Empires of Flux & Anchor

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She and Matson returned to their Flux base and became human. “I’ve decided,” she said. “We have to pull her out of there. She’s already half gone, maybe with drugs or something. Now they’re taking her into Flux without Spirit, and she’ll be lost forever.”

He nodded, but said, “Are you sure about this? It seems kind of funny that they’d bring her here and parade her around and then Coydt shows up. I think they know we’re around. Suzl’s bait to get you out in the open for Coydt, Cass. It’s a trap.”

“Then it’s a trap we take. You’ve been itching to move. Let’s move now or forget it.”

Their weapons had been well prepared in advance and needed no more done to them. Practice was impossible; either it worked or it didn’t. Matson set the detonators; then Kasdi changed them into the great birds again and used her power to make the packs fit correctly. They could take off with them in Flux, but whether or not they would be able to handle the weight in Anchor had yet to be proven.

They flew in formation, one close behind the other, right down the roadway atop the wall. Matson gave a quick glance towards Lamoine and saw no massed troops and made the final decision. They swooped down on the emplacement and let go their loads, then quickly gained altitude and headed for Flux.

Captain Weiz had waited nervously for a bit at the emplacement, then decided he wanted to smoke. Rather than go further down the wall, he decided to go down into Anchor and see to the horse and carriage. He had barely reached the horse when suddenly the world exploded behind him. He turned and was knocked over by the blast and almost trampled by the panicked animals, but he was the only one able to see what had happened.

One set of high explosives had struck near the barrels where oil for the night torches and lamps was stored; the other fell on the other side of the small makeshift hut, near the ammunition. When the birds came in, there were only curious stares, but when they dropped loads that clanked metallically on the stone, they leaped into action, some starting to aim at the fast-fleeing birds, others jumping for what was dropped. All too late. Matson had perfect timing.

Suzl’s initial estimate of their vulnerability had been right. The two containers exploded within a fraction of a second of each other, one blowing the oil barrels and sending flaming liquid everywhere; the other blew up the concentrated boxes of ammunition. The whole post was bathed in a massive fireball; then individual explosives began to go off in all directions. Weiz, on the ground below, could only keep low and try and make himself as small a target as possible. One thing was sure—the wooden stairway was also aflame, and he could not reach the top now even if he wanted to. He looked up when the explosions diminished and made a run for it away from the wall and towards Lamoine. Coydt’s trap had been sprung, but in a way he hadn’t expected.

Kasdi quickly restored Matson in Flux, then kissed him. “Good luck!”

“You, too,” he responded softly, giving her a hug.

Both reentered Anchor east of the machine and saw the remains of their work. Kasdi quickly ran down well past the machine to where they’d seen Suzl and Coydt enter Flux; Matson gave one brief check of the wall to make sure that anybody alive wasn’t going to shoot him, then stood on the apron looking directly at the machine, barely visible despite being so close.

The machine had its own protection against Flux magic, but he had no Flux magic. He had studied this problem over and over again, and he knew he’d better be right.

Carefully, he uncoiled and tested his four meter bullwhip, then walked right up to the Flux boundary and stuck his head in. He saw the wizard sitting there, relaxed in a comfortable chair, reading something. “Hey!” he shouted. “Trouble on the wall! We’re under attack!”

The wizard jumped up, revealing the two small probes on his head, and looked puzzled for a moment.

The whip cracked out, wrapped around the wizard’s neck, and as it did so Matson pulled and was back in Anchor, still pulling. The action was so quick and unexpected that the wizard literally flew off the machine’s cab deck and landed, with a pull, in Anchor.

Matson cooly walked up to him, leveled his shotgun, and blew the wizard’s head off.

He unclipped two timed explosive charges, walked into Flux and attached one to the cab area of the machine and another to a random spot on the smooth cube of the basic machine itself. Then he ran back for Anchor, unsure of just what the hell was going to happen when they and that thing blew.

Kasdi entered Flux and immediately saw Suzl, grotesquely deformed, frozen there about five meters from Coydt. The evil wizard was talking to Suzl.

“Which do you choose? A happy life—or this? I have little patience left. Here is the binding spell I spoke of. Take it, embrace it, and join your husband. Or refuse it, and stay that way until hunger forces you in.”

That spell! Suzl was going to accept it! “Suzl! Wait! Don’t do it!” Kasdi screamed.

Coydt looked over at her, turned, and smiled. “How melodramatic,” he commented softly. “Friend saved in the nick of time from a fate worse than death by the timely arrival of—Sister Kasdi, is it not?”

“I am Sister Kasdi. And you are Coydt. I have been looking forward to this for a very long time now.”

He grinned. “That is certainly mutual. Would you care to step over here a bit? I wouldn’t like to get out of range of our audience here, but I wouldn’t like to injure her either.”

16 SAINT DEVIL

“Cass! Watch out for his hate!” Suzl called to her. “He was castrated by the old Church and stuck with it in a binding spell! Power’s the only thing he’s got and hate’s his only fuel!”

“She’s right, you know,” Coydt told her. “In a way, we have things in common, you and I. Both of us were abused by the system, and both of us are trapped in binding spells that leave power as the only outlet. Power for its own sake.”

“Yes, we’re probably a pair made for each other, but you’ve become so foul that it’s impossible. What you have done to me and mine cannot be excused.”

“Excused?” He laughed. “I don’t ask to be excused! It amused me to do it. It proved out many of the theories I’ve read in the old books and fragments, the old records. Power needs no excuse! Power exists, and those who have it make the rules! Look what I’ve made them swallow in Anchor Logh! Your birthplace, the start of everything you’ve done—and the ending of it. The end of your empire, and the beginning of a new one, one based on reality. They were sheep under the old Church, willingly sending off their children to slavery and death! Actually thanking the Church for its tyranny! Then they followed you, built monuments to you, called you a liberator and denounced the old ways, not ever once thinking that by doing so they were denouncing themselves.

“And all they had done was changed mistresses, substituting one rule for another. You were the Fluxlord to whom they gladly sent their daughters, and you bound those daughters to absolute obedience, and then you sent them back to unquestionably enforce whatever rules you and your empire thought up.”

“I gave them their freedom,” Kasdi responded.

“What freedom? To happily send the best of their young off to die in distant wars for a cause you decided? And how did you free them, make their life better? Was it really different in any way?”

“Science is once again open to them.”

“Ah! Science! And I thank you for that. As long and hard as our research teams worked to develop the amplifier machines, it wasn’t until your own bright ones came up with the new transformers capable of handling an Anchor’s power and the internal electronics needed to feed them that we had the answers. The scientists thought they were working on a means of inter-Anchor communication, which is what attracted us in the first place. Perhaps they will invent that, but mine is of more immediate practicality. Science is always a two-edged sword like that. That’s why it was suppressed and feared by the old Church.”

“You’ve killed thousands in Anchor Logh,” she accused. “You killed my father.”