Hello, Hello, Hello...HELLO! I wish I was a good enough writer to convey the off-key harmonized greeting the Three Stooges were famous for. Since I'm not, I hope you'll use your imagination to fill it in. This is Chapter 40. It's probably time to tell you that this story has a total of 50 chapters, so...the count down will begin with the next chapter. I hope you're still reading, and even more than that, I hope you're still enjoying. I've had a ton of fun writing and posting this story, as well as hearing from all you lovely, generous, just fantastic people out there. I hope this story brightens your day when you read it. Now, just because we're getting near the end, DON'T WORRY, a ton of great stuff is packed into the next chapters. It's going to be an interesting ride all the way to the end. AND, once this story is over, there will be another one right behind it. It might even be about the world of Solum. Maybe. You'll have to stay tuned to see. I hope you do. Now, let's get into it!
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40
A Fight and a Climb
Twin machine guns spat simulated death at the eight-hundred-foot-tall mountain top, a ratchety metallic sound added treble to the bass of the barking blanks. Grenade launchers fired anti-personnel shells that burst with shock and paint to indicate a hit. The launchers spent; they were discarded in favor of shoulder-slung submachine guns. The platform of magic supporting the Dux brothers could have been an illustration in an action comic. Cy looked very much at home behind the long, heavy barrel of the tripod mounted machine gun. His powerful arms rippled in time with the exploding blanks, the weapon an extension of his being. The sub-machine gun in Vulp's hands looked small for him, but its matte-black finish and utilitarian design suited the image.
By comparison, the opposite platform looked ludicrous with petite Neb and pleated and pressed Bem blasting away. All four faces, on all four people held aloft, had the set expression of purpose and focus on a job. Their precise movements and lack of reaction, showed off their training and professional status. I admired them all.
Shawn was next to me, machine pistol drawn and scanning for potential ground attack. I couldn't protect us in a box, because it would seal my magic in and I wouldn't be able to maintain the platforms. I had four sides around us, but an open top. Someone could still lob a grenade at us or shoot from a tree. Shawn was to watch out for me while I focused on our other teammates. I had my doubts that he would fire his weapon if we were threatened, but I hadn't figured out what to do about that yet, so I ignored the problem.
I kept my eyes on the hovering platforms and watched for hand signals to move them in any direction or to lower them away from harm if a weapon jammed or they were overwhelmed by fire from the surface. We had earpieces for communication, but we'd been instructed to use them for emergencies only. We'd been warned that chatter was a distraction, and the enemy might have had tech to listen in.
It wouldn't have done them any good if they had. The battle was over too quickly for the enemy to strategize. The heavy weapons and ease of deploying them stacked the deck in our favor. Neb's overwhelming force easily penetrated the enemy's defenses and wiped out their soldiers to the last man. Bem had only just started his second magazine and both heavy machine guns still had the better part of half their ammunition to spare. We'd done very well, none on our team had so much as a scratch.
I lowered our gunners down along the black face of the mountain, returning them gently to the ground. We were at a different location for our war-game, this time a stark black tower that was geologically similar to the Demon's Citadel. We were also fighting a different special forces group. "That's proof of concept at least." Neb said as she touched down. She rerolled her sleeves up, rubbed her arms, and kneaded her shoulders. Her upper body seemed sore from the pounding recoil of the machine gun.
The Dux brothers high-fived and chest-bumped each other. Vulp remained stoic, but Cy was flushed and exhilarated from the adrenalin of the battle. "Proof of concept my ass!" He exclaimed. He left his machine gun hanging from its tripod at an odd angle and practically skipped passed me to celebrate with Neb and Bem. He slapped Bem's back hard enough to drive the air from the lean man's lungs and send him stumbling forward. Cy turned to Neb, came to rigid attention, and gave her a crisp salute. "Ma'am, it's my opinion, that if our real enemy is anything like what we faced today, we've got this licked."
He spun toward me, his hand in the air. "High-five big guy!"
I raised my hand as high as I could to tease him. He dropped into a boxer's crouch, fists up and leading with his right. "Oh, you think you're funny cause you're tall, do you?" He bounced on his feet and jabbed like he was going to punch my guts. I pictured a heavy curtain of magic between us. Cy lunged, got tangled in it, and broke up laughing. "OK, OK, you win this round." He laughed and hung on the curtain.
I stood him on his feet and released the magic. He shook my hand. "I thought you were full of it when you told me about that magic carpet thing you do. Wish I would have had you with me on every mission. Would'a been a lot easier. You can't be up in the thick of it, but if I can fly into battle behind twelve-hundred fifty-caliber rounds a minute, the fuck if I care where you are!" His iron grip jerked me into a bone-crushing, back-slapping hug.
Everyone was pleased except Shawn. The all too familiar waves of anxiety radiated from him. He withdrew from all of us and worried. Gonna have to talk to him.' I thought. This can't go on.'
"Alright, Church, you're up." Bem said, breaking into the celebration. He was standing in front of me, a curious smirk on his face. His presence so near me took me by surprise. I hadn't noticed him moving into my personal space while I was distracted by Shawn's anxiety.
"What do you mean, `up?'" I asked, already worried about the direction his orders were likely to take.
Bem pointed to the mountain. "We need to know if you can do it. Get going."
I looked where he pointed and back and didn't believe him. "You're fucking with me."
"Nope." He pulled two sets of climbing gloves from his back pocket and offered them up. "Pair for you and a pair for Shawn. I'll yell when lunch is ready. You can float me up and I'll bring it to you."
I crossed my arms, refusing to touch the gloves. "What if I tell you to get fucked?"
Bem grinned. "Nothing I'd like more, but you won't, Shawn won't, Neb doesn't have the equipment, and the muscle men like women. What can you do?" He shrugged and jerked a look up the mountain. "Get to it."
I looked to Neb, hoping against hope that Bem was trying to haze me and she would get me out of it. She wouldn't. "Sorry...but he's right. You've never climbed this much height and never in one go. I know it feels like we're punishing you for not being able to ride your own power, but we have to know if you can do this."
I rubbed the back of my neck and snatched the gloves from Bem with what would have been a right hook if I'd made a fist out of my hand. I quickly resigned myself to climbing the mountain, but that didn't stop me from throwing a tantrum. "FUCK! Goddamned fucking demon king...fucking mountain." I ranted. I pointed my fist full of gloves at Bem. "You're pissed no one will fuck you? I'll fucking trade you. WHY THE FUCK DON'T BAD GUYS EVER LIVE IN RANCHERS?" I mimed the actions as I narrated. "We'd open the gate, stroll up the walk, knock on the door," I knocked on an invisible door, "and when he opened it, we'd kill the shit out of him! NO FUCKING MOUNTAIN REQUIRED!"
"Church." Neb called. I stopped ranting to glare at her. She was trying very hard to keep a smirk off her face, but she failed. She waved a vague hand at the mountain. "Please."
I shrugged and let my shoulders sag; all the anger drained out of me. "OK...Neb, because you asked nicely, I'll climb this pointless rock." I pulled my gloves on and offered the other pair to Shawn. "Will you go with me, please?"
"Sure." He accepted the gloves and seemed to stand a little taller. The prospect of a long climb forced the anxiety from him. Funny how that worked. It only served to increase mine. Shawn immediately switched into focused climbing mode. He eyeballed the mountain, looking for a lane for us.
Neb came over to smooth down my ruffled feathers. "Believe me," she said with her hand on my upper arm in a friendly way, "I wish we could just knock on the door and kill the shit out of them. This goddamned mountain hasn't made my life any easier either."
The way she said it made me glad I'd ranted a little. Hearing Neb say something as ridiculous as kill the shit out of them' and goddamned mountain' was priceless. I laughed out loud and felt much better. I almost asked her if she was sending good vibes to me, but I decided I didn't want to know. "What's for lunch?" I asked to focus on a topic that I did care about.
"Rations; you have a request?"
"Send me a double meatloaf."
"Done...Shawn?" She asked.
"Chicken anything." He said without tearing his eyes from the goddamned mountain.
"Alright, I guess I've stalled long enough." I checked the straps on my gloves as I got ready to start my climb. A worry worked its way into my head, and I voiced it. "Wait, where will the other team come down?"
"Don't worry," Neb dismissed my concern, "there's a road cut into the other side. They'll drive down."
"They'll fucking drive down." I grumbled. "Fucking goddamned mountain." I checked the straps on the gloves again, asked Shawn to recommend a lane, and started up.
Several hours later, Shawn and I sat on a ledge, eating our lunches. Neb brought them instead of Bem. I'd finished my first meatloaf platter and was waiting for the second to heat. Shawn was eating the dessert brownie that came with his meal. "I guess this doesn't suck." I offered to get conversation moving.
Shawn slid his tray and utensils back in the ration box and folded the flaps shut. He put the box in his lap and laid his hands on top of it. "Whenever I feel lost, or the world seems too big, I come to a place like this or I run. Since Roeb left me, I've been climbing. Even on Earth, I found places to climb. I don't meditate, never saw the point of sitting still when I could be doing something. This is my meditation."
I checked on my meal, and found it was ready. I tore it from the box and peeled the film from the tray. I used the cardboard fork to heap mashed potatoes on the meatloaf, cut a big piece from the whole, and shoveled it in. "Is the climb helping you deal with earlier?" I asked around a mouthful of food.
He knew I was referring to his anxiety over the Dux brothers' talk of killing and answered accordingly. "It's like what you said about drinking; the problem is still there. This helps me not think about it for a while."
I chewed and swallowed. "I should have gotten addicted to climbing shit. Instead of being a fat, bleary-eyed drunk, I could have been ripped." I returned my thoughts to his problem. "Do you want to talk about it?"
His anxiety came back in putrid waves. He seemed to shrink. The empty ration box crushed under his hands. "Church, I don't think I can do this. I don't think I can point an instrument of death at another person. It's horrible. How can I reconcile murder with my gift? How could I ever offer to heal someone again with blood on my hands."
I ate my meal while I thought about his problem. I had a similar aversion to the idea of killing, but I'd made some peace with the fact that I might not have a choice. Neb said it best, I lived in the world and accepted how it worked. Shawn hadn't accepted it yet. He was very innocent in spite of the years he'd spent with Ars. I wondered how Shawn would feel if he knew how much blood Ars had on his hands. I assumed he never killed directly, but I was certain scores of people had met their end at his say so. All holders of high office are responsible for death.
An idea hatched out of that line of reasoning. "What do you think of our teammates?" I asked. I felt Shawn's emotions shift. He thought I'd changed the subject. I hadn't, I just decided to approach it from a different angle.
He released the pressure on the ration box. It partially sprung back to its factory shape. "We just met Cy and Vulp, but I like them. Cy must have apologized to me a hundred times. He seems like a really warm man. Yesterday at lunch he spent the whole time talking to me and showing me pictures of his family. Vulp is difficult to read. He says so little. I think he's just like his brother, maybe nicer because he lets Cy have all the attention."
"How about Neb and Bem?" I prompted.
"I didn't think I was going to like Neb...too formal...prickly, but since she started to loosen up, I like her a lot. She knows so much and is a great teacher." He trailed off and didn't say anymore.
"And Bem?"
His feelings got tangled up, so many I couldn't separate them to identify. He looked out to the horizon and seemed to draft his response in his head before he let me hear it. "I'm attracted to him. I know he bugs you with his teasing. He's doing it because he wants you to relax and be yourself. He told me he's very attracted to you."
"Ah," I waved a hand dismissively, "I'm a curiosity. The number of partners he must have had over the decades...staggers my imagination. He wants me `cause he's never had anyone like me."
Shawn turned his frozen eyes on me like he did when he needed to say something important. "That's part of it." He admitted. "Your physical size and the power you wield turn him on, but he admires you. He told me so."
"That's rich." I said dismissively. "If he admires me, it's only `cause he doesn't know me that well."
Shawn shook his head. "I wish you hated yourself less. Bem told me he never met anyone as ill-suited to this type of work as you."
I cut him off. "And that inspires admiration?"
Shawn shook his head, both at my snide interruption and my sarcastic question. "No. What he admires is that nothing stops you. The odds have been against you since we started this adventure, but no matter what comes, you keep putting one foot in front of the other. Look where you are." Shawn threw his arms out in a grand gesture. "We're five-hundred feet into an eight-hundred-foot climb, and you're enjoying yourself. If you asked the you from a month ago, what would he say about this?"
"He would've thought I switched to drinking wood alcohol." I muttered.
"I'm not sure what that means, but I take it you see my point. Bem is very attracted to who you are. Kind of like me." He set a hand on my thigh and rubbed a little. "We haven't in a while, have we?"
"No." I agreed sourly. "Been too fucking tired to fuck. Don't start anything up here. We'll wind up distracting each other and fall to our deaths. I don't think we can fuck if we're dead."
Shawn snatched his hand away like he burned it. "Wouldn't want that. So...what do you think...about Bem?"
"What do you mean?" I looked up from scraping the last bit of food from my tray and read the answer in his face. He wanted to know if I'd agree to romp with Bem. "Oh, shit...I don't know. Would you have, already...you know?"
"Oh yes." He said with a deep nod and obvious enthusiasm.
I reached for my watch before I remembered I'd taken it off so it wouldn't interfere with the fastenings on my gloves. I gripped the wrist where the watch should have been. I thought about it and started to get turned on. I realized how dangerous that was and beat the thoughts down with a mental mallet. "OK. I'm in, but not after a twelve. If we're gonna do this, let's do it right. Pick a day when we're not dog tired."
Shawn felt like he wanted to turn a cartwheel. I felt anxiety, but that was normal. I gathered the trash and put it in a telekinetic box to lower it to the ground. Shawn put his gloves back on and stood to reassess the lane we were in. I lowered the trash and turned to the wall. He reached out to a handhold and stopped. "Why did you ask me about the team?"
My original purpose had gotten lost in the discussion about Bem and I'd forgotten it. I was glad he hadn't. "Every one of those four people you just praised, including the one you want to invite into your bed, is a killer. Not one of them is a murderer, but all four have taken life, probably many lives. Think about everything you just said and ask yourself if that fact changes your mind about any of them."
I could tell from the look on his face, and the emotional turmoil I felt along our link, that I'd shocked him. I think the realization was every bit as intense for him as finding out that meat is flesh, or at least that it is everywhere that isn't Solum. I purposely didn't give him a chance to respond. I latched onto the mountain and started up.
It was just dinnertime when I set my feet back on the ground. We'd climbed all the way to the summit and all the way down without repelling. It was the hardest physical day I'd put in, probably ever, but I did it. Neb met us as we stepped off the wall. She handed me a sports drink and an already-warmed meatloaf ration. I could have kissed her. I'd been eating nuts steadily, even sent down from the summit for a fresh bag, but the hard work had burned through everything I had and then some.
I didn't bother to remove my gloves before I ripped into the meal. "Good work, both of you." Neb said. "Today was a turning point. I can tell the Steward we're ready."
"Ready?" I asked, some green beans escaping around the word.
Instead of being offended at my rudeness, Neb laughed at me. I was a little embarrassed, and I renewed my hope that once the world wasn't ending, my appetite would settle down. My body was getting a punishing workout every day, but my jaws were working even harder.
Neb shoved her sleeves up and rested her hands on her narrow hips. "While you were climbing, we were working on mission planning. Our new teammates are already integrated and know their roles," she nodded her head my way to indicate her next comments were about me, "your power and control is excellent, and your physical progress has been nothing short of astounding. While I know some thanks for that is due Shawn, you have worked so hard...I'm impressed. Bem and I have an appointment with the Steward tomorrow to discuss moving forward to the real mission. You may attend, or you are welcome to take the day."
"What time?" I asked as I inhaled the dessert brownie in one oversized bite.
"First thing, eight o'clock, probably until noon. We have quite a bit of ground to cover."
I heaved a nervous breath and slugged down the rest of my sports drink to clear the dry brownie from my throat. "I think we should be there." I was tempted to take the day, but didn't want final decisions made without at least understanding how they affected us. I shifted gears and turned to Shawn. "About the other matter, what do you think about inviting Bem for a matinee?"
"You want to see a play?" Shawn asked.
Neb snorted and smirked at Shawn. "Shawn, a matinee is a polite way of indicating sex in the afternoon."
"Oh," Shawn inclined his head and filed this new information in his mind, "I'll see if he's free."
Neb watched him walk away and shook her head. "I forget how very young he is. Finally giving in, are you?"
I crushed the ration box in my fists and shrugged. "I can't see any reason to hold him off. He wants it, Shawn wants it, and if I'm honest, so do I. This is my world now and I need to learn how to live in it."
"You won't regret it." Neb grinned. "The man is skilled."
A wave of desperate lust crashed into me. It was so intense, I stumbled and reached behind to the cliff face for support. "What's wrong?" Neb asked.
I turned away from her as quickly as I could and held onto the wall. "What's Shawn doing?" I asked.
She looked, "Bem is kissing and groping him."
"That's what's wrong. I'm getting the feedback."
She leaned her back on the wall next to me, her arms crossed under her small bust. "It must be very intimate to feel him like that. I can see why you're struggling. Bem is all over Shawn...oh...he just got his hand in Shawn's pants. Shawn is trying to fight him off, but Bem is too fast for him. You should see the looks on Cy and Vulp's faces. This is making me a little warm, you should watch."
"Neb...I'm begging you."
She patted my back. "No need to beg. I'm sorry for teasing you."
She pushed calm into the three of us, displacing the lust with feelings of peace. I got my feet under me and made sure the calm had reached every part of my body before I stood off the wall. "Thanks." I said to her. I felt great, dreamy and floaty, like everything was right with the world. Bem and Shawn separated and the bright flush faded from their faces. The Dux brothers didn't know which way to look. They awkwardly went back to packing up the van. Shawn came over to us. "I suppose he said yes." I offered.
"He actually didn't say anything, but I'm pretty sure we can assume he plans to join us."
"Neb," I asked, "how long can you keep up what you're doing?"
She laughed again. "I think long enough to keep you from getting mauled until we get back to The HALL."
I surprised her with a hug. "Thank you."
We piled in the van. Neb must have cranked up her power because all three of us were asleep before we were even on the main roads to Epistylium. That was fine with me. When we got back, Neb was nice enough to wake Shawn and me first and give us enough head start so we were driving away before she woke Bem.