“…we don’t know exactly WHAT it is or more to the point exactly where it is. We know that the place we have been shown by these Bear men, these Kondarrians, is a conduit that we can use to get to other Earths. Our planet is sick and filled to capacity. We have colonies in orbit and the moon, and our largest project. The space elevator system already has three beanstalks to support our population and give them jobs. Jobs we guarantee every one of our employee-citizens. We’re running out of resources.”
“What are you suggesting we do? They seem primitive. They showed up in a flying trireme with oars and sails dressed like Greeks carrying spears. They have no money, and they are at war, with tiger men no less.”
“Ah, but they have an entire planet full of unexploited resources. So they are asking for our help. They have agreed to train our people to get to this Hurricane in the Sky in exchange. Ah, yes, tyfónas ouranós translated directly is “Sky Hurricane.” These tiger men are giving them trouble as they have the equivalent of Viking technology. Against our modern weaponry, they should have no chance. The Kondarrians have been raided by them for generations, having their children stolen from them and sold into slavery in the world of the tiger men.”
“Our company has no problem with these tiger men. Why not just side with them? We have no proof that the Kondarrians aren’t lying to us.”
“We do have issues with them. They raided a few yachts near the Samana Cayes and have kidnapped several of our employee-citizens. No doubt they’ve been sold to slavers already. They already had set up a small base of operations. They were harassing the local fishing fleet until we had the Federal Coast Guard attack and capture them. Interrogation of the prisoners by some of our Kondarrian friends has revealed that they intend to raid our world en masse in about a month, hitting mainly civilian areas. Because according to them, “This is a world of lazy, fat burghers ripe for the plundering.” We have the bones of our citizens to pick with them, an entire planet of new customers with the Kondarrians, and two new planet Earths to use for resources. We can get our army much-needed experience and secure a means to get to other Earths. The question should not be why we should not help them, but when.”
Minutes from Executive Level Board Meeting
Internationale Sozialistische Deutsche Gemeindebehurde
Berlin, Central District, Federal Zone
2012-02-13
Aboard the Euphoric Zenith
Somewhere in the Sky Hurricane
February 10, 2187
The job was not as advertised in the packet. Althea was up all night the first day acting as personal muscle to the second in command, the Staff Captain. The tall thin human had found out about her from Senior Airman Wilson and had collared her the first moment she went on duty. The biofem didn’t know much about human standards of beauty. Still, she was confident with this one’s slicked-back hair, receding chin, bulging Adam’s apple, and rat-looking face that he may have been better served to hook up with a lady from Verne or Devonal with a similar-looking species.
Staff Captain Hall was apparently from one of the newer colonies of the Federacy that lacked in all but the most basic of amenities. He kept regaling her of how easy it was for people with this technology and how he had worked up from the dirt to be a Staff Captain on a cruise ship. His greatest pleasure seemed to be finding a worker who had done a minor wrong and yelling at them. At the same time, Althea stood near, her skin flushing cat colors in embarrassment for the crew member and annoyance at the man. The worst thing was that the crew members stared at her in terror when she was just standing there.
When her shift had ended, he told her to ignore it and follow him. Still, she had saluted him and said that her contract stipulated ten-hour shifts in a twenty-four-hour period. As he had stood there dumbfounded, she about-faced and walked off. She had noticed a bubble of space around her while eating at the crew mess. The menu was heavy on sausage, rice, small dumplings filled with minced meat and vegetables, and pickled cabbage. Her skin colored with annoyance when she began to hear the whispers that she was the Staff Captain’s new enforcer. Letting out a snort, she went back to Marine Country and her cabin, where she uploaded the audio and video files of the day to her report along with notes of what had happened during the day.
The second day was much of the same. However, Hall had taken to ‘mistakenly’ bumping against her with his hands and crotch. This had disturbed her a bit, but humans were clumsy. After her shift, she had had time to go to the gym and use the machines on the 200-kilo setting. The devices could go to four or five hundred kilos, though she suspected those were for the larger races onboard like Kondarrians. The Bear-men out massed biofems and could bench press much more than they could, though her Realities Biomen could match them. This ship had a sizeable group of the Bear-men. They were the only ones that were marginally friendly with her. A few had been veterans of the Sidhe war and worked alongside her kind before. Through them, she had learned that the detestable Staff Captain Hall was saying that he was enjoying recreation with her. She had been annoyed to the point where she had to run around the outer railing of the cargo area three times to get enough energy out of herself, so she didn’t do the unthinkable and backhand a commanding officer.
Today was the third day of this duty, and they would be docking at Neu Holmgaard in the morning. She had seen that Security Captain Chung had approved her leave on the first night. After that, the approval switched back and forth between approved and disapproved several times. The digital fingerprints were from Hall and Chung. It seemed they had a disagreement on when her shore leave would be. Her Arbeit ticket included liberty at all ports of call, so if she really was annoyed, she could say that she could leave as a passenger. That would probably set the little martinet off, so it would be a last resort. Still, she would not let this chance to get a Festus plushie to pass her by.
This night she had sent a secure request to SC Chung. She received permission to record herself from the security cameras to file along with her personal recordings. The night began as usual, with Hall intercepting Althea from her patrol in the cargo deck and him making her follow him along on room inspections. She looked utterly disinterested from others looking at her, except for the coloring on her skin. Most of the violations were relatively small, like diverting air vents from where the crewperson was sleeping or switches wired to turn off lights faster. However, a loose plush toy set him off for a while, and she had turned around and stared into the hallway for a bit.
The odd thing was that some people deferred to him or treated him in a friendly manner, and their violations were overlooked. She chalked this up as a human quirk and filed the violations anyway, along with video and auditory evidence. Halfway through the shift, he had started touching her again, starting with her bottom when she had to bend over to get something he didn’t feel the need to pick up. She recorded this from all angles as a matter of course. He turned around suddenly and shoved his face into her breasts at one point. Her face turned red with a blush, and she had jumped back at least three meters, leaving him with a disappointed look on his face. Near the end of the shift, he had told her to be ready for the afternoon shift after the passengers returned.
“Sir,” she began. “I am also a passenger.”
He snorted, “The hell you are. You’re a purchased asset like the other Biofems I’ve seen.” He looked her up and down in a lewd manner.
She sighed and thought, I knew this was going to happen. She replied. “I am still a Sergeant in the Storm League Security Forces, Sir. I have an Arbeit passenger ticket. Which is not a bill of sale in any sense of the word.” She watched as his face turned several shades of red and purple. She went to parade rest with her hands clasped behind her back and just stared at him, her skin darkening in response to the emotional turmoil of being right and having it thrown in her face.
Hall began shouting, “Now you listen to me! Your people are just cute robots! We buy and sell you as guards all the time!” Flecks of his spittle hit her face as he yelled.
She looked at him coldly, her face impassive as he yelled. She had heard of others removing incompetent leadership but hadn’t done it herself. I wonder how much of an incident it would cause if I just killed him? she thought. But, she colored darkly, I can’t do that. This isn’t the battlefield. Nope, that’s a horrible idea. They’ll send me back to the doctor. Also, it could ruin our reputation even further.
Hall had finally noticed she wasn’t listening and went to grab her chin. She took a smooth half-step back and avoided his hand. “What the fuck are you doing?” he growled, looking at her. His eyes finally met hers, they were huge with predatory focus, and her fangs were showing at the corner of her lips. Her body was tense, and he finally felt a prickle of danger radiating from her.
“Avoiding a physical altercation, Staff Captain,” she said quietly while still staring at him.
The man swallowed, and his prominent Adam’s apple worked in his throat. “I see…” he said a bit quietly. Then, trying to gather his courage up, he said, “If you threaten me, I will have you placed in the brig.”
She raised an eyebrow at that and said, “I have not threatened you, Sir. I merely wished to avoid being hit by you.” Her face went back to being blank. “Shall we continue the rest of the shift, or shall I talk to Security Captain Chung for a reassignment?” Emotions were roiling around her as she stared at the human unblinkingly.
Staff Captain Hall felt a shiver go up to his spine, and he looked away. “Um, yes, go back to Security Captain Chung. I’ll finish here,” he said, trying to recover dignity. “Note that I will file a complaint that you threatened me.”
Sighing inwardly, Althea uploaded the video of the incident from her perspective and the surrounding cameras to her own files, SC Chung’s, and the archive. “It is done, sir,” she said and turned on her heel, walking at a brisk pace away from the man. There was already a message from Chung to meet him in his office before the shift ended.
The meeting with Chung ended up being productive. Video evidence of sexual harassment by Hall had been building up over the last two nights, and this last one was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Althea had dispassionately described every incident in detail. She provided video footage from herself with timestamps corroborated by security footage from the ship’s security cameras. Apparently, just doing a thorough job had exonerated her from Hall’s accusations that she had made everything up and should be sold back to Mechanon. This last bit brought up his attitude that she was less than human.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Althea herself didn’t particularly care about it, but was an attitude of great interest to the people in the Security department. Several non-human crewmembers mentioned slurs that were pointed at them during inspections. She was warned to watch out for retaliation by the Staff Captain’s allies and not give in to their provocations. He would also commend her diligence in recording only facts and not letting emotion color her reports.
After about two hours, Althea was given the go-ahead to patrol the cargo area and wait for the ship to dock at Neu Holmgaard. She would be part of the inspection crew to check incoming cargo and be allowed liberty in the town afterward. She was walking on the outer railing of the cargo area when she saw the town of Neu Holmgaard. It was a six-and-a-half-kilometer long island floating among the eternal sunset clouds of the Sky Hurricane. The island was a large, flattened oblong; one side had an amusement park, gardens, and a large restaurant complex. The other side housed a military base filled with docks for skyships and airstrips. Built deep into the rock was an entire complex made for patrolling the odd dimension. Between both extremes was a relatively populous picturesque town built in the Bavarian-style from some “when” in the eighteen-hundreds. At one end of the town, a small lake fed irrigation canals for crops and housed aquaculture of fish and other creatures from many Realities.
Exploration of the Sky Hurricane had discovered floating “islands” here and there, often with very odd creatures and plants on them. Their main draw was that they were also stable navigation points within the pseudo-dimension. If you could find one with your Navigator, you would at least be able to find their bearings. Navigators were crucial to travel within the Hurricane. Not only could they open the gates to the pseudo dimension, but they could also find their way within it. Though technological devices had been devised, none could match the specialized mages and psychics that could find their way through the ever-twisting maze of clouds to the locations of specific Realities. The islands, therefore, were significant landmarks to any traveler within the Hurricane. The origins of most of the islands were shrouded in mystery. They could be part of a reality that had broken up, or maybe chunks of an Earth that ended up there in a disaster or storm. However, Neu Holmgaard hadn’t been found like this and colonized. It was entirely artificial.
Named initially 1998 OR2, Neu Holmgaard was a leftover of Erde’s Ring Project. The ring project was a network of beanstalks that terminated in a several hundred-meter-thick space station encircled the planet. It provided the planet with an extremely cheap way to get things into orbit, a place for hazardous manufacturing, and someplace to employ people. It was a legacy of the original drive to colonize the solar system. It had been funded by all three of the superpowers. The ring Project was built by harvesting large parts of the asteroid belt and had used several of the larger asteroids that were towed into orbit and disassembled over a few decades.
1998 OR2 was a leftover of this enormous project and had sat in geosynchronous orbit over the former Empire of Brazil for many decades. It was riddled with mines and facilities for orbital habitation. It had to be taken care of lest it fell on the planet and was a drain on any department’s budget. In 2140 a junior exec with a plan to make his small fast-food division of Fess-T-Burger more significant got the asteroid in a budgetary reshuffle. Instead of trying to pawn the White Elephant off to another division, he got several dozen Kondarrian priests to work together and shift it into the Sky Hurricane to just get rid of it. Instead, it had anchored itself near the navigational point to Erde.
The resulting mass turned out to be a stable flat platform anchored just outside of Erde’s entrance to the Sky Hurricane. Even better, a stable navigation point always led to the so-called Prime Reality. After the initial panic had subsided, the Fess-T-Burger division hired a skyship, landed it on the barren asteroid, and started to sell food at the only waypoint that marked Erde’s Reality. Soon afterward, they got into the orbital miners’ old facilities and used them for housing or repurposed them for kitchens and freezers. The massive traffic between the realities that used the Sky Hurricane soon became a regular stop for trading caravans and military patrol ships. It was turning a profit soon after. A small village of hotels and housing for workers was started, and the town of Neu Holmgaard was born. The Consortium began using one part of the asteroid to dock their patrol ships regularly and use the abandoned tunnels and old facilities to house troops. Soon that area became known as “the base,” and most nonmilitary personnel avoided it.
Other trading partners soon began to rent space from the Fess-T-Burger division. Formal divisions between the town, the restaurant, and the base were laid out. Docks for all the ships were established, and over the next twenty years, the complex became known as the crossroads to trading in the Sky Hurricane. Fess-T-Burger restaurants opened in most Realities as Traders had come to associate the unique take on burgers as comfort food. The most prominent building on the Sky Island was the Fess-T-Burger itself, spanning a few hundred meters and four stories tall.
It was a temple of fast comfort food, several different kitchens, and themed seating areas, so several thousand guests could be served at once. There were arcades and playrooms, all themed with the restaurant’s menu in mind. Bars and even two dance floors were available for the customers. The multiple kitchens prepared foods from all their menus, even less popular items discontinued in restaurants. If Fess-T-Burger had ever made it, it was sold here. There was even a themed toy store here, which Althea had a particular interest in. It was the only one that sold an exclusive plush toy of Festus. Other parts of the chain had plushies but were smaller and less well made. This one was the one that said you had made it to the largest fast-food restaurant in all known Realities.
Parts of the island had had soil brought in and mixed with the top of the regolith to provide tree cover and areas to grow fresh vegetables to support the kitchens and require fewer supply runs. They had founded a colony on an empty Reality and renamed it, Vredenburg. It supported a vast cattle ranch, piggery, slaughterhouses, and packing plants to support the enormous food empire. The Amusement Park was the latest addition to the complex. It had constantly been upgraded only pausing operations during the Sidhe War. Still, the restaurant had never ceased operation, feeding military personnel and traders for the forty-seven years it had been in operation.
From a small, nearly useless division given a white elephant budgetary sinkhole, the Fess-T-Burger division had become the fourth most profitable division in the entire GmbH. Althea absolutely loved their food but limited herself to it a few times a month because of the drain to her meager salary. This would be her first time in the Sky Hurricane when not in a troopship, and she was allowed to visit the restaurant in person.
Giddily she went through the checks of the cargo going out and in. She had smelled some gun oil and electronics in one large crate, flagging it for the Security Captain. Soon, several Detectives and personnel from the local constables swarmed over the boxes where they had found crates of NewHomian plasma rifles. Apparently, someone on Newhome thought they could circumvent regulations and bypass taxes. After being questioned for a half-hour, she was let go to finish the checks. The rest of the reviews were routine, everything passing the sniff test of both her and the Kondarrians. After completing her reviews, she returned to her room and filed her reports electronically. She changed into her only civilian clothing, a gray sleeveless wrap tunic over a white shirt and a pair of red slacks. The outfit was topped off with a small belt around her waist and black flats. Undoing her braid, she wore it in a long ponytail.
She looked at herself in the small mirror and smiled inwardly. She knew her dead sisters would’ve thought her conceited, but she was going to Fess-T-Burger and was happy. Her skin colored mildly, and she connected to the local Network node knowing there should be an excellent connection to Erde. Information flooded her senses, and she went through her mails, accepting a minor security update from Mechanon and sending a report from the doctor’s office to her Creator. The ping of acceptance made her heart flutter. Humans couldn’t really understand the rock solidness of talking to your creator and getting responses.
Well, the human and other sapients’ priests talked like that, but no one had ever made any miracles or produced an angel or a devil. The only real devil was Lî Chasse, the psychic entity that tried to destroy her home, and the sole true Creator she knew was Mechanon, the one who had given her people life. Shaking her head, she refocused back on the task at hand. She went out to the duty station, checking in with McNab, who stared at her bug-eyed as he electronically stamped her pass to leave. As she left, she heard him say under his breath, “Damn, she cleans up good. No, no, she’ll kill you if you even say anything. Stupid! Stupid!” Her cheeks colored red for a moment, and she headed down the ramp, handing her pass to the officer in charge of the cargo gangplank.
To avoid any surprises, she had planned an itinerary that would get her to the restaurant and allow her time to get a small amount of shopping done. Now she had access to the Full Network, she could see what she needed back at the barracks. She would go through the town in the quickest route there, hit a few sundry stores, and then back to the boat with minimal interaction. Neu Holmgaard looked like a Bavarian town, emphasizing pedestrian walkability. There were a few small vehicles here and there, but it was too small to support extensive vehicle infrastructure. Besides, most of that was down below in the subways. She could just take one to the restaurant, but she wanted to see it from the surface first. She would see the underground station on her way back.
The streets were cobblestone formed from the regolith of the island itself, and the buildings were about three or four stories tall. All had shops on the first floor and lovely glass windows at each level. The buildings were wood framed with stucco in a riot of colors, each building right up against the other. There were a few alleys, but space was at a premium. She suspected they were built on the former orbital shelters and had extensive basements.
Peaked roofs shed the frequent rainfall that was a feature of the Sky Hurricane. Winding streets snaked through the town with clear directions and street names. They were choked with tourists from many realities, and they all were curious about one another. She saw Celari eyeing elves and other fantasy hominids like griffons and unicorns. They were also being looked at with curiosity being the first aliens from another planet many inter-reality tourists had ever seen.
None of the crass holographic marketing of the GmbH was here. This was a tourist town, selling an image of a quaint village. Instead, the shops themselves had flags and tables of their wares out in front of the shops. There were also the side streets that had shops from various realities. She could hear and smell the sounds of Shénzhōu music and their cooking off in the distance and see a toyshop filled with Vernian magitech inventions. An Anglio shop nearby was filled with books and the stinks and perfumes of incense magicians used. It was staffed by gnomes and an Anglian elf. Another shop from Union with East Asian script sold electronics and cybernetic augmentation.
She saw a kitchen festooned with green banners and red stars down a side street. Another shop from Anglio with green and brown-skinned pig men, orcs, serving pierogis and chebureki. Younger children handed out miniature copies of the works of Grotz Azrodam and the manifesto of the People’s Orcish Republican Commune. The two Anglian shops were on entirely different streets, and she knew there was no love lost between them. Even a few shops sold wares from Imperial Japan on Erde and a shop selling cowboy hats and boots from the Republic of Texico.
As she slipped through the crowded streets, her combat computer being used in this environment, predicting movements and allowing her to glide smoothly through the people like a fish through the seagrass. Her ears twitched and moved on their own as she picked up dozens of languages and dialects, but none of her own Mechanese.
The war had ended only five and a half years ago, so it was surprising to hear the sounds of Shénzhōu in the area. Still, she could understand if some of the people of that reality just wanted to leave the misery of being in the occupied zones behind. Most of the occupation forces were GmbH and Federacy. Still, they had a few scattered Legions of Mechanese that hunted down any signs of resistance. Until she had been transferred, she had been one of the occupiers herself. Going on missions to various realities where there were still hold-out bases of the Sidhe that raided here and there.
In her experience, the people had been raised on generations of propaganda, but most knew it for what it was. The only ones who fought were the ‘true believers’ who thought their people were the pinnacle of evolution. But, unfortunately, they were soon shown the error of their ways. The high magics that they relied upon had been forever stripped by the Reality bombs that changed the very nature of their universe.
Movement behind and to her right. She put her right hand down to grab someone’s hand as they touched under her tunic near the belt. What she hauled up was a short fox-hominid. Specifically, a long muzzled Devonalian, red with grey streaks Althea held him across her body to look him in the eyes. He was wearing a pair of ill-fitting blue jeans with a hole cut in the back for her bushy tail to poke through and a black t-shirt with a Union band logo on it. He, no… she, looked at her with terrified yellow cat eyes and tried to smile nervously, “Ummm hiiiiii,” the fox girl said.
“Recreation is to be asked for, not taken. Besides, you are much too young to even think of techuute.” Althea replied with her usual blank face.
The fox blinked. Stared at her and then blinked again. “Vait, vas zat a joke? ” she asked.
Althea released her and nodded. “Yes, but do not try to pickpocket me again. You’ve been added to my target database.”
“Yeah, sure, sorry,” she said, looking away.
The fox-girl nodded and scurried off, tail flipping in what she thought must be a signal to her fellows to leave the tall Mechanese lady alone. Sure enough, she saw a few tense individuals around them relax and back off. Most were Devonalian of various shorter species, and some were Federacy Recombs. The latter was easily picked out by their human heritage of shorter demi-muzzled and ear placement on the sides of their heads rather than the tops.
The human-animal hybrids that were a gengineered Federacy slave species had more in common with her own genetic heritage than the natives of Devonal. Still, she understood why they would be with them. The Federacy had invaded the high magic world and tried to enslave the inhabitants. They had only stopped due to the outbreak of the Sidhe War. As a result, many Recombs fled to the other reality, siding with similar species to escape slavery. She quickly added metadata to them as ‘people to watch’ on her list to be flagged if they got close to her.
Walking with a little more caution, she saw the signs on the streets that pointed towards the Amusement Park. It had initially been using cartoon animal mascots, but that had to change over the last few years with the influx of different hominids and the offense they felt had seen a dip in profits. So instead, they settled on cartoon robots for mascots, which seemed alright. However, she suspected that some might think Mechanon himself would look askance at it.
Unfortunately, The Lord of her people didn’t care for much of anything if it didn’t further his hunt for the Lî Chasse, and so the new mascots stayed. She stopped to check out a flower shop, smelling the complex scents of blooms from dozens of alternate earths. Some were even grown here on the island, and she had been smelling their scents on the wind since they had neared the port.
She paused, thinking of maybe buying a single flower for her room to give it a pleasant scent when she felt a small hand grip her left hand. None of her warning senses had been tripped. She turned and looked down to stare into the eyes of a small child. She was pale skin, long straight dark hair that went down her back, big dark almond eyes, long ears poking out of her hair. She was wearing a blue tunic that faded to white at the bottom, white leggings, soft black shoes. Sidhe? Blinking, her skin turned catlike in surprise.
The child smiled up at her and said, “Ni hao, Ayi!”