Chapter 3 Myrocena

Chapter 3 Myrocena

On Tuesday morning Pluto got up dressed and went downstairs for breakfast. His mother was already at the table.

"Good morning," she said with her usual cheerful smile. Is there something you want to tell me?

"Yes there is..., I passed Tier Two."

"Congradualtions, now eat your breakfast while everything is still hot. The biscuits are piping and the gravy, delicious,"

"You already knew, didn't you?"

"As a matter of fact I did"

"Who told you?"

"A little bird.” She got up and began fluttering around….”Let me get your tea. The toast is hot, try some. The butter is soft, just the way you like it. Here, let me get your napkin."

"Mother!" he groaned. Are you going to tell me or not?"

"Maybe," she answered, "Now what's on your agenda?"

“I'll be moving on to the intermediate field. They will be setting up the Tier Three qualification. Today we’ll get to do a walk through and on Friday will be the first chance to qualify.”

“Feeling confident?”

"Sort of, but the level of difficulty is increasing."

"Who’s your battle partner?"

"A girl I met a couple of weeks ago."

"What’s her name?"

"Bedelia."

"Tell me about her."

"Not much to say really….except we work well together."

"If you qualify Wednesday, you’ll be on a Rip.

"How do you know what a Rip is?"

"I wasn’t born old. Vladimir and I had a Rip back when I was in school."

"I don’t really expect that to happen."

"If it does there’s going to be a lot of spectators start showing up. Money will be changing hands.

"What about seven straight Tier One Failures…. How does that factor in to the percentages?"

"Nobody will pay the slightest attention to that….a Rip is a Rip…In my day they called it “The Hat Trick."".

"Don’t get your hopes up."

"How good is this partner of yours?"

"She’s exceptionally accurate with the light bow."

"What’s her family name?"

"Whoa! I'm late, I really have to be going."

"She’s a Simian Elf, isn’t she?"

Pluto's heart sank. "So what if she is?"

"Don’t take that tone. I’m not prejudging her. If she’s good enough for you then she’s good enough for me."

"Whew! I should have mentioned it."

"Yes you should have... I had to find out from Olivia."

"I should have known."

"What's Bedelia like?"

"Very different. She’s extremely telepathic and they say that her mind can reach out four hundred miles."

"Is she attractive?"

"Cute, in a weird sort of way."

"Weird?"

"You'll just have to see her...She carries this doll around Mom, and talks to it like it's a real baby…it took some getting used to."

"What kind of doll?"

"You know, one of those training aid dolls that they issue the girls."

"Yes, I recall. I really would like to meet her."

"You bet," he replied dismissively, "I’ll bring her by one of these days."

Pluto kissed his mother, picked up his gym bag and walked out the door.

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On the way over to the athletic field he was thinking about the Tier Three Scenario. He was worried and began game playing some of the courses of action. Before he knew it he was at the stadium and going up the stairs. Bedleia was wating at the top, holding Molly.

"Hello, Pluto."

"Hey Bedelia," he answered. "Have some pleasant dreams?"

"Yes," she replied.

"About what?"

"I have plenty to think about."

"For instance?"

"Everything that's been happening...its all so overwhelming."

"I've been doing some of that myself...I know the feeling."

"You do?"

"Yes I do... My life is becoming a whole lot more than passing the Home Defense Course."

"So is mine."

"But we need to stay focused." He put his arm around her shoulder. "If you want, lets say we go over to the Intermediate Course and check out the street."

"That’s a good idea," said Bedelia, taking hold of his wrist. As they walked Pluto began feeling self conscious. Bedelia took his hand from off her shoulder. It was not a rebuff, but in response to his feelings. She knew he was trying to reconcile his emotions with the growing momentum of their relationship. He was sensitive about attracting too much attention, and the teasing of their friends.

"Pluto," she said, "I have something I need to tell you."

"What is it?"

"You know I’m telepathic."

"I’m beginning to realize that," he replied with a smile."

"You know how you signaled Yesterday, by wiggling your back?"

"Yeah."

"Well, that isn’t really necessary…you see I know what you want me to do, at the same instant you think it."

"Huh?"

"As soon as you have an idea and form the words, I know it."

"I understand that."

"But there's more I can do."

"Like what?"

"I can get under your skin and let you get under mine."

His heart gasped, his breath sucked and he stopped dead in his tracks.

"Not sex! Silly," she giggled, catching herself on his arm. "It's called a mind probe."

"I wasn’t thinking about, sex...."

"Were too.."

"What I was doing was considering the possibilities, in order to understand exactly what you're talking about."

"I see, my fault...I should have explained better." but she kept on giggling anyway.

"When you don't speak clearly, I have difficulty analysing all the posssibilities.

"My mistake Pluto, my mistake, though I'm not offended and don't see why you should be so embarrassed."

"I'm not embarrassed."

"I'm sorry, OK, I'm sorry." What I meant to say was that I can slip into the edge of your mind and at the same time let you slip into the edge of mine."

"Now that has possibilities."

"I knew you'd see the advantage. Through the probe, you know what I’m thinking and I know what you’re thinking; and there isn't any touching, hearing or seeing needed at all."

"I understand what you're saying but it still sounds a bit abstract."

"You want to try it?"

"Sure."

"Ok. To show you how it works, let’s pretend we’re dancing. Hold out your arms. Good now I’ll hold out mine….We won't touch but keep this space between us. Are you ready?"

Pluto looked around nervously hoping nobody was watching. Now what is supposed to happen? I don’t feel anything."

"Start to dance."

He started dancing. It was a box step. As he moved there came a sense that she was following his lead. He pretended he could see her... In his mind he held her in his arms. Daring a peek he saw that she was moving effortlessly and in consonance with his steps. Wow, she's good, he thought."

Then he noticed that her eyes were closed. He began moving sideways, backwards and forwards and she followed as if she was standing in his shoes. Then he began turning about and she followed with a lilting and effortless grace.

"Close your eyes, you cheater " she laughed gaily, "Close your eyes."

He did, as if he were dancing with himself in a dream, only it wasn't a dream and he wasn't dancing with himself. In his mind she moved before him, turned with him, went backwards and forwards and sideways and twirled around and around, never missing a step. Suddenly she came to him putting his hand about her waist and taking hold of his. Abruptly he stopped and opened his eyes. She stood before him, looking up, poised and smiling.

"My goodness Pluto," she exclaimed, "For a big guy, you're a wonderful dancer."

"Thank you my dear," he answered graciously.

Now that you understand how the probe works, explain to me what the plans are for Tier Three?"

"Ah Yes, the plan. Do I ever have a plan....On the first series, we’ll encounter a Troll, A Goblin and a Bat Wraith."

"So what do we do?"

"For the first encounter I think we should stand fast. We’ll let them close until they’re halfway from the corner... to where we’re standing. Then we need to maneuver in a direction away from the Troll, and into the Goblin."

"Go on."

"That will put the Goblin first and the Troll behind him, with the Gnome trying to get us from the flank. You shoot the Gnome through the head and I’ll take out the Goblin. Then you step back and I’ll take care of the Troll."

"What if the Gnome is wearing a full helmet?"

"What makes you think that?"

Bedelia shrugged innocently inclining her head towards Demetrio. She tapped her head and smiled.

"You’ve got to be kidding me….a full helmet on the Gnome?"

"A cladded helmet!"

You've got to be kidding.. Why?

"The think I'm messing with their minds."

"Are you?"

"No! That would be cheating."

"Well I guess we’ll just have to sweep by and I’ll knock it off…. Then you can tag him."

"That'll work."

"This dancing idea of yours, That’s the strategy we’ll use. You just move with me and I’ll know that you’re covering my backside."

"Think of me as your Shadow."

"In the next sequence, instead of the Gnome we’ll see the Bat Wraith. Where do you suppose the wraith will appear?"

"I suspect," said Bedelia smiling again, "that it will come from the front this time and try and keep your big body between itself and my arrow."

"Very well, then we will do a twirling maneuver and you can let fly as it spins into view. Then we maneuver the goblin and troll as before and I will deal with them one at a time."

"I feel good about this," said Bedelia, beaming with confidence.

"In the last sequence There will be the troll, two Goblins and two bat wraiths. In this sequence we need to fall back down the street. As we do the Goblins will outdistance the Troll and the Wraiths will be the first to arrive. Again we will do the pirouette, and you can engage them with your bow. Once that is settled we will move on to the Goblins as we did with the Troll, putting one in front of the other. I will kill one, then the other and when the Troll finally shows up he will get the usual treatment."

I'm so excited," said Bedelia, jumping up and down. "I can hardly wait 'til Friday."

"Now, I'm going to sketch the three scenarios in the sand and I want us to dance our way through each one of them. He bowed low, "Ready?"

"Charmed!" she replied.

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Olivia sat at her window in the study. It was late afternoon and she was engaged in one of her favorite pastimes; street watching. From the window of her parlor she had a great view of the boulevard that ran in front of her house. She was a keen observer and her telepathic powers, when augmented, had a range of about fifty yards. She enjoyed picking out someone passing by and putting them into a classification. Then she would observe their demeanor and dress and try and determine visually their occupation and frame of mind. Once this was done she would shift into passive telepathy and confirm if her hypothesis was correct. It nearly always was, however, there was one passerby who had a shrouded mind. She was a Special Operating Force (SOF) soldier...Pluto's Battle Buddy.

If this wasn’t intriguing enough, imagine her surprise when they both came walking up the avenue, holding hands.

“Come here!” she called out to Squire Rogoletti. The Squire was her Butler, Secretary, and Live in Boy Friend and whatever other additional duties the moment required.

“Look! Look!” she called out in excitement. “Pluto is walking up the street with Bedelia.”

Rogoletti hurried to her side, looked out and smiled. “Sure enough.”

“You know her?”

“You might say that.”

“Tell me everything.”

"She's Pluto's battle partner, a female SOF soldier."

"I know that, what else?"

“Information of such importance comes at a great price,” he said, kissing her neck.

“Later,” she said in annoyance, “Tell me what you know.”

“Bedelia's a Simean Elf. One of those taken at Myrocenia, and guess what? My men and I were the ones who rescued her.”

“Really? You never talk much about the war and I never wanted to press, but now I simply must know… After all she’s walking with my son, and if I'm not blind, it's more than an academic interest.”

“Wait here just a minute while I fetch something. It'll help me fill you in on the details.”

Please! Rogo, I don’t need a military briefing….

However, when she turned, Squire Rogoletti had gone to his room. In a few minutes he returned with an old map. Spreading it out on the conference table he began explaining.

“First you need to understand a few things.” he said pointing with his finger. “Right here is where Myrocena is located.”

“I’ve heard the name.”

“It’s a fortress and it sits on this finger of bluffs that extend twenty miles into the Free Territories. For years nobody paid them much attention until the Republic decided to build a fort there. At first it wasn’t much more than a trading settlement with a palisade, but every year there were improvements until before long they had a well fortified base. As you can see it’s located on the high ground astride the main road from Tristan City to the border of Ksimet Province.

“I don’t see the border… for that matter I don’t see Tristan City.”

“This is a local map but if you look at where the road drops down off the bluff and onto the plain you will see an arrow where it runs off the map, pointing towards Tristan city. See the arrow labeled on the margin?”

“I see it, and this must be the road to the fortress and it continues North East until it leaves the map again at the margin… and you have another arrow drawn, labeled Kismet Province.”

“You have the eye of a soldier.”

“I can read a map, Rogo.”

“Anyway, ever since the War of Confederation ended, there have been endless skirmishes along the border. These tactical encounters were traditionally kept low key and not viewed by either side as serous enough to start a war.”

“I remember the talk of fighting… but it was mostly through my involvement with the Council. There was not a lot of local coverage. There was a sense of something important going on but it was low key, not anything that caught the public interest.”

“For those of us who were there, these tactical encounters were anything but low key. We all realized the strategic importance of what was going on.”

“Well, here at home it was billed as just another one of those endless border disputes. They were seen as more of the same old news.”

“Most everyone was taken in by the lack of hype. It was none the less extremely serious business. As the years passed the fighting grew in intensity. So did the patience of the Empire. Once we wrestled Myrocena from their hands it all but restarted the war. If last minute negotiations had not diffused matters that would certainly have been the case.”

“So how were you involved?”

“At the time I was a Company Commander. I was involved from the beginning to the end.”

“Why was it such a big deal?”

“The Fortress was being used for covert operations.”

“What kind?”

“All kinds… Reconnaissance patrols, kidnappings, infiltration, intrigues and intelligence gathering. Do you remember the Coffer Stall Scandal?”

“Seems like I do. Didn’t some bullion disappear?”

“It wasn’t bullion, it was even more precious than that…it was Coffer Stall. Ten wagon loads were stolen. It was a Defense Department nightmare. A fortune in precious metal, in broad daylight, right up the road to Myrocenia and on to Corinth. It was over half the strategic stockpile.”

“So what’s the big deal about Coffer Stall?”

“They use it to line helmets and shields…protects against psychic attack.”

“Does it work?”

You bet it does… keeps your brains from getting fried... Anyway that was the last straw. We launched a full scale attack but it was repulsed with heavy losses. Somehow they were able to anticipate exactly what we had in mind.”

“How did they do that?”

“I’ll get there in a minute. Afterwards we established a blockade that the Republican Guards had to break, once or twice a year, by pushing through a resupply column. Still the Republic clung to the outpost and refused to pull back. Each year the fighting became more and more heated until at last we were able to establish a siege.”

“The siege of Myrocenia…I remember that.”

“The Republic was prepared and the place was well stockpiled. There were cisterns for gathering rain waters in addition to wells for irrigation. The fortress was virtually self-sustaining.”

“Wasn’t it taken by some kind of ruse?”

“You have a good memory."

“It’s starting to come back to me."

“We made it look like we’d thrown in the towel and began pulling our forces back. The Republic immediately began resupplying and feeling good about themselves. What they didn’t realize was that the last convoy was taken by our SOF forces and used as a means for gaining entry.”

“Wasn’t Martha Tropolof‘s father involved in all that?”

“His commandos took the main gate and held it open until we got there. There was only a handful left alive when we got there and by that time he was dead.”

“You’re Martha’s god father aren’t you?”

“Vladimir and I were close friends.”

Sorry, sounds like he wasn’t the only one in the thick of things.”

“It was fierce fighting… In less than half an hour we had over a thousand warriors inside and put an end to it.”

“So tell me about Bedelia.”

“I’m getting to that right now…. I swear it was the damndest experience of my life.”

“Go on.”

“The real reason Myrocena was so important was because it was a listening post…

What?”

“Surprised us too.”

“A listening post?”

“What we discovered was that the Empire has bred a type of Elf, who had the ability to extend telepathy far beyond anything we ever dreamed possible. A species of telepathic ape’s had been cross-bred with an Elf. Their offspring were psychic dynamos.”

“Were they Apes or Mountain Elves?”

“Same thing… The term Mountain Elf is a euphemism for Ape.

"Are you sure?"

"They don't look anything like an Elf. They're big and hairy. Bedelia might look like an Elf, but her kin look like gorillas.

"I 've never seen one..."

"Then take it from me, I've seen them up close...now where was I?"

"You were talking about their telepathic abilities."

" Anyway they could read a person’s mind from over a mile away… I’m not talking about just sending messages over unbelievable distances... What I want to emphasise is they could read someone's mind over a mile away. That's how they knew more about what we were doing than we did. For years they had an advantage that kept them one step ahead of us.”

“How did you discover all this?”

“Once inside we heard this psychic disturbance.”

“Go on.”

“The Empire had a crisis action plan, in the event that the worst happened. It called for killing all the Simean Elves. As the end drew near, they tried to put the plan into effect but the adult Apes boarded up the nursery and attacked the Guardsmen in the corridor leading to the Kennel.”

“So what happened then?”

“I took my men to the source of all the commotion and dispatched the last of the soldiers trying to break down the door. There was an unbelievable carnage in the hallway and the Apes had killed all the Guardsmen but those last two.”

“Dear god…are you about to say what I think you are?“

“Once we secured the corridor, I was the first one through the door. There was this little girl, not more than six or seven, with the rest of the youngsters huddled behind her and she was hissing at me.”

“It was Bedeila wasn’t it?”

“Her eyes were gleaming like coals and her lips were curled and she was snarling.”

“What did you do?”

“I stopped dead in my tracks and hollered back to Sergeant Hollis. “My god, these are baby elves; Weird looking but honest to god baby elves.””

“This is unbelievable.”

“The other five peered out from behind her, their eyes glowing like hers, spitting like she was."

'Goodness gracious."

“We’re not going to hurt you….I swear to god we aren’t” I told them, not knowing if they could understand or not.”

“Could they?”

“You bet they could because there came into my mind a string of sharp thoughts with the warning, Better not if you know what’s good for you.

“What did you do?”

I backed up, making the empty hands gesture and thought real hard and slow…We are not your enemy.

I know who you are, she channeled back. Did they kill my whole family? Are they all dead?

“She was pleading with me to tell her different than what she already knew. She was aware of everything that had happened on the other side of the oak door and she wanted me to tell her it wasn’t so. It broke my heart to say the truth about something she already knew.”

“That is so sad.”

“I was at a loss for what to do and her thoughts just kept repeating themselves… razor sharp and unrelenting…Are all my people dead?

“Finally I answered, ““If the long haired ones were your kin, I’m afraid so Honey… The hall out there is littered with dead Guardsmen and Apes….”

She turned and vized to the five others, Wait here. “Show me,” she said.

“I’m not sure you want to see this,” I told her.

SHOW ME!

“It was like a hot poker in the eye. I gabbed my head and staggered backwards. Any thought of trying to spare her the witness, vanished. “Don’t do that to me again!” I warned her…“but if it’s that important then come see for yourself.”

“That poor little girl.”

“She walked out in the corridor and looked around. By then my men had the dead Apes laid on one side and the Guardsmen the other. Tears came to her eyes and the emotional outpouring was like lightening through a bath tub.. No Elf in the fortress was spared… It was powerful, gut wrenching and unlike anything I’d ever experienced.”

“What did she do?”

She knelt down before each of them. They had this blood soaked blond fur, covering their faces and sticking out from beneath their garments. She began stroking their silken hair, embracing them, and rocking back and forth. Soon the other infants, some barely able to crawl, followed and for them the reaction added fuel to the outpouring. ...Hugging, rocking and a racking, bitter sorrow. A mournful and unrelenting sadness.

“Did you get a look at their ears?”

“Huh?”

“Did you see the Ape’s ears?”

“Yeah?“

Were they pointed?

“As a matter of fact they were. So what? Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?“

“I'm sorry, go on.”

“Well, there's not much more to say... By that time the physic firestorm had spread, and the hall was crowded with our men, and as they came upon the scene they began weeping with the Simeans, unable to escape the power of their grief.”