“Rabbit,” Alice turned to her robotic companion. “Can you contact Sue in Control?”

“Negative, Captain. There is still interference.”

“How can there be interference between two entangled particles?”

“I don’t know, Captain. I can tell that the particles are still entangled, but there’s a strange shift in them. My calculations show that the Control side of the relay should react, but it would take several hours.”

“Rabbit. I know that I’m far from being an expert on quantum mechanics like Sue. But even I know that what you just said makes absolutely no sense.”

“I am not programmed with the concept of ‘sense’, Captain.”

“OK. Can I send a message that Control will get in several hours then?”

“Negative, Captain. There’s a random aspect to the interference that will garble any signal I can send.”

“Fine. Can you get us back home then?”

“Negative, Captain. The wormhole generator is not calibrated with the local physical constants. Trying to activate it without proper calibration will result in a catastrophic failure.”

“Can you recalibrate?”

“Not without access to a more expansive sensor suite.”

“Are there any good news you can give me?”

“Affirmative, Captain. The interference seems to be attenuating. I can extrapolate that contact with Control will be possible in approximately one hour.”

“That’s something, at least. I don’t think anything can reach Earth from Mars in less than an hour.”

“Excuse me, Captain?” Hatter, who couldn’t help but hear Alice and Rabbit’s conversation, politely interrupted.

“Please, sir, call me Alice. I might be a captain, but only in the meaning of being in command of a vessel. And I’m not even sure about that any more.” Alice answered, gesturing at Rabbit in explanation.

“Then you must call me Amadeus. I couldn’t help but overhear you say that you seem to be having some technical difficulties.”

“You might say that, yeah. I’m sure my friend Sue will be able to fix things, if I could just contact her.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. Most of your conversation went right over even my hat. But might I interest you in a cup of tea? If your companion is correct about being able to call you friend in an hour or so, you might as well be comfortable while you wait.”

“I… Yeah. I think I’d like that, Amadeus. Thank you.”

“Jolly good. Suit Commander?” Hatter turned to his subordinate, who was looking slightly less panicked.

“Sir?”

“Please get back to your patrol. The White may have escaped to who knows where, but the Red is still at large, and would like nothing better than to catch us unprepared.”

“Yes, sir!” King snapped a salute, and turned to his own subordinates. “Heart suit, reshuffle, cut, and back to patrol!”

“Yes, sir!” came the reply from all twelve soldiers.

The ten privates? Grunts? Numbers? Alice wasn’t sure how to call them, but all ten did a complicated maneuver where they repeatedly arranged themselves into two lines, and then merged them into a single line in a seemingly random order.

Eventually, they split into two groups of five, each one following one of the junior (hand?) officers. King himself went with Jack’s group, but seemed to be letting the Hand Commander lead.

“Shall we?” Hatter asked.

Alice shook her head in confusion, and turned to Hatter.

“Let us.”

For the first time since Rabbit broke down the door, Alice had the time and presence of mind to really look around her. The room she and Rabbit came out of was part of an ivy covered stone tower. At first, the tower gave Alice an unsettling feeling, and it was only after a second glance to she realized that while the ivy looked like it had hundreds of years to grow, dry out, and grow again, the stones themselves looked to be brand new.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The tower stood in a large, grassy clearing in the middle of a forest, with utterly mundane looking trees, which Alice found somewhat jarring after the past half an hour or so.

Hatter led her towards the forest, and Alice felt her unease grow as those same seemingly mundane trees casually moved out of the way, leaving behind a paved road heading deeper in.

“So,” she asked Hatter, more to take her mind off the trees than anything else. “The Red?”

“The Red Witch Queen, to give her her proper title. She is fire where the White Witch Queen is ice, but just as tyrannical as her sister. We’ve been at war with the two since before anyone can remember.”

“And the White was locked in the tower?”

“Yes. They’ve been slowly conquering the entire land for a few hundred years, before the White was captured. It took months of planning by one of my predecessors. Queens can go in any direction, you know. But he managed to trap her, and we’ve been able to hold the Red back since then.”

As they were walking deeper into the forest, the trees continued to move away in front of them, leaving behind pavement that didn’t seem to exist before. A little more worryingly, the trees behind them moved back into place, keeping Hatter, Alice and Rabbit in a small oval of paved roadway with no obvious start or destination.

“Don’t worry about the trees,” Hatter said when he saw Alice’s concern. “They’ll open up again if we want to return. They’re very accommodating, the trees.”

“That’s just so strange. Trees don’t really move around where I come from.”

“Don’t they?” Hatter asked wonderingly. “Then how do you get through the woods, if the trees don’t make a road for you?”

“Well, we usually have to cut them down, I think?”

The trees around Alice seemed to shudder, and move back a little further.

“I don’t think they like that idea,” Hatter said, sounding like he didn’t like it much himself.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think that trees can like or dislike things where I come from.”

“It sounds like you come from a very strange place, Alice. But I think we’d better change the subject. I wouldn’t want to distress the trees any more.”

“Yeah, OK.” Alice agreed. “So, you seem to be some sort of officer, I think?”

“Yes. I am a Deck Commander,” Hatter seemed happy for any topic that didn’t involve lumber. “A deck is the standard autonomous unit of our military, and contains four suits. Each suit holds ten numbers and three officers, as you’ve already seen when you encounter the Hearts.”

“That sounds oddly familiar. Almost like it’s based on…”

“Shhhhh!” Hatter interrupted her, and whispered. “The trees are still agitated. I don’t think it’s you they’re agitated about.”

The three continued in silence, and soon after the trees split apart ahead of them to show the paved road leading into another clearing.

Without the trees in the way, Alice could see black smoke from further into the woods, and hear the wooshing sound of fire, as well as the occasional harsh metallic clang.

Hatter rushed into the clearing, and Alice followed closely behind, stopping abruptly at the scene of a battle she never would have imagined possible.

A giant statue of an armored soldier, at least ten meters tall and collared red from boots to helmet, was moving ponderously and trying to aim a huge pike at a much smaller figure. The smaller figure was brown, and moving too fast for Alice to see any more details. And it had to move fast, since the pike was blasting tongues of fire whenever it was aimed at its direction.

“A Pawn!” Hatter called out in anger. “No wonder the trees were upset! But what is it doing so deep into our territory?”

The brown figure slammed into the red statue with a loud “clang!”, and in its single static moment, Alice could see a metallic rabbit similar to her companion, except brown instead of white.

“Allied unit detected,” Rabbit said, moving forward. “Moving to assist.”

Alice could see the blue light of Rabbit’s strange weapon starting to accumulate in its ears. Meanwhile, Hatter had pulled a pistol out of his hat, and was shooting at the statue.

The whole battle should have been ridiculous. Hatter’s pistol and the brown rabbit’s kicks should have been completely irrelevant to the Pawn.

And yet…

Each kick staggered the statue, causing it to stop in its tracks, and even shoving it back.

Each pistol shot exploded against the red armor, causing minute fractures in the stone.

The Pawn kept trying to reach Hatter, but whenever it tried to move in his direction, the brown rabbit slammed into it and pushed it back.

And whenever the Pawn tried to hit the brown rabbit, Hatter had the freedom to shoot at it.

“Run, Alice!” Hatter yelled, jumping away from a far too close blast of fire. “I don’t have nearly enough ammunition to take that thing out. It takes at least a hand to deal with them, even with the Hare to assist!”

Alice, however, didn’t have time to answer. Rabbit’s ears were glowing bright blue, and the twin beams of blue light shot out of them to hit the statue. The brown rabbit, which must have been the Hare Hatter talked about, jumped away from the statue, as if it knew that the attack was coming.

The blue light struck the red Pawn, and a blue sphere started growing, where the beams converged. It couldn’t have taken more than a second before the light drained from Rabbit’s ears, and the beams vanished.

The blue light sphere, however, remained for one more second, before exploding outward, tearing the Pawn apart.

“Whew,” Hatter took off his hat and wiped his brow. “That was a lot closer than I would like. That Rabbit of yours packs quite a punch.”

“What… What was that?” Alice asked.

“A Red Pawn. One of the Red’s basic war machines. It must have slipped through our patrols when the Hearts were busy at the tower.”

“That’s a basic war machine? What the hell are the advanced ones like?”

“Terrifying. They’re absolutely terrifying, and usually take a full deck to have a chance against. But we really should be going. We might be safe for now, but I need to get more ammunition, and I really need that cup of tea right now.”

“Negative, commander,” The brown Hare interrupted, in a voice eerily similar to Rabbit’s “We are not safe.”

The Hare pointed deeper into the forest, and Alice’s heart lurched when she saw the heads of three more Pawns towering over the trees.