Roseway
31-12-2003, 05:49
OK, this is just to introduce a major character, one of the Empire's (and therefore Roseway's) national heroes. Just for reference.
An old man walked through the halls of a corporate building. He looked extremely lithe and muscular for a man of his age, like someone who had let the years age his face only. He was dressed in plain gray robes. All in all, he looked extremely out-of-place in the headquarters of Seamore Corporation, the biggest company in capitalizt Sampetra. This feeling of incongruity increases when one catches sight of the rune-studded bladestaff he carried in his right hand.
His name was Lord Jason Wyndham.
As he turned a corner and headed for the express elevator, a huge security guard, a stoat with an eyepatch and a shotgun, turned and saw him. "Hey! You!" he shouted, unslinging his weapon. He stopped when he saw Lord Wyndham's smooth, hairless face. "What in..." The stoat trailed off. "Let me see your clearance!"
Jason looked at the stoat, easily seven feet tall relative to the old man. "I have no clearance. Please do not raise an alarm."
The stoat had already raised his radio. "I'm on Floor Three, with an unidentified intruder heading for the elevator. He looks dangerous."
Lord Wyndham had already leaped. He landed two feet in front of the guard and used his momentum to swing the bladestaff toward the huge stoat. Blue runes flared as it teleported through tough armor and most of the animal's skin, cutting easily through the guard's insides and teleporting out the other side.
The stoat fell, lifeless, with an accusing glare toward Jason.
The alarm had been raised, despite Jason's warning, and the auto-defense systems had already been turned on. Wyndham flipped through the hallway, dodging the bullets being pumped out by machine guns mounted next to security cameras, cut through the elevator doors, and jumped into the empty shaft.
He fell through the darkness and landed winded on the upcoming elevator. The elevator rose past the third floor where Wyndham had cut the elevator doors and sped up.
Jason looked up to see glowing lights rising above him. They were either the ceiling or another elevator.
As the elevator car Jason was on accelerated towards the lights, they failed to switch into another lane. Lord Wyndham coolly looked at the lights as they came toward him, and with a swift flick of his staff, cut through the control box on top of the car.
The car's lights turned off, it hovered for a moment, and dropped like a stone.
In the brief instant that the car had no velocity, Jason jumped from the car onto the wall. He grabbed onto an archaic cable that probably had not been used since the building had been used by Seamore. He inched along the cable until it ran into the wall, then headed the other way, feeling the wall for ventilation ducts. He finally found one, several feet from where he had first grabbed the cable, and climbed into it.
As he crawled through the dank tubing, he muttered. "I'm too old for this," he complained as he saw the first exit and shoved the grille off.
The auto-defense gun, seeing the motion of the grille falling to the floor, swiveled to the duct. It tracked the motion of what appeared to be a human hand, holding what appeared to be an acorn. Nothing remotely resembling a threat had poked through, so the camera resumed its silent patrol of the empty office.
Jason flicked the acorn through the air, guiding it with a small oak leaf. It hit the gun/camera assembly and shattered.
Lord Wyndham dropped into the room as the machine gun slowly turned to stone, and ran toward the computer terminal. A scared-looking ferret was hiding beneath the desk. "Are... you..."
"Yes."
Jason turned his staff toward the ferret. "This is my bladestaff," he said. "It can work no harm on those who will not harm its master, and it will do no good for those who will harm its master."
"I don't mean any harm! I'm just an engineer! I just thought I'd work in my boss's office while he was sick, and the alarm sounded, and I have a wife and a couple kids, and..." The ferret looked as if he were about to cry. "I don't wanna die!" he shouted.
Jason nodded. "Then you will not," he said. He nudged the staff a little, and pointed a shifting rune at the engineer. The rune flared into a bright blue light. As the engineer fell into unconsciousness, his last thought was, It's so pretty...
Lord Wyndham picked up the ferret with hardly an effort and sat him up against the wall. "Sleep well," he said.
He sat in front of the terminal. Touching either side of the minitower, he stared at the screen. Images began springing up, most of them about company loyalty and the evils of the other corporations.
Jason wicked those away and pried deeper into the network. He found a location marked "Security" and wiped the whole section clean. He also found the location of the science lab on the one hundred-thirty-first floor, so high up that if it exploded, the rest of the building would be safe.
Jason rose from the computer after giving it special instructions and walked into the hall.
The automatic security guns had been deactivated, but the security guards had not. Five burly rats were already patrolling the hall.
Lord Wyndham jogged to the security patrol. He jumped and twirled.
The guards, having been looking forward, never even saw him coming. They slumped to the floor.
Jason ran down the hall to the elevators. He pressed the "going up" button and leaned back.
Why can no one develop a lift that comes when you call it? Jason wondered as he waited, drumming his fingers on his staff.
He caught sight of a camera swiveling down the hall. Apparently they ran on a different system than the now-defunct machine guns.
It swung toward Jason and stopped. Jason smiled and waved. What else could he do? He wouldn't waste another acorn, and he couldn't hit that small a target from that far away.
The sound of heavy boots on carpet reached him from down the hall.
Jason whistled and waited for the elevator. Fifteen monitor lizards ran toward him, rifles raised. They wore the Seamore Security badge, but they were no guards. They were soldiers.
The lead lizard saw him and fired just as the elevator dinged its arrival. Jason ducked and forced the doors open. He swung sideways into the interior and hit the "close" button.
Bullets ripped through the middle of the car as Jason hit the button for the seventy-fifth floor. He heard fists banging futilely on the doors as the elevator sped toward the top of the shaft.
After about thirty seconds, the car decelerated. The elevator slowed down and stopped as the doors opened.
Apparently Seamore's garrison had been activated. More than twenty monitors in full battle armor were sitting at the end of the hall, at the other elevator.
Jason ran toward them, a yell from his native Scotland rising in his throat. Halfway down the hall he roared his family battle cry, a chilling call that would frighten a man to his bones.
The monitors stood, a few looking shaken by the call. They raised their assault rifles and stared incredulously at the approaching human.
Lord Wyndham stopped in front of the lizards and spun. His bladestaff, eager to cause destruction and death yet again, cut through the lizards' heavy body armor and tough scales like they weren't even there. He fell to the floor as they fired their rifles at him, then rose and jumped past them toward the elevator. He turned around and swung his staff recklessly. Lizards fell around him as he let the bladestaff enjoy the work.
Jason hit the button and jumped at the stone wall around the shaft. He melded seamlessly into the concrete, leaving no trace of his presence except for the dead monitors strewn over the hallway.
Troops pounded into the hall from the elevators and other parts of the floor. They gathered near the elevator, gawking at the sliced corpses. They must have been thinking about what would have caused it as the elevator reached the floor.
The soldiers started as the "ding" resounded through the rather crowded hallway. They sat back and watched the doors open into the empty car.
Nothing happened...
Suddenly Lord Wyndham burst from the wall. "Good morning," he said to the stunned troops as he ran into the car. He hit the button for the one hundred-twentieth floor, the highest on the panel, and sat back.
As the light went past the one hundred-first floor, the elevator stopped. The lights turned off, and the elevator started falling...
Jason cut through the wall and jumped into the concrete behind it. He stuck his head out and passively watched the car disappear into the darkness. He then stuck his hand out and searched for a grip. Finding none, he pulled out his staff and jammed it into the wall above him.
He pulled out of the wall, the concrete gripping him like some gray form of molasses. He swung from the staff and looked above him. The door to the hundredth floor was about ten feet above him.
He swung around, his feet high above his head, and blended with the wall above him. He pulled out his staff and swung above until he was standing upright in the wall. He then stuck the staff into the wall above his head and repeated the process.
Lord Wyndham found himself facing a blank, unopened door. He stood on his staff and steadied himself. He pulled out a small gray dagger and cut a Jason-sized hole in the door and swung himself through. Brushing himself off, he turned around to pull out his staff.
A voice rang through the corridor. "Don't move."
Jason paid it no heed. "And why not?" he said sarcastically. He yanked his weapon from the wall, stood up, and turned around.
A young-looking weasel was pointing a pistol at him. "Because if you do, I'll shoot you."
"Then why are you not shooting me yet?"
The weasel shrugged. "I guess I just wanted to see your face clearly. You people all look alike, but I'm guessing... you're Lord Jason?"
"I cannot deny it."
The weasel looked positively joyful. "So it is true... there are other universes out there, and you and Pax and Rame are in all of them?"
Jason began speaking, and stopped. He spoke again. "How did you know that?"
The weasel would have been dancing had he had less control. "The Adventures of His Majesty's Secret Agents," he said. "You're all under the command of this big Emperor, and he fights with you sometimes, right? And you saved a unicorn in a place called Luster and it blessed you and your companions with long life, right? And you have that staff, and it likes killing people, and Pax has a lightsaber, and Rame has a sword. And you like to fight entire armies at a time. And..."
Lord Jason raised his hand. "Enough, enough," he chuckled. "It is always good to find a fan. We are in a comic book here, am I right?"
"Yes! That's it! Most of my friends said it was far-fetched, like Mom's stories about Redwall, or those Star Wars comic books, but I believed yours! I knew there just had to be a place where all that existed! And you're from it!"
"Yes, there is a place where 'all that' exists. And I must be going."
"But wait - what are you doing at Seamore? Are we doing something really evil?"
Jason sighed. "No, but I am getting a lot of money for sabotaging your company's main project."
"Did the Emperor send you here?"
"No, I do not work for the Emperor any longer. We left his service after the three of us saved his life. We all thought that it was high time to get on with our grossly extended lives. And now, finally, I have to go. Do you mind if I knock you unconscious? I would never kill someone if I knew they were such great fans of me."
"Go right on ahead!"
The weasel stared at a flaring rune and slumped over. Jason shook his head and stepped over the young man's body. He continued through the halls and reached the other end, and stopped when he found there was no elevator. He quickly ran back to where he had started.
With a few swipes of his staff, the doors became inhospitable to any elevator cars that may have came to it. He then swiftly searched the floor for any other elevators. At every dead-end hall he found, there was simply wall. How do they get to the top? he wondered. Helicopters would be much too expensive for a daily commute, and unless the scientists slept up there...
The scenic elevator!
The glass-walled elevator ran the height of the Seamore tower. They were usually used to show tourists the view from the tallest building in Sampetra, but...
Wyndham ran to the cafeteria, which had a large window. He picked up a small table and threw it at the scenic plate-glass. The glass, which had not been designed to be bulletproof because of the blast doors at the other side of the cafeteria, shattered.
Jason walked to the edge and watched the table and broken glass tumble the long, long way to the street below. The table hit the pavement in an artistic way and bounced ten feet before settling down upright in a scene which would surely be included in the manufacturers' advertisements.
He stepped onto the sill and swung around onto the facade. He easily found a grip and began the climb.
The skyscrapers of the island city-state of Sampetra rose around him. He could see above a lot of buildings, see the old castle over there, the Corsair building where he had been hired, the beautiful scenic bay where Salamandastron's newest carrier rested...
Salamandastron was at war with Sampetra. Why would they dock here? As two fighter jets rose from it, Jason shuddered. The jets could only be there to bomb some corporation, or even the Government. There was a high possibility that they were headed towards Seamore. All that killing, and my work might be done for me. Oh, what cruel irony the Universe has.
He resumed the climb. Several stories later, he nearly lost his grip when a voice spoke to him from somewhere inside his head, bypassing his ears.
"Jason! What's up?"
"I thought I had the comm removed after I left His Majesty's service."
"You did, but we had installed about seven when you went under. We always wanted to be in contact with you, so...
"Who do you want me to kill now? Is this an assassination, or an army job?"
An army job. We found another universe with other Creators. We came in about the time a Morgoth-like evil overlord invaded a terraformed Mars. We want to make a big impression on the Lawful Good side, so we're taking on his orcs and Dark Elves with the Eclipse clan and you. We've got Pax, he just needs a little convincing, but we can't find Rame. Do you know where he is?"
"As far as I know, he is still getting awarded a huge sum of money for saving the Emperor's life. I left the Crown swiftly, you may recall, and I have not yet looked back."
The jets circled the Seamore building and fired missiles into the higher floors of the skyscraper just across the street from Jason. Flames poured from the top three floors. Anti-aircraft from the building popped at the jets, and one of them fell toward the street. It exploded in a bright flash. Its companion managed to get back to the carrier.
"So are you in? The transport's already headed for Redwall Modern."
"No. I am not 'in.' I am working for myself now."
Come on. You're getting three trillion.
"Very well. I am in. Please let me finish this job, however."
"Fine. We'll wait for you.
He climbed the rest of the way, silent as usual. He reached the window on the one hundred-thirty-first floor and cut at it with his staff. It gave way on the third blow.
Jason scrambled in to see a swarm of mice in lab coats staring at him. He smiled. "I'm sorry, I just have to sabotage the program that you have been working on for the past five years with no reward."
He pushed his way through the crowd and reached the mainframe computer at the center of the room. He touched his forehead to it, and the lights running along its outside slowed and stopped.
"Thank you for not trying to resist."
He walked back to the window where the Imperial transport hovered, its side door open for him. As he walked toward the window, one of the scientists started yelling. "You can't do that!"
"Well, I just barely did. And if you will excuse me, I must leave your universe without a trace."
The outspoken scientist continued. "I know who you are! Don't think that a carbonizer won't kill Lord Jason Wyndham!"
He turned around at the sound of his name. "Parse," he said.
The wicked-looking carbonizer, along with the lights, telephones, copier, and terminals around the room, lost all power.
Lord Jason Wyndham, Hero of the Crown, Marquis Emeritus of Aberdeen, Headmaster of Wardancer Academy, Former Martial Arts Instructor to His Majesty's Armies, Hero of Countless Battles, and Member of the Triumphant Three, pulled out his trusted phase dagger, not used at all in the day's mission, and tossed it to the scientist. "Here, examine this," he said. "You may find it to be of great worth."
And with that, he jumped out of the window into the transport, which dissappeared into the blue, blue sky, and the traffic jam on the street below gawping at the alien vessel that had, just for a few minutes, graced the isle of Sampetra with its presence.
An old man walked through the halls of a corporate building. He looked extremely lithe and muscular for a man of his age, like someone who had let the years age his face only. He was dressed in plain gray robes. All in all, he looked extremely out-of-place in the headquarters of Seamore Corporation, the biggest company in capitalizt Sampetra. This feeling of incongruity increases when one catches sight of the rune-studded bladestaff he carried in his right hand.
His name was Lord Jason Wyndham.
As he turned a corner and headed for the express elevator, a huge security guard, a stoat with an eyepatch and a shotgun, turned and saw him. "Hey! You!" he shouted, unslinging his weapon. He stopped when he saw Lord Wyndham's smooth, hairless face. "What in..." The stoat trailed off. "Let me see your clearance!"
Jason looked at the stoat, easily seven feet tall relative to the old man. "I have no clearance. Please do not raise an alarm."
The stoat had already raised his radio. "I'm on Floor Three, with an unidentified intruder heading for the elevator. He looks dangerous."
Lord Wyndham had already leaped. He landed two feet in front of the guard and used his momentum to swing the bladestaff toward the huge stoat. Blue runes flared as it teleported through tough armor and most of the animal's skin, cutting easily through the guard's insides and teleporting out the other side.
The stoat fell, lifeless, with an accusing glare toward Jason.
The alarm had been raised, despite Jason's warning, and the auto-defense systems had already been turned on. Wyndham flipped through the hallway, dodging the bullets being pumped out by machine guns mounted next to security cameras, cut through the elevator doors, and jumped into the empty shaft.
He fell through the darkness and landed winded on the upcoming elevator. The elevator rose past the third floor where Wyndham had cut the elevator doors and sped up.
Jason looked up to see glowing lights rising above him. They were either the ceiling or another elevator.
As the elevator car Jason was on accelerated towards the lights, they failed to switch into another lane. Lord Wyndham coolly looked at the lights as they came toward him, and with a swift flick of his staff, cut through the control box on top of the car.
The car's lights turned off, it hovered for a moment, and dropped like a stone.
In the brief instant that the car had no velocity, Jason jumped from the car onto the wall. He grabbed onto an archaic cable that probably had not been used since the building had been used by Seamore. He inched along the cable until it ran into the wall, then headed the other way, feeling the wall for ventilation ducts. He finally found one, several feet from where he had first grabbed the cable, and climbed into it.
As he crawled through the dank tubing, he muttered. "I'm too old for this," he complained as he saw the first exit and shoved the grille off.
The auto-defense gun, seeing the motion of the grille falling to the floor, swiveled to the duct. It tracked the motion of what appeared to be a human hand, holding what appeared to be an acorn. Nothing remotely resembling a threat had poked through, so the camera resumed its silent patrol of the empty office.
Jason flicked the acorn through the air, guiding it with a small oak leaf. It hit the gun/camera assembly and shattered.
Lord Wyndham dropped into the room as the machine gun slowly turned to stone, and ran toward the computer terminal. A scared-looking ferret was hiding beneath the desk. "Are... you..."
"Yes."
Jason turned his staff toward the ferret. "This is my bladestaff," he said. "It can work no harm on those who will not harm its master, and it will do no good for those who will harm its master."
"I don't mean any harm! I'm just an engineer! I just thought I'd work in my boss's office while he was sick, and the alarm sounded, and I have a wife and a couple kids, and..." The ferret looked as if he were about to cry. "I don't wanna die!" he shouted.
Jason nodded. "Then you will not," he said. He nudged the staff a little, and pointed a shifting rune at the engineer. The rune flared into a bright blue light. As the engineer fell into unconsciousness, his last thought was, It's so pretty...
Lord Wyndham picked up the ferret with hardly an effort and sat him up against the wall. "Sleep well," he said.
He sat in front of the terminal. Touching either side of the minitower, he stared at the screen. Images began springing up, most of them about company loyalty and the evils of the other corporations.
Jason wicked those away and pried deeper into the network. He found a location marked "Security" and wiped the whole section clean. He also found the location of the science lab on the one hundred-thirty-first floor, so high up that if it exploded, the rest of the building would be safe.
Jason rose from the computer after giving it special instructions and walked into the hall.
The automatic security guns had been deactivated, but the security guards had not. Five burly rats were already patrolling the hall.
Lord Wyndham jogged to the security patrol. He jumped and twirled.
The guards, having been looking forward, never even saw him coming. They slumped to the floor.
Jason ran down the hall to the elevators. He pressed the "going up" button and leaned back.
Why can no one develop a lift that comes when you call it? Jason wondered as he waited, drumming his fingers on his staff.
He caught sight of a camera swiveling down the hall. Apparently they ran on a different system than the now-defunct machine guns.
It swung toward Jason and stopped. Jason smiled and waved. What else could he do? He wouldn't waste another acorn, and he couldn't hit that small a target from that far away.
The sound of heavy boots on carpet reached him from down the hall.
Jason whistled and waited for the elevator. Fifteen monitor lizards ran toward him, rifles raised. They wore the Seamore Security badge, but they were no guards. They were soldiers.
The lead lizard saw him and fired just as the elevator dinged its arrival. Jason ducked and forced the doors open. He swung sideways into the interior and hit the "close" button.
Bullets ripped through the middle of the car as Jason hit the button for the seventy-fifth floor. He heard fists banging futilely on the doors as the elevator sped toward the top of the shaft.
After about thirty seconds, the car decelerated. The elevator slowed down and stopped as the doors opened.
Apparently Seamore's garrison had been activated. More than twenty monitors in full battle armor were sitting at the end of the hall, at the other elevator.
Jason ran toward them, a yell from his native Scotland rising in his throat. Halfway down the hall he roared his family battle cry, a chilling call that would frighten a man to his bones.
The monitors stood, a few looking shaken by the call. They raised their assault rifles and stared incredulously at the approaching human.
Lord Wyndham stopped in front of the lizards and spun. His bladestaff, eager to cause destruction and death yet again, cut through the lizards' heavy body armor and tough scales like they weren't even there. He fell to the floor as they fired their rifles at him, then rose and jumped past them toward the elevator. He turned around and swung his staff recklessly. Lizards fell around him as he let the bladestaff enjoy the work.
Jason hit the button and jumped at the stone wall around the shaft. He melded seamlessly into the concrete, leaving no trace of his presence except for the dead monitors strewn over the hallway.
Troops pounded into the hall from the elevators and other parts of the floor. They gathered near the elevator, gawking at the sliced corpses. They must have been thinking about what would have caused it as the elevator reached the floor.
The soldiers started as the "ding" resounded through the rather crowded hallway. They sat back and watched the doors open into the empty car.
Nothing happened...
Suddenly Lord Wyndham burst from the wall. "Good morning," he said to the stunned troops as he ran into the car. He hit the button for the one hundred-twentieth floor, the highest on the panel, and sat back.
As the light went past the one hundred-first floor, the elevator stopped. The lights turned off, and the elevator started falling...
Jason cut through the wall and jumped into the concrete behind it. He stuck his head out and passively watched the car disappear into the darkness. He then stuck his hand out and searched for a grip. Finding none, he pulled out his staff and jammed it into the wall above him.
He pulled out of the wall, the concrete gripping him like some gray form of molasses. He swung from the staff and looked above him. The door to the hundredth floor was about ten feet above him.
He swung around, his feet high above his head, and blended with the wall above him. He pulled out his staff and swung above until he was standing upright in the wall. He then stuck the staff into the wall above his head and repeated the process.
Lord Wyndham found himself facing a blank, unopened door. He stood on his staff and steadied himself. He pulled out a small gray dagger and cut a Jason-sized hole in the door and swung himself through. Brushing himself off, he turned around to pull out his staff.
A voice rang through the corridor. "Don't move."
Jason paid it no heed. "And why not?" he said sarcastically. He yanked his weapon from the wall, stood up, and turned around.
A young-looking weasel was pointing a pistol at him. "Because if you do, I'll shoot you."
"Then why are you not shooting me yet?"
The weasel shrugged. "I guess I just wanted to see your face clearly. You people all look alike, but I'm guessing... you're Lord Jason?"
"I cannot deny it."
The weasel looked positively joyful. "So it is true... there are other universes out there, and you and Pax and Rame are in all of them?"
Jason began speaking, and stopped. He spoke again. "How did you know that?"
The weasel would have been dancing had he had less control. "The Adventures of His Majesty's Secret Agents," he said. "You're all under the command of this big Emperor, and he fights with you sometimes, right? And you saved a unicorn in a place called Luster and it blessed you and your companions with long life, right? And you have that staff, and it likes killing people, and Pax has a lightsaber, and Rame has a sword. And you like to fight entire armies at a time. And..."
Lord Jason raised his hand. "Enough, enough," he chuckled. "It is always good to find a fan. We are in a comic book here, am I right?"
"Yes! That's it! Most of my friends said it was far-fetched, like Mom's stories about Redwall, or those Star Wars comic books, but I believed yours! I knew there just had to be a place where all that existed! And you're from it!"
"Yes, there is a place where 'all that' exists. And I must be going."
"But wait - what are you doing at Seamore? Are we doing something really evil?"
Jason sighed. "No, but I am getting a lot of money for sabotaging your company's main project."
"Did the Emperor send you here?"
"No, I do not work for the Emperor any longer. We left his service after the three of us saved his life. We all thought that it was high time to get on with our grossly extended lives. And now, finally, I have to go. Do you mind if I knock you unconscious? I would never kill someone if I knew they were such great fans of me."
"Go right on ahead!"
The weasel stared at a flaring rune and slumped over. Jason shook his head and stepped over the young man's body. He continued through the halls and reached the other end, and stopped when he found there was no elevator. He quickly ran back to where he had started.
With a few swipes of his staff, the doors became inhospitable to any elevator cars that may have came to it. He then swiftly searched the floor for any other elevators. At every dead-end hall he found, there was simply wall. How do they get to the top? he wondered. Helicopters would be much too expensive for a daily commute, and unless the scientists slept up there...
The scenic elevator!
The glass-walled elevator ran the height of the Seamore tower. They were usually used to show tourists the view from the tallest building in Sampetra, but...
Wyndham ran to the cafeteria, which had a large window. He picked up a small table and threw it at the scenic plate-glass. The glass, which had not been designed to be bulletproof because of the blast doors at the other side of the cafeteria, shattered.
Jason walked to the edge and watched the table and broken glass tumble the long, long way to the street below. The table hit the pavement in an artistic way and bounced ten feet before settling down upright in a scene which would surely be included in the manufacturers' advertisements.
He stepped onto the sill and swung around onto the facade. He easily found a grip and began the climb.
The skyscrapers of the island city-state of Sampetra rose around him. He could see above a lot of buildings, see the old castle over there, the Corsair building where he had been hired, the beautiful scenic bay where Salamandastron's newest carrier rested...
Salamandastron was at war with Sampetra. Why would they dock here? As two fighter jets rose from it, Jason shuddered. The jets could only be there to bomb some corporation, or even the Government. There was a high possibility that they were headed towards Seamore. All that killing, and my work might be done for me. Oh, what cruel irony the Universe has.
He resumed the climb. Several stories later, he nearly lost his grip when a voice spoke to him from somewhere inside his head, bypassing his ears.
"Jason! What's up?"
"I thought I had the comm removed after I left His Majesty's service."
"You did, but we had installed about seven when you went under. We always wanted to be in contact with you, so...
"Who do you want me to kill now? Is this an assassination, or an army job?"
An army job. We found another universe with other Creators. We came in about the time a Morgoth-like evil overlord invaded a terraformed Mars. We want to make a big impression on the Lawful Good side, so we're taking on his orcs and Dark Elves with the Eclipse clan and you. We've got Pax, he just needs a little convincing, but we can't find Rame. Do you know where he is?"
"As far as I know, he is still getting awarded a huge sum of money for saving the Emperor's life. I left the Crown swiftly, you may recall, and I have not yet looked back."
The jets circled the Seamore building and fired missiles into the higher floors of the skyscraper just across the street from Jason. Flames poured from the top three floors. Anti-aircraft from the building popped at the jets, and one of them fell toward the street. It exploded in a bright flash. Its companion managed to get back to the carrier.
"So are you in? The transport's already headed for Redwall Modern."
"No. I am not 'in.' I am working for myself now."
Come on. You're getting three trillion.
"Very well. I am in. Please let me finish this job, however."
"Fine. We'll wait for you.
He climbed the rest of the way, silent as usual. He reached the window on the one hundred-thirty-first floor and cut at it with his staff. It gave way on the third blow.
Jason scrambled in to see a swarm of mice in lab coats staring at him. He smiled. "I'm sorry, I just have to sabotage the program that you have been working on for the past five years with no reward."
He pushed his way through the crowd and reached the mainframe computer at the center of the room. He touched his forehead to it, and the lights running along its outside slowed and stopped.
"Thank you for not trying to resist."
He walked back to the window where the Imperial transport hovered, its side door open for him. As he walked toward the window, one of the scientists started yelling. "You can't do that!"
"Well, I just barely did. And if you will excuse me, I must leave your universe without a trace."
The outspoken scientist continued. "I know who you are! Don't think that a carbonizer won't kill Lord Jason Wyndham!"
He turned around at the sound of his name. "Parse," he said.
The wicked-looking carbonizer, along with the lights, telephones, copier, and terminals around the room, lost all power.
Lord Jason Wyndham, Hero of the Crown, Marquis Emeritus of Aberdeen, Headmaster of Wardancer Academy, Former Martial Arts Instructor to His Majesty's Armies, Hero of Countless Battles, and Member of the Triumphant Three, pulled out his trusted phase dagger, not used at all in the day's mission, and tossed it to the scientist. "Here, examine this," he said. "You may find it to be of great worth."
And with that, he jumped out of the window into the transport, which dissappeared into the blue, blue sky, and the traffic jam on the street below gawping at the alien vessel that had, just for a few minutes, graced the isle of Sampetra with its presence.