Nanophlogiston chapter 40

[mc776]

I felt House-Made-Of-Needles' psychic recoil, then Many-Discarded-Stones', before I heard Captain Alvarez's voice. And even then I could not make out the words.

Imagine every time you've ever been at a party and two guests started going at each other. Imagine that tension just before you notice a small line of people huddled together with their backs to you, before you realize it's a circle and something's going on inside it. Imagine your becoming conscious of the yelling - or impact sounds on the other side of that line - and you and your buddies start running for it. Now imagine that feeling and multiply it by three, then mix it with... how would I describe the recoil of being hit with the specifically alien parts of an alien mind? Like that rush of embarrassment when you walk up to someone you think is an old friend or lover and you're already in their space when they turn around and it's actually a stranger. And then long wispy feelers come out of the stranger's eye sockets to prod you judgingly.

Now imagine that whole package all delivered in a single baffling gut-punch.

We were too far away from her to hear her actual words, so everything was filtered through the Children of the Worthless's parsing of the thoughts that they carried. They understood that she was angry and drunk and wanted to beat the living shit out of Jean Hébert, and in her drunken reasoning somehow expected him to emerge in human form "out" of the Old One artifact for that purpose; but it was all associated with strange twists of meaning and implication specific to khoïkopithecene culture and anatomy that made it profoundly awkward and uncomfortable for everyone.

It was enough to get us running over to the shore.

Weeping-At-The-City-Gates' nonlinguistic bark and my "HEY!" were simultaneous and for the most part interchangeable. A few of the men had already begun forming a semicircle around a spot just under the low tide line, their feet and tails disappearing into the swirling waves. Some of them turned to look at us, while others kept their focus on the two participants of the fight as they themselves froze in the middle of their scuffle and each shifted her weight ever so slightly in case they had to face us.

"What the hell do you people think you're doing!?" My outburst translated surprisingly well into telepathic-shrimp-ese, so Weeping-At-The-City-Gates didn't add his own version. The night-vision overlay in my helmet faded into view and I could start getting more of an answer myself.

There is a ridge in the front of a shrimp just above their first main stabby-arms, after a few inches of gap beneath their final pair of jaws, that looks in its placement not entirely unlike a human collarbone - or a lapel. It was with this that Alvarez was grabbing onto Undead-Dragon, her opposite foot stomping her stinger deep into the sand and muck beneath the now-foamy waves, her opposite hand brandishing the plasma derringer like a hammer. Undead-Dragon's body stood out in its own undulating waves above the water; it seemed like she had been trying to grapple the captain just before the stomp. Undead-Dragon's own arms were a mess of blades alternately rearing back or stopped mid-strike, fortunately unable until now to get access to the captain's neck under her helmet.

It didn't occur to me until much later that that model of plasma derringer was officially sold as the Apocalypse Arms "Mjolnir".

"I was trying to have a peaceful discussion with the Tyrant through his device when this... person!... suddenly stomped over here and started screaming at Glorious-Army!"

I winced as Weeping-At-The-City-Gates' mind-voice rang through my head, and I could see a few of his underlings do the same from the corner of my eye: "What!?" He rushed over and separated the two women and turned to face Undead-Dragon. "This is madness! Any dialogue with the Tyrant must be done through the proper channels!"

Undead-Dragon uncoiled away from Captain Alvarez and turned entirely to face her chief meditator. "Proper channels! Everything the people have heard is filtered through your diplomat team! This so-called Tyrant has already told me many things you have hidden! We need to know the truth!"

"The truth! Fine! Many-Discarded-Stones, get over here and start opening your mind! I'm going to bring the telepathic field to elevated mode--but first!" - he turned towards the stumbling captain, then to me - "Daughter-Of-The-King, Fugitive-From-The-Worthless, I need your assistance. Would you agree that, if the Tyrant or his minion tries to do anything untoward in our psionic vulnerability, you will take your death-wands and blast that rod into pieces?"

Captain Alvarez already had her Mjolnir trained on the Tyrant-rod. At that distance "into pieces" was extremely unlikely. I casually wandered over and shouldered my shotgun. "If," I grunted.

I did not know until that moment that the shrimps' faces were articulated enough to glare angrily, but Undead-Dragon was definitely doing that to both me and Weeping-At-The-City-Gates now. This must've been pretty embarrassing, really - after all, between--

"You fool!" The horrible rumbling voice of fanged, clawed strangulation slammed into me. Shadowy psychic tendrils wavered about in my space as Undead-Dragon's wrath barely contained itself for now. "Both of you! Meditator and alien, accuse me of failing to hold a line? This is not the battlefield, the Tyrant is not the Naked, and most importantly I AM the Chief Battle-Virgin, and being so I AM THE LINE."

She had read what I was thinking before I had even articulated it to myself.

I almost started pointing the shotgun at her when I felt the tendrils flail and retreat. What I could only describe as a colourful green thought - no, not a thought even, just a very rational-feeling sentiment - bubble around us, an effervescent vague bubble eternally in danger of popping or fading away, ever fading yet remaining untouched. When I dared to take my eyes off the rod and Alvarez, I saw Weeping-At-The-City-Gates standing next to me, completely relaxed in the centre of this silent green laughter.

From the corner of my mind's eye I could see the flickering dim blue and pink fuzz of Finkelstein and Gunnerbot cautiously coming down the coast. The rod's double aura in front of me was a murky tremble, drawn into itself and pinned by Alvarez's attention as though with a knife, and drowned out by the rainbow chatterings of the shrimps that had been watching for a fight. I looked further inland and saw House-Made-Of-Needles amidst a humming red ball of pressurized, carefully contained whoop-ass. She had a bow readied on her back and was aiming right for my face. We made eye contact.

I nodded and she nodded back, and then we waited.