"Mike? Hello?"
I blinked, looked up into my co-worker's chunky face. "Hm? Oh, yeah. Sorry." I rubbed my eyes. "Um, could you repeat what you just said?"
Steve frowned, but repeated himself. "I said, Bob wants to know if you've put together your recommendations for the LAN yet." He paused, gave me a concerned look. "You okay?"
"Yeah; I just haven't been getting much sleep lately," I mumbled, reaching for my coffee mug and quickly downing another jolt. "A lot of stuff on my to-do list right now." Stefan's misgivings about my dual life came back to me again; I mentally shrugged them off, put my mug back onto its perch atop the little warming plate I kept on my work desk, turned back to Steve. "As for the recommendation, that's easy; rip it all out and start over."
Steve blinked, then frowned, his arms moving to fold themselves across his broad chest in a gesture I was beginning to learn was the storm warning for yet another long, hard argument. I felt a twinge of dislike. "Mike, we started work on this thing a long time before you got here, and we've put--"
I waved him down, trying to get a word in edgewise before Steve picked up a head of steam. "Steve? Steve? Hey, Steve! Can I just show you something? It'll only take a minute, honest."
Steve gave me a suspicious look, but at least he uncrossed his arms. "All right," he said at last.
I had him follow me into the main computer room, the entrance to which was less than a dozen steps from my desk. On one side of the room, an ancient Wang minicomputer was running, its cooling fans and hard drives humming loudly, one drive in particular perhaps a little too loudly. On the other side, a rat's-nest of homemade cabling cascaded from a ragged hole in the tile ceiling, then with a myriad of kludged connections plugged itself into a stack of cheap network hubs perched precariously upon a flimsy wall shelf. I stopped in front of the shelf, gave the whole mess a contemptuous look before turning back to Steve and giving him an evil smile. "Watch this."
I raised myself a couple inches on my toes for a moment, then let myself fall, my heels hitting the floor with a thud.
Roughly a third of the connection indicators on the hubs went out.
I did it again, and some of the little green lamps came back on, but then others went out in their place. I looked at Steve, my expression growing serious. "Steve, this whole setup is wildly unstable. All you have to do to knock it out is walk past it, and you want to build a business network atop it?" I shook my head. "I don't think so; not unless you think you'll enjoy being tarred and feathered by the users." Somewhere in the background, a phone was beginning to ring. A pissed-off user, no doubt. "Second, do you have any idea where any of these cables go? What they're hooked-up to? I can't find any documentation anywhere, and trust me, I've looked. Third, this cable--" I jabbed a finger toward the snarl coming out of the ceiling "--is running through the overhead ventilator space, but it isn't plenum-grade. In other words, it's flammable, Steve. Guess what's going to happen the moment the fire marshal lays eyes on it? He's going to slap us with a code violation and make us rip it all out anyway, whether anybody likes it or not. So . . ." I crossed my own arms, looked Steve in the eye. "Any questions?"
Steve stared at the wildly flickering hub indicators, then back to me. Slowly, he deflated. "No; I guess not," he sighed at last. "What do you propose to replace it with?"
I gave the heavyset man a wide smile and patted him on the shoulder, then gently guided him back toward my work desk. "Well, as to that, I just got hold of some lovely catalogs from Cisco, Cabletron, and the networking kiddies over at AT&T, and they're chock-full of neat little toys. Why don't we sit down for awhile and take a look at them?"
After detouring to the gym for a grueling two-hour workout and a hot shower, I finally made it home. I unlocked the door to my little bungalow and trudged inside, setting a bag of supplies onto a side table and tossing my coat into a convenient corner. I took a minute to start the coffee pot, then headed over to the mail slot, gathered the day's take and then plunked down into my easy chair with a groan. Another day, another dollar, I thought to myself, then started flipping all the junk mail into my little stove, following it with a lit match to warm the room up a bit. Soon the little wood-burner was rumbling happily to itself as I started going through the remainder of my mail. Just bills, today. After several minutes of shuffling I eventually gave up, tossing the letters behind me onto the chair as I went back to the kitchen in the hope the coffee was ready.
It was, thank the gods, Ancestors, and whatever else might be listening. I poured some into my favorite mug, added a bit of sugar, then went back to my seat. Once there, I stared for a moment at the pile of papers laying there on the seat cushion, then with a silent snarl swept them off onto the floor. Back in my chair, listening to the stove, it wasn't until I'd finished almost half my mug that I finally began to relax. It had not been a very good day, not with Steve sulking like some small child who'd dropped his ice cream cone. . . .
I jerked myself awake when I felt the scalding contents of my coffee mug beginning to soak through my shirt. Damn! I jerked my cup upright, spilling more in the process, then took both it and myself to the kitchen. A few minutes of frantic dabbing at my clothes with a wet paper towel and I had most of the coffee out, but I knew I had to get my shirt into the wash fast if I wanted to save it.
With a mumbled curse I stumbled into the laundry, stripping off my shirt as I went. I cranked the knob for cold water on the washing machine, tossed my shirt in along with a few fistfuls of soap, then slammed the lid down and punched the start button. The elderly machine started up with a growl and the sound of rushing water, and I tiredly leaned against it. Gotta get more sleep, Sarge . . . I sighed, rubbed at my eyes, then stumbled back to the kitchen to refill my mug and head back to my seat. This time, however, I set my cup on the floor and shifted to my proper form, coiling myself upon the throw-rug I kept in front of the stove. Picking my mug back up with a taloned hand and slurping at its contents, I reached for the scattered papers. Let's see you spill it now, you stupid lizard. . . .
A couple of mugs later I'd finished with the niggling little details that one needs to address to live in a Western country, then with a grunt I rose to my feet and padded back to the front room. Settling back on my haunches I grabbed the sack of supplies, cradling them in one arm as I sent out a mental call. A moment later that incredibly infuriating, incredibly useful sphere of the Lung materialized before me with a quiet snap. I grabbed it in my jaws, repeating the routine I'd settled into in the past weeks as I concentrated on the image of a ranch house lost in a snowy mountain wilderness. . . .
Snap.
The weight of the massive weapon cradled in my arms seemed to dwindle to almost nothing, adrenalin flooding its icy way through me as the last echoes of the choking, gurgling scream slowly faded and died. I slammed my back against a water-slicked wall, blinking the sweat out of my stinging eyes as I peered through my NVGs at the tight maze of galleries and stone columns about me, searching for movement as I tapped my helmet com. "First squad, report," I hissed.
". . . . .st squad. Someth . . . hit our lef . . . took out Stev . . . nd . . .Nguyen before we . . . ld react. I'm pull . . . ack, see if we . . . pen route."
I felt my lips curling back in a snarl of frustration as the rock formations surrounding us continued to play merry hell with communications, then I tried to contact the other squads. After four or five tries I managed to get through, told them to redeploy in tighter groupings and advance deeper into the caverns.
Dropping to one knee, I yanked the canteen off my combat harness, downed a quick gulp of stale water, then allowed myself a few seconds of silent cursing at the bastards who'd sent us into these caverns to dig out the enemy. Everyone, all the way up to the brigade commander, had begged the head shed to just pump the place full of nerve agent and blow the entrance, but noooo, this damned hellhole was a National Treasure. Can't go around pumping National Treasures full of VX, not when they can send infantry in to die in the darkness.
Things had quickly gone to hell in a hand-basket. We'd lost contact with the other platoons within minutes of entering the vast underground galleries, the dense rock making radios almost useless. Several hours later, something caused a huge chunk of the ceiling to let go, crushing the lieutenant, platoon sergeant and several of the men, leaving me as the senior NCO, and in command. Several more suspicious rock-falls had followed, killing four more of my men and forcing us to spread out to make less inviting targets. Now the enemy was picking us off one by one, and so far nobody had even seen one of the damned lizards, let alone gotten a shot off.
I switched freqs, once again tried to raise company main, once again failed. Damn it, I had to tell them we were in contact, that we needed to pull back. If I retreated without the rest of the company knowing, whatever it was we were facing could follow us, swinging around to hit the other company elements in the rear. . . .
. . . .Assuming they weren't already dead. . . .
Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! THINK! There has to be a way out of this damned deathtrap, if I could just get a moment to--
A scuffling sound and a small shower of pebbles had me whipping my weapon to the left, my hand very nearly squeezing the trigger before I recognized the silhouette of another trooper. "Hey, that you, Sarge?" He whispered.
I drew in a shuddering breath, tried to calm my jangling nerves. "Mendez," I hissed "where's the rest of second squad?"
"Damned if I know, Sarge," the burly PFC replied, crouching down on one knee beside me for a moment's rest. He looked like some kind of space alien with the NVGs covering the upper half of his face, and I probably looked just as weird. "These fuckin' tunnels twist and turn all over the place. Can't see more than ten feet, most of the time. Easy to get separated," he added apologetically. "Any luck raising the CO?"
"No," I sighed "we're on our own for the moment, at least until they send someone after us." I fell silent, thinking, the gulp from my canteen already a fond memory. If we tried to bunch up again, the lizards would just drop more rocks on us. Two- or three-man teams? Might work. . . . I tapped my radio. "First squad."
Static.
"Second squad." . . . .Nothing.
I tried the other two squads with similar results. Damn it, they'd moved out of range already. "We need to move up," I murmured as I rose to my feet "get this show back on the road. I'll take point."
Mendez and I began to move forward as quietly as possible, myself in the lead. Mendez followed, the PFC spending most of his time walking backwards to scan our rear. It took only several minutes of squeezing between towering stalagmites and scrambling over rock-falls to get the sweat seeping into my eyes again, and I longed to yank the damned NVGs off and wipe the sweat clear. I'd already had to change batteries on the goggles once; running in IR mode took a lot of power, and I began to wonder if we'd manage to get out of here before we ran out of spares. Great; something else to worry about. Time seemed to stretch into an eternity, but it couldn't have been more than ten minutes later that we heard the crash of another rock-fall, followed moments later by several screams.
"Shit!" I picked up the pace, moving as quickly as I could towards the sounds of agony, Mendez close behind. My goggles picked up a bright flash up ahead, followed by an explosion that reverberated through the caverns as someone fired his weapon. More screams.
Move, move, MOVE! The caverns' stale, oxygen-poor air seared my lungs as we pounded forward. Behind me I could just make out Mendez quietly praying in his childhood Spanish, a prayer that choked off as we came skidding around yet another stone column and right into an abattoir.
It was an open space, larger than any we'd come across before, and evidently third squad had tried to use it to regroup. Now, blood oozed out from beneath a fresh rock-fall, and shredded bodies lay strewn all about in various postures of agonized death. Even as we slid to a halt a trooper was slumping to the ground as a glitter-scaled something leaped away from him, using his body as a springboard to pounce with eye-blurring speed upon the sole remaining third-squad soldier still on his feet. Some dark corner of myself was terribly glad I could not see the soldier's face as the barely man-sized creature batted his weapon aside, then sank the talons of its forepaws into his chest as its hind legs swung up and began ripping into the man's abdomen like a chainsaw.
It was an infant dragon. My God, we were being butchered by children!
Mendez screamed something unintelligible as he fired his weapon in almost the same instant I fired mine, the muzzle blasts lighting the space like high noon for an instant. One of the rounds went wide, I don't know whose, but the other went through the little dragon's right shoulder, decorating the stone columns behind it with a spray of blood and tissue and smashing the creature backwards, tearing it free of its victim and hurling it across the cavern floor.
There was one of those split-second pauses one sees in combat as the dragonet rolled to its feet and shook its head dazedly. One wing trailed limply in the mud, its shoulder joint smashed, and blood gushed down its right foreleg. Then the head came up, and lambent eyes met mine with an almost physical impact.
How beautiful.
Then the instant was gone. The dragonet snarled and leaped for our throats. Instantly I felt the stock of my rifle slam back into me, recoiling hard as both Mendez and myself fired and fired and fired, the heavy slugs swatting the creature out of the air and sending it tumbling backwards, bloody chunks being torn from its gleaming body as our weapons hosed it across the floor--
A nudge awakened me. Instantly my golden eyes snapped open to scan the dim room, but came up with nothing save for a trembling Ashadh. For a moment I stared at him blankly, then everything came back to me with a rush. I groaned and raised myself to my haunches, my mane jangling as I gave my head a savage shake to clear it. Damn it, I thought I'd seen the last of those blasted nightmares, or warnings, or whatever the hell they were.
Then my eye caught Ashadh again, saw his fear, and something else came back to me with stunning force. "You dreamt it too? It was you that I . . . that I. . . ."
Ashadh gave a piteous whine, almost a wail, and pressed hard against my side, still shivering violently. I hugged him gently, my heart like a piece of lead in my breast. A faint sound had me quickly looking to my right, to see my younger daughter standing there, closer to me than she had ever come without being coaxed, her quicksilver body shaking. "You too?" I murmured, gathering her to me, then looking to the nest to find my elder daughter awake and looking at me, her own eyes wide with fear. So; we were all there, in the darkness, fighting for our lives in any way we knew. Ancestors, how!?
I gave my head another shake, this time in bafflement. Then I looked down once again at my two children, and my thoughts began to ease as I gazed at them. My daughter lifted her head and her eyes met mine; the fear was there, but lessening. She gave a quiet croon and rubbed her head against me, and I felt something catch in my throat. I dropped my head, dragon senses drinking in her scent. Dear child, I will call you Dahiric, until you choose your own name. . . .
Dahiric could not have heard my silent thought, but her croon grew louder as she snuggled more tightly against me, and I allowed my form to grow larger until I could coil protectively around both of them. I also extending my wing over all of them and stuck my head below in between both of them. Eventually their movements slowed and they grew silent, and after awhile my elder daughter closed her eyes as well. I myself did not; I lay there, then drew my head out and across my forelegs and turned facing the door, worrying at questions without apparent answers, my thoughts churning in futile circles as I waited for the dawn.