jack gave the bike a vaguely mystified look and patted it with the same cautious care Modo had patted Hermes with.
"Ok, I’ll contact you telepathically at moonrise each night for a progress report, and I’ll ‘port you in a supply of gas for the next day at the same time." Modo nodded in response to Talon’s comment, and hugged her warmly, and Tally handed Hannah her helmet. "You’ll need to wear this, but it should fit you fine. This is the switch for the radio, it’s keyed to Modo’s helmet frequency already." Hannah squeezed her hands and they swapped another cheek-kiss, then Hannah pulled on the helmet and climbed on the bike behind Modo.
"This is for your safety, Hannah, ma’am." Modo told her, and wound his tail firmly around her waist. Jack clasped Modo’s hand, and warned him, "Listen to Hannah, this world has a lot of surprises."
"Why Jack," Hannah teased, "that almost sounded like a compliment. Are you feeling all right?"
Jack gave her a dour look, and the whole sequence reminded Modo so irresistibly of Charley and Vinnie’s endless squabbles he laughed out loud. Mustafa and Kirgo snickered too, and Talon smothered a grin and slapped his shoulder. "Get moving, you big galoot."
Lil’ Darlin’s engine roared and the pair took off for the mountains to the west. The remaining group watched them for a minute or two, then Jack and Mustafa climbed into the red Caddy and headed out themselves, and Hermes, Talon, Kirgo and Toulouse watched them disappear in a cloud of dust back towards the garage. Hermes whined and nudged Tally’s shoulder. She scratched the big dino’s eye ridges, and crooned, "They’ll be fine, baby. And we’ve got work of our own to do." And girl and dino headed back inside, Kirgo giving the surrounding area a final searching look before he followed them in.
***
Four hours later, at dusk, Hannah and Modo had reached the foothills, and as the sun began to set behind the mountains, Hannah said over the helmet radio, "We should stop for the night. The mountains are treacherous after dark. There’s a place to camp until morning." She pointed over her shoulder, and Modo, ever the gentleman, tried not to notice to the faint warmth of her against his fur. It wasn’t easy, Hannah seemed utterly fascinated by him, and had bombarded him with so many questions about himself and his world, Modo was beginning to think he’d probably talked more in the last four hours than he had in the last four months. Not that he minded in the least having a beautiful girl interested in him, but… was it just his imagination, or did she seem interested in him from more than a scientific standpoint?
He pulled his bike up in a small rocky dell scooped out of a hillside, and Hannah climbed off the bike, tugging off her helmet and shaking out her black locks. She examined the site carefully, and nodded in satisfaction.
"This’ll do. We can build a fire at the entrance to the dell, and nothing will be able to get in behind us. We should be safe enough." She rummaged through the pack on the back of the bike, and pulled out a canteen. "There’s a small stream just behind those rocks, I’ll get us some water if you can gather up some firewood."
Modo nodded as he hung his helmet on one handlebar, hanging Hannah’s on the other. A dead tree just outside the dell caught his eye, and deciding it would do as well as anything, he braced himself, wrapped his hands around the trunk, and straining mightily, ripped it right out of the ground. Hefting it onto his shoulder, he carried it back into the little dell and dropped it against the rocky wall. He ripped the dead limbs off it casually, tossing them into a heap, and was in the process of breaking up the trunk when Hannah returned, a dripping canteen and a handful of unidentifiable greenery in her hands. Her eyes went round as she stared at him.
"Wow," was all she said, "you’ve got the strength of a mac." That was the native name for a triceratops, he recalled, and blushed beet-red under his fur. Hannah laughed, and as she tried to lift the pack off the bike, he frowned and lifted it for her, setting it down on a conveniently placed rock shelf. A few more minutes’ work had a fire burning cheerfully, and Hannah pulled a series of small pots nested inside each other from the pack of supplies. She filled two with fresh water from the canteen, and set them at the edge of the fire to heat. Modo took the largest section of trunk and set it near the fire for a rough seat for her. She grinned a thank-you and tossed a handful of that spice-powder Jack had made tea with that morning into one pot, and dropped a chunk of something brown and dry-looking into the other.
"What’s that?" Modo asked, automatically keeping his cyborg arm on the side away from her as he sat down.
"Dried sambuck meat. It tastes better than it looks, trust me."
"It’d have to," he responded, giving it a dubious look. Laughing, she broke up the washed greenery and tossed it in too, and peeled the skin from a handful of nut-like things before dropping them with the rest. An appetizing smell began to drift up, and his nose, at least, didn’t seem to have any trouble believing her blithe assurance as to its edibility. The stars began to wink on in the sky, and Modo leaned back and stared in amazement at the sheer number and clarity of them. Hannah seemed content to watch the fire and the sky without speaking, and for a Martian on a strange planet, on a mission to save what remained of humanity, Modo thought wryly, he was having an awfully good time.
The temperature began to drop rapidly as the last of the sun’s warmth faded from the rocks behind them, and Hannah wrapped her arms around herself.
"Are you cold, Hannah, ma’am?" Modo asked worriedly.
She wrinkled her nose up at him, and declared, "If you call me ma’am one more time, I’ll… I’ll think of something awful to do to you."
Unable not to laugh at her mock-fierce expression, he told her, "Ok, Hannah."
"Better," she admitted, and handed him a battered metal cup of spice tea. She slid down to the ground, putting her back against the log, and he shrugged and did the same. Hannah handed him another metal bowl, with a large portion of the thick stew in it, and as he lifted the spoon and tried a skeptical bite, his eye widened in surprise and he devoured it hungrily. Hannah laughed at him as he gave the empty bowl a pitiful look, and refilled it with a self-satisfied grin. He killed the second portion nearly as quickly, and as Hannah finished her bowl, he took hers and his and disappeared in the dark for a moment, returning with bowls and spoons washed in the little stream.
"You cooked, I can do dishes," he told her, and Hannah set them on the little rock shelf to dry and refilled his mug with the last of the spice tea. As he sat back down beside her, she nudged his arm with an elbow, and as he lifted it puzzledly, she tucked herself against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her gingerly, and gradually relaxed.
As the moons began to rise, first the smaller and then the larger, filling the star-scattered sky, Modo felt a quiet peace and contentment he hadn’t known in over a decade of nearly-continuous battle. A gentle tug on the mind-link in the back of his head alerted him to Talon’s telepathic call, and he sent a lazy surge of affection back at her.
*Hey, teddybear… havin’ a good time?* Her mental chuckle bounced around his head as she locked onto his location telepathically, and a surge of teleportational effort in her mind heralded a jerry-can of gas appearing beside Lil’ Darlin’.
He thought back, *Remind me to recommend this place as an R&R spot…*, and Talon, looking through his eye and scanning the area around him, chuckled again as she felt Hannah’s warmth pressed up against him.
*It’s a hell of strain still to ‘port and ‘path this far, so I’ll keep this short. Need anything else?*
*Nah, we got it under control. Ya get yourself some sleep, cuddlekitty, you’re still walking-wounded, remember? I promised Throttle I’d keep my eye on you.*
*Yes, Mom, and take care of the cuddlesome person you’ve got right there…* He swatted at her receding thought as she let the link fade, and Hannah looked up at him curiously, having noticed the appearance of the gas can.
"How are things going?"
Modo looked down at her and had to yawn tremendously before answering. "Nothing to report so far." He tossed a few more sections of tree-trunk on the fire, the sparks rising into the still air.
She yawned back, and pulled a couple of blankets from the pack, spreading one in front of the fire and beckoning Modo to join her on it. He stretched out beside her, and she snuggled up next to him, draping the second blanket over them both.
"Keep an eye on things," he told his bike, and the LED display flashed at him. A faint, sweet, floral scent drifted up from Hannah’s hair, and weary, warm, and well-fed, he drifted off to sleep, her head pillowed on his arm.
***
Back at the garage, Jack and Mustafa had the garage’s forge and smelter set up and as ready as it could be; and with nothing to do but wait, Jack was beginning to drive Mustafa crazy with his endless pacing and worrying. Finally, he told Jack irritably, "Weren’t you gonna fix the big guy’s arm when he and Hannah get back? Go work on the pieces for that, and get out from underfoot!"
Jack had looked rebellious, but his mechanic’s insatiable urge to tinker overwhelmed his nervousness, just as Mustafa knew it would, and he breathed a sigh of relief as Jack headed for the side repair bay, muttering, "Maybe I could give him an upgrade while I was at it… that was a kinda crappy design, but what do you expect from a mad scientist? Glad we don’t have Plutarkians here… now where did I put that feedback circuitry we salvaged last year?" Sighing to himself, his face distracted, Mustafa sent up a fervent prayer Hannah and Modo would get back before Jack ran out of things to tinker with. Otherwise he was going to have to deck the mechanic just to keep him quiet.
***
Back at the reactor, Talon was outside with Hermes, staring up at the moons and wondering if Throttle and Chance were missing her as much as she missed them. She’d gotten used to a warm furry bulk wrapped around her as she slept, in either universe, and the prospect of sleeping alone was singularly unappealing, to say the least. Hermes chittered and tugged on her long braid, sensing her despondent state; and she smiled, flung a leg over the dino’s back and hauled herself up on his neck, her slight weight no strain for the dinosaur. Hermes clacked delightedly and began to trot, and Talon wrapped her fingers around his metal collar to steady herself. The dinosaur paced straight out of the nuclear complex grounds and Tally glanced down at him curiously, wondering where he was taking her.
Not worried, but knowing it was foolish to be careless, she dropped her exterior psi-shields, letting the feel of the jungle wash over her. She loved this world for just this reason, everything around her was alive, and the psychic backwash of so much life was as intoxicating as any liquor or drug ever invented. When she let her meta-senses loose, every living thing around her, plant or animal, pulsed with the fire of life. The faint, steady green glow of the vegetation, the flickering hot orange sparks of insects, the red-tinged, focused, fierce concentration of stalking carnivores, and the deep blues of the placid, imperturbable contentment of grazing herbivores. It soothed her down to the very depths of her soul, and she understood, for the first time, how much the arid, barren feel of lifeless Mars had starved something vital inside her.
Hermes was heading steadily for a rocky outcrop of tumbled boulders, and as he reached them, something moved in the shadows between the rocks, and Talon abruptly realized why Hermes had brought her here… he’d been asked to. A figure moved out from the shadows and stood in the moonlight. It was hunched and deformed by human standards, but since it wasn’t human… a reptile’s toothy muzzle, shrouded in a hood decorated with carved bits of bone, looked up at her, and an alien thought brushed against her mind.
*We sensed your return, starchild, and there is much turmoil in your soul. You came to help our world, is there no way we can help you in return?*
Understanding the delicate balance that his kind lived by, Talon took no offense at his question. The reptile race lived in each other’s minds even more directly than she and her clan did, and the troubles of one were the troubles of all. And the simple fact that they considered her worthy of their help was a compliment of the highest order.
*Am I so troubled even my soul cries out for help?* Talon slid down from Hermes’ back, and stood beside him, one hand on his scaly shoulder.
*What tears you in two?* The reptile race disdained rhetoric, and the pointed question made Talon face squarely the dilemma she’d been dodging with indifferent success for several weeks now.
*My heart is torn between two new loves, and I do not know what to do. My clan would welcome them both, and cherish them dearly, but they are so very young, and I do not think they will understand the bonds that bind us, even beyond death. I would cut out my heart before I would hurt them, but they must learn the truth eventually, and I think that truth will cut deep…I love them both, and I cannot choose between them!* Talon’s last sentence was a wail of pure anguish.
*Think you so little of them, then? That they could not encompass your true soul? You do them no honor, starchild.*
*To know that your love is another’s love as well? I… I do not know. In four millennia I have never faced this! Always before, each of our clan had known what I was, what we were, before they gave me their heart and became one with us all. But Throttle and Chance have no idea what I truly am! No idea what we all are… and what they will become; indeed, what they are already becoming without knowing. I thought to give them each a lifetime to understand, but… I feel the shifting of the omniverse around me, and I know I will not be given the time to let them grow into this knowledge. The lifepaths of we three approach convergence; and when it happens, and it will be soon, I feel, there must be resolution. It frightens me, and I fear the future with all my heart.*
*Your fear is what holds you back. You must face the future with an open heart, and give yourself to them without hesitation or reserve. Only then can they understand, for they will have your understanding to lead them. Give them your soul, starchild, it is all they truly want and need. Give them your soul, whole and complete...* The reptile-shaman gazed at her for a moment longer, then extended a scaly claw-hand. Talon took it unhesitatingly, and as it closed around hers, she felt him press something into her palm.
*Fare well, starchild, until we meet again, for meet again we shall. For I, too, feel the shifting of the worlds, and we know you shall return…*
The shaman slid back into the shadows, and as it disappeared down the tunnel hidden in the rocks, Talon opened her palm. Three rings of intricately carved bone lay in her hand, gleaming softly in the moonlight. Three rings… Talon lifted the silver chain of the locket Jake had crafted so lovingly for her over her head, and unfastening the chain, slid the three rings on with the locket and refastened it about her neck. Hermes nuzzled her again, and she pressed her forehead against his scaly flank. As she vaulted back onto his neck, Hermes turned and paced swiftly back to the buildings.
***
The next morning, as the blazing sun rose over the world and began to burn the damp dew of the night away, Hannah and Modo were on their way even before the sun had cleared the horizon, the faint gray light of the false dawn enough to let them proceed. As they penetrated deeper and deeper into the mountains, the lush vegetation gave way to scattered scrub, and the bewildering multitude of wildlife petered out to a few small lizards skittering among the rocks. Then the wide stretches of dry meadow gave way to increasingly narrow, stony gullies, and with each intersection, walls of gray shale rose higher about them, and the trail became more and more steep, rocky and rough.
At each intersection or break in the trail, Hannah would confidently point in a direction, and off they would go, climbing higher and higher each time. Hannah bore the rough ride without complaint, and indeed, despite the roughness of the terrain and the urgency of their mission, was enjoying herself tremendously. When she first met Talon, the scientist in her had been wildly fascinated, and the fact she ended up a personal friend Hannah considered nothing less than a miracle. And when Talon had left last, she’d laughingly promised to bring more aliens when she returned. But given the dire urgency of their request, it had never occurred to Hannah that Talon would come anything but alone, and as fast as possible.
But meeting Modo was a joy that could not be overshadowed; which, given the relative urgency of their mission, was rather weird and maybe even a little obsessive. But worrying wouldn’t get them there any faster, and as long as he was a captive audience, and such a big, warm, soft, gentle, absolutely captivating one too, she might as well enjoy it to the fullest. A Martian! Someone not only from another planet, but another universe! That was about as different as it got all right, and she just loved it! And he was so nice, too. It was like fate was handing her an embarrassment of riches to revel in.
The bike was roaring through the twisted dry bottoms of the floodwater gullies that the snowmelt caused each spring, and Hannah kept a sharp eye on the sky. A sudden squall, even as far away as five miles, could cause a flash flood and fill the gully 20 feet deep in fast-moving water in minutes. But what she could see of the sky remained clear and sunny, it was only the tall shadows of the mountain crags that made it seem dark.
As they climbed higher, and the gullies became more twisted and interconnected, Modo wondered how she could know these shifting paths so well.
"Hey, Hannah?"
Those helmet radios certainly were slick, too, Hannah mused, she’d have to ask if he could show Jack how to make one. "Yeah?" she asked.
"All these twists and turns and gullies, how do you know where we’re going to come out?"
"I don’t, exactly," she explained, "these gullies are all interconnected through the whole range, and the floods each spring cut and recut them. All of them eventually connect at some point, so to cross them, you just keep a straight compass heading and follow the gully that points in the direction you want to go. We’re headed straight across the range as fast as possible, so we want to head due west." Hannah pointed to the small radarscope on the bike’s control panel, which had a directional compass in the readout. "Since your bike had a compass on it already, I don’t even need to stop to take a fix with mine, I just kept us heading straight west."
"Oh," was all he said. "That works. You need a rest?"
"No, let’s keep moving until noon, then we’ll stop. Or does your bike need to cool down or something?"
"No, Lil’ Darlin’s fine, but you let me know if you need an rest, ma’… Hannah."
She laughed and let him return his concentration to the slippery, shifting shale trail. An alien that was kind, thoughtful… and furry, too. Her fingers, buried in his thick fur as she held on tightly, were pleasantly warm despite the damp rocks and cold wind as they climbed higher through the range. The helmet kept her ears shielded from the wind; and hanging on for dear life, clinging as tightly to him as she could, the warmth radiating from under his fur kept her toasty warm.
His body temperature had to be higher than hers, she reflected, probably about 105 degrees by the ancients’ scale. The muscle arrangement under her fingers, and also, admit it, pressed up against her seemed very similar in anatomical configuration to a human’s. Wonder just how close to human anatomy they were, she giggled internally, maybe he’d be interested in a little exchange of diplomatic information? Scientific exploration had never been such an attractive prospect before… Hannah reined herself up sharply at the direction her thoughts were taking. Get a hold of yourself, she said firmly, he’s an alien! Who knew if he liked humans?
Modo pulled the bike to a stop. The trail divided sharply here, with both trails immediately climbing higher over the two sides of a shale ridge running due west. Modo looked back over his shoulder.
"Which way, Hannah-girl?"
Hannah considered the ridgeline and the way the shale lay, and pointed to the left. "We’ll be less likely to start a landslide on the facing side of the ridge, but we should watch out for the trail shifting and buckling under us."
Modo looked at her to see if she was kidding; decided she wasn’t, and his tail, which had been curled loosely about her waist, tightened noticeably. He gunned the engine without further comment and the bike began to pick its way across the shifting shale ridge. They had made it most of the way across the ridge down into the next flood gully, with their progress starting only a few small slides behind them. But as they approached the downward slope back into the next gully, the stone underneath them shifted and cracked, and part of the trail gave way and started to slide sideways. The ridgeline grew very sharp here, and the fall, were they to slide down to the edge of the ridge, would land them over a rocky drop some forty to fifty feet below them.
Modo yelled, "Hold on, sweetheart!" and the exhaust tubes blasted white fire as the bike leaped forward into the air, jumping the slide area and landing safely back on the ridge top. The landing was bone-shakingly hard, and Hannah would have been thrown from the bike right back down the cliff side were it not for his tail holding her tightly. As Modo fought the bike back on the path and stopped for a moment’s rest, Hannah let herself sag against him, trembling slightly despite her fierce determination to show no fear.
"You ok, babe?" Modo’s worried face looked down at her as he turned around and put his hands on her shoulders, and the bright grin she assumed for his benefit didn’t fool him. He pulled off his helmet and lifted hers from her head gently, and put his flesh arm around her. She stayed rigid for a moment, then leaned against him and shivered violently, burying her face in his gray fur. Not quite believing he was doing this, Modo pulled her closer into his arms and tipped her face up. Her dark eyes gazed into his, and in those deep brown eyes was a shy, uncertain welcome… Modo bent over, and taking his courage in both hands, kissed her.
Hannah felt the warmth of his breath on her lips as he did, and deep inside her something uncurled from its sleep as she sank her fingers into the thick fur of his shoulders and returned it breathlessly. His mouth wandered over hers with exquisite gentleness, and the terror of her near-miss vanished instantly in the flood of feelings that tender kiss aroused in her. Taking all the time in the world, Modo tasted the sweetness of her mouth, the texture of her lip, and the silky softness of her skin, trailing soft kisses of such slow passion along her jaw that Hannah felt scorched by the leashed fire in him. What it would take to let that fire loose to consume him, she wondered dizzily, were all Martians capable of such rigid control? His hand stroked the strands of soft black hair away from her face as he whispered into her ear, "Feel better now?"
"Absolutely…" and she pulled his mouth back down to hers and put all the fire inside her into it.
Modo, blown away by her heated response, knew without any words she was as captivated by him, as he was by her. Reluctantly they pulled a little apart, and as they exchanged a look of wondering understanding, Modo caressed her face and told her unsteadily, "We should get going again…"
"…before the trail goes without us?" Hannah finished. "Yeah, the sooner we get through the mountains, the better." She pulled her helmet back on as he handed it to her, but as she wrapped her arms around his waist again, her hands stroked his fur shyly.
***
By noon they’d reached the spine of the mountains, and as they looked down onto the other side of the range, Modo marveled at the view. The sharp, rocky crags of the mountains were softer and more worn away on this side, and in front of them, an expanse of verdant veldt stretched out below the foothills as far the eye could see, the broad plain pale green and grassy under the bright sun, colorful splashes of wildflowers scattered across it. Hannah sighed in fond remembrance at the sight.
"Every time I see it, I’m more amazed by how beautiful it is." She pointed northwest, and told him wistfully, "Wassoon is that way, but once we reach the veldt, we’ll follow the foothills straight north until we get to the mine." The range dropped sharply here, and with a little luck they’d be down in the foothills by the time they had to stop for the night again. Modo squeezed her hand once and they started off, the gentler slopes of the range on this side increasing their pace greatly.
***
Talon cursed for the millionth time as she tried to repair the mechanical arms necessary to replace the new control rods in the reactor core, and pushed her sweaty hair out of her face, leaving a long streak of black dust on her creamy fur. She was half-jammed in under a control console in the main reactor room, and fully a third the electrical filaments she was trying to reattach were crumbling to dust as she touched them. Wishing absently Jack were here to help, even if the big mechanic would never have fitted in under this particular console, she patiently cut a new section of filament and painstakingly reattached it to the terminal leads. The control console clicked and power flowed through the wire. Only a hundred or so more to go, she thought ironically…
***
Back on Mars, Throttle dodged a blaster bolt and leaped for the cover of a stalagmite as Plutarkian regulars opened up on them. So much for a quiet, stealthy entrance into the prison camp, and pinned down in an underground tunnel was not his idea of a good time either.
"Whadda ya think, kid?" Stoker asked as he dodged behind the tall cone with him, a close shot peppering them with stone fragments.
"We can split the force and leave half here to keep them busy, while the rest of us come up behind them through the second layer of tunnels." Throttle snapped off a few more shots and one of the Plutarkians went down yelling.
Stoker grinned fiercely, his steel tail lashing. "I never knew there was a second set of tunnels below this set of caves."
Throttle bared his teeth back in a gleeful snarl, and waved for Vinnie and Rimfire to join them. "If it weren’t for the ceiling of the lower level collapsing under ol’ Modo when we were younger, we never would have found out either. We gave him crap for weeks about throwin’ his weight around."
"Wonder how he and your girl are doing?" Stoker joked, firing at the ceiling and dropping a stalactite on a group of Plutarkians, taking out four at once.
"Couldn’t be any worse than this," and Throttle led Vinnie and Rimfire down one of the side tunnels, blowing a gaping hole in the floor and dropping down into the smoking pit below.
***
Jack was hunched over his workbench, lost in a haze of concentration Charley and Razor would have probably recognized, but no one else. Pieces and parts of every description, and a few indescribable ones, were littered the bench in front of him, and silvery coils of the finally located feedback circuitry were looped over everything.
"Man, he’s gonna love this… wonder if Mina’s got a morph-generator on her… maybe I could hook it into the arm so it’d look normal when he’s not using the cannon… don’t ever wanna see a Plutarkian if they need weapons like this ta fight ‘em… give me Scharnhorst and Hammer any day…" Jack muttered to himself, chortling under his breath as he worked.
***
Despite Lil’ Darlin’s best efforts, Modo and Hannah were forced to stop early for the night. As the sun began to sink down toward the horizon, one of the squalls Hannah had feared would catch them in the mountains blew up over the plains in less than twenty minutes, and pelted them with an absolute torrent of cold rain. Letting his bike find its own way down the muddy, wet trail, Modo hardly able to see in the downpour, the bike’s scanners found several small caves, but none large enough to shelter them. After slogging through the rain for nearly an hour, Modo was more than relieved when his helmet’s scanners finally picked up a cave that might be big enough to get them out of the rain.
The cave entrance was half-hidden in dripping brush, and as he left Hannah perched on the back of the bike and slipped and slid through the mud, Modo wondered suddenly if anything else in the cave had decided to get out of the rain too. Pulling out his blaster cautiously, he pushed his way through the concealing brush and although he had to stoop very low to get through the entrance, Lil’ Darlin’ would fit through with a foot to spare.
The cave ceiling rose slightly as he walked further into it, but he would have to be careful not to knock his head every time he stood up. A dry, rocky floor, with a few scattered pebbles and dirt, and large enough for the bike with room to for him and Hannah… it would do. He returned to Hannah and to grin at her game expression as she sat, soaked to the skin, on the back of the bike. Even Charley would have been grumbling a few complaints by this time, but Hannah seemed to think it was just part of the job they had to do, and made no outward protest.
"It’ll do," Modo told her, helping her off the bike, "go on inside, I’ll push the bike in behind you."
Hannah did as he asked, holding the branches of the brush back as he heaved the bike up the small rise into the cave. Rolling it into the corner of the cave nearest the entrance, he patted his bike fondly. "Best I can do for ya, darlin’," he told her regretfully, "at least this way we can dry off." Lil’ Darlin’ flickered her control panel lights at him, and then went silent.
Hannah came back from checking out the far corners of the cave, helmet in hand, and reported, "I was hoping a bit of deadwood would have blown in, but looks like we’re pretty much out of luck as far as a fire goes tonight." She looked down at her dripping clothes. "We better get dried off quick, or we’re going to catch something nasty." She rummaged through the pack and pulled out the two blankets, handing one to him with a very direct look. "Mind turning your back?"
Modo blushed bright red under his fur, and turned and contemplated the rock wall for several minutes as wet soggy noises, accompanied by low-voiced grumbling, told him Hannah had managed to strip off her wet clothes.
"Hey, what’s your bike’s name?" Hannah’s voice asked, "and will she mind if I borrow her for a drying rack?"
Modo had to laugh at her question. "Her name’s Lil’ Darlin’, and no, she won’t mind. Go ahead." A few more noises of wet cloth drifted back to him, and then Hannah told him, "Ok, you can turn around now." He turned and found her sitting on the ground, wrapped tightly in the blanket, her clothes neatly draped over the handlebars to dry.
He hung his helmet off the end of one of the handlebars, and had stripped off his chest plate and gunbelt, wiping as much of the water from the metal as possible, and had started to undo his jeans when a thought struck him, and he turned back to see Hannah watching him, unsuccessfully trying to hide a cockeyed grin.
"Do you mind?" He asked wryly, and she blushed beet-red too as she turned away. Draping his wet jeans and socks over the seat, and pouring the water out of his boots, he set them by the bike. He rather carefully draped his boxers to dry out of her line of sight, and mentally resolved to ask Charley to buy him something a little less flamboyant the next time she went shopping for them. Little red kisses on blue boxers were cute, but not exactly what one wanted a strange lady to see… and got a mental picture of Charley asking slyly which strange women had been examining his underwear, and abandoned the notion fast. Wrapping himself in the blanket, he pulled the pack from the back of the bike and set it down in front of Hannah, sitting down with his back to the rock wall beside her.
She dug through it, the blanket slipping off her shoulder and affording a very nice view of the smooth skin of her back. Modo gulped, reached out very carefully, and pulled it back up over her shoulder.
"You better stay wrapped up," he told her a little hoarsely, "it’s chilly in here."
"We can make some cold tea…" and she stopped as Modo sat up straighter and his eye went distant at a familiar tug in his mind.
*You’re early, sis. Anythin’ wrong?*
*Nah, but Jack radioed in that he’d seen a thunderhead roll over the mountains and was worried you’d been caught in a gully-washer, so I reached for you right away. You seem fine, if a little cold and damp. I can give you a hand or two with that.*
*Are you strong enough?* Modo’s sharp thought was deflected easily, with a lazy strength that reassured him.
*Yes, Mom, I’ve been getting better by the minute here. By the time we leave I might even be back on my feet completely.* A faint tinge of quizzical puzzlement laced the thought. *Why I’m getting better so much faster here is something I should look into…later. Stick a couple pots out into the rain and let them fill with water, and I’ll give them a little help. You two need to eat and sleep if you’re going to keep up that kind of pace.*
Modo reached over Hannah’s shoulder and pulled out the stack of pots, and got to his feet, holding the blanket clutched around his waist.
"Tally’s… Mina’s going to give us a little help from afar, she says. She’s got something in mind." Hannah snorted at the inadvertent pun, and Modo heard Talon laugh in the back of his head too. He set the two largest pots out in the rain and ducked back in hastily before he got wet again. He was drying off, but wet mouse wasn’t the nicest smell in the world. They were full in a matter of minutes, and he hauled them back in.
*Ok, set them down in front of Hannah.* Hannah looked like a kid at Christmas as she waited for the ‘help’. It came in the form of a few bubbles from the bottom of first one pot, then the other. It built to a rolling boil in both pots, and Hannah grinned in sheer delighted amusement. She fished out more of sambuck meat and put it in the larger pot, another allotment of spice powder went into the smaller.
*Next trick,* came Tally’s thought, and the clothes draped over the bike began to steam, and as they dried, the warmth generated came drifting across to them, raising the temperature of the cave several degrees.
*And again,* and hard as Modo listened, he could feel no strain in her mind as a pile of fruits and vegetables appeared beside Hannah on a large leaf, together with another jerry-can of gas for Lil’ Darlin’.
*And just to show off,* and two extra blankets appeared and dropped neatly into Modo’s lap. *You’re making great time, so just keep moving as fast as possible. Things are set up and ready at the garage for the ore, and I should have a pretty good idea of the amount of ore we’ll need tomorrow. I’m getting there with fixing the reactor core manipulator arms to replace the control rods; and Toulouse has a crew of men, Scharnhorst’s, no less, plating the whole reactor cooling system substructure with lead plates and pouring concrete to seal the coolant system off permanently in a solid block of the stuff. It can decay naturally for the next thousand years in perfect safety, and we’ll do the same to the reactor core when we get it safely neutralized. All we need are those new control rods.*
For the first time Modo began to sense the effort of holding contact over such a long distance, and Talon gave in to his imperative thought she desist, but not without an *I have to push myself if I’m going to build my strength back up, ya big teddybear…stay safe…* and her warm presence faded from his mind.
Hannah, who had finished her arcane manipulations with the edibles Tally has sent, took one of the blankets and spread it out, sitting down on it with a sigh. Modo plopped down beside her with an answering one.
"Hurray for my sis feeling better," he joked, and took a long drink of the steaming hot tea Hannah handed him, and immediately felt better himself.
"She does manage to get a lot of benefit out of small uses of power. I really have to ask her about that sometime." Hannah said thoughtfully. She set her cup down and took the last blanket and spread it over their laps. "We would have been pretty cold and miserable tonight without those little tricks."
Without thinking, Modo said, "I wouldn’t let you freeze, miss Hannah, ma’am." Hannah turned and swatted him square in the center of his chest. He set down his cup and gave her a mock-fearful look.
"I told you if you did that again I’d get you for it," she said warningly. Her expression changed suddenly, she knocked the hand he was leaning on out from him with a quick move, and as he started to fall, pounced on him.
As he landed flat on his back with her on his chest, her brown shoulders slipping out of her blanket again, she told him with a wicked grin, "There are all kinds of ways to keep warm on this world."
"Why don’t you teach me a few more?" Modo asked her, pulling the blankets over them both as he returned her kiss.
***
Another group of travelers weren’t nearly so comfortable or companionable, as the rain poured down into a poacher’s camp high in the mountains to the north of them. The cold rain splashed down in a small mountain clearing on a few dilapidated shelters, no more than four posts and a roof, with a wooden floor a few inches above the dirt. The poachers huddled underneath them, drinking and snarling at each other as they watched the rainfall. Their vehicles were scattered around the camp, most covered with dirty tarps, a few just left to sit in the rain. All of them stiffened and reached for their weapons as a truck hauled its way up the muddy, rutted trail. Recognizing the heavyset, sour-looking woman in the front of the truck, the brooding man in the largest shelter waved for the gang to lower their weapons.
"Whadda you want, Scharnhorst?" an angry snarl greeted the City in the Sea’s third Governor as she stomped into the center of the wet camp, a full dozen of her soldiers behind her. She made her way immediately to the largest shelter, which had tarps tied to the posts to enclose the shelter partially. As she approached, her tan pants and shirt blending in with the dirt, the gang’s leader watched her advance with a cantankerous, ill-tempered expression on his scarred face. As she splashed through the mud toward the shelter and lifted a foot to step into it, the two other people on the platform pulled weapons and pointed them at her, their faces bored, seemingly indifferent to killing her or not. The big woman stepped back a pace, out into the rain, folded her thick arms and glared down the husky blond man sprawled in a crudely constructed throne-chair, ornamented with a fortune in ivory.
"What I always want, Hammer. That wretched Old Blood Mechanic out of my way, permanently."
Hammer snorted, tossing the joint of meat he was gnawing on away. "Yeah, but somehow all your brilliant plans to get Tenrec always end up with my gang getting the short end of the stick, and takin’ all the lumps." He leaned forward in his chair, his broad face twisted with anger. "Not interested, Governor, you don’t pay well enough to get me to do another of your stinkin’ jobs."
"Not even for a fortune in silver?" Scharnhorst smirked at him, the flare of greed in Hammer’s eyes at the mention of the silver enough to tell her she had already won.
"What kinda fortune?" Hammer asked, slumping back in his chair, but the washy blue eyes were sharp and hard as he stared narrowly at Scharnhorst.
"Your kind, Hammer. Tenrec wrecked another one of my plans, and he’s planning to ship a fortune in silver through the pass to his garage to finish the job."
The big outlaw snorted and stretched his legs out in front of him, "Yeah, we heard about that, Scharnhorst. You’ve done some stupid things playin’ in the nightmare ruins, but I’d’a thought nearly killing the entire city last time would have smartened even you up. Nothin’ but death comes outta those old places."
Scharnhorst’s face went red as the poacher’s taunt scored. "You want the job or not, Hammer? I got better things to do than stand here in the rain."
"Yeah, what the hell, at least I’ll get paid for it this time. When’s he moving the silver?" Hammer abandoned his careless pose and sat up, his face mirroring his sharp avariciousness.
Scharnhorst sneered as she told him, "Through the pass above Verizano’s Point sometime in the next three days. That Wassoon woman, Hannah Dundee, will be leading the group."
"Hunh, I owe her for the last time we tangled," and the poacher’s hand strayed to a newer scar in the maze of them striping his face. "It’ll be a pleasure to run into her again."
"Your amusements are your own business, Hammer. Just remember half the silver’s mine." Scharnhorst waited for the outburst, but the big poacher surprised her.
"You’ll get your half, Scharnhorst, just make sure you don’t try to take mine." The big poacher toyed with the handle of the machete embedded in the platform’s floor next to his chair.
"Don’t worry, Hammer, you’ll get what’s coming to you." Scharnhorst smiled at him, but there was no warmth in that rapacious expression.
"That’s what I thought you’d say." He jerked his head toward the big truck that had carried Scharnhorst and her men in. "Now take a hike. You’re not Governor here. You oughta remember that, Scharnhorst."
Scharnhorst turned away, and was halfway back to the truck as she muttered through clenched teeth, "Oh, believe me, Hammer, I think about it all the time." She climbed into the passenger seat as the men piled in the back, and the truck took off with a splatter and spray of muddy water.
The rest of the poachers had gathered in Hammer’s shelter; and the lone female of the group, Milka, one of the two with her gun trained on Scharnhorst the entire time, asked Hammer, "What’s the deal, boss? She screws us every time."
"Yeah, and I’ve had enough of it. We’re leaving this territory for better pickings. We’re gonna take that silver in the pass and keep going west. Even if we don’t hit Wassoon, we’ll still have enough money to buy ourselves whatever we want." Hammer flexed his hands, and stared challengingly at them, "And when we find a new territory, we start takin’ what we want, with no Jack Tenrec to stop us. Scharnhorst can wait all she likes. We ain’t comin’ back." The poachers looked at each other in surprise, then grinned voraciously.
"Sounds good, boss." Milka agreed. The rest of the gang nodded, and Hammer’s expression changed.
"We go north into the pass in the morning, then. If Dundee’s gonna head through the pass, she’ll be moving fast and counting on no one knowing she’s coming. She’ll run right into our arms." Hammer laughed coarsely, cracking his knuckles. "This’ll be easy."
***