Why here?
Screams.
A girl screams.
A scream he knows—Michelle.
The princess was on the Dragon. And in hyperspace. Reynard races for the tunnel reaching into the darkness. The piping designed to light the corridor with flames has been smashed. Gun drawn, he chases the screams.
Stale meat perfumes the corridor. The musk smell of the dead.
Pale light illuminates the crypt. Ice-blue skin, as if hypothermic, pinks as the vampire drains blood from Michelle’s neck.
It steals her life to restore his. The magnum thunders.
The durasteel annoys the creature. It drops Michelle’s limp body to the stone.
“At least you aren’t fucking sparkly.” Reynard shifts his thoughts to wishing he had a wooden stake. His sword flashes into existence for an instant, transforming to a wooden branch shaven to a point at one end. Nothing fancy, but effective. He punctures the creature’s chest. As the point separates the heart’s chambers, the monster bursts into a waterfall of half-digested blood.
“I’m not sure you should touch her.” JC materializes from the shadows.
The wooden stake transforms into his katana.
“You control your weapon already?” JC asks, shocked.
“I’ve learned no control. Though I made a strong suggestion. It seems to do what it wants. How I got the blade to do it, I don’t know. Why don’t you want me to assist Michelle?”
“We are in her dreamscape. I don’t detect the Sandman. If you touch her it may lock you into her thoughts, and we’ll have to wake up, and then I won’t be able to follow the creature.”
“Lead the way. I have to stop it before it kills one of the crew.”
“I’m not exactly sure how this works. I’m sort of making it up as I go along,” she says.
“Hell, I do that every time I sit in the captain’s chair.”
“She should wake up, and it will just be a dream for her.” JC closes her eyes. “I found you in Michelle’s mind. The Sandman wanted to corrupt her thoughts, but she is pure—innocent. He dragged out her darkest fear.”
“What about her innocence?”
“Maybe he thought she was weak—I’m guessing.”
“Reach out for Scott,” Reynard orders.
“Why the Lieutenant?” she asks.
“He’s corruptible.”
••••••
REYNARD’S SYNAPSES TWIST like his stomach does when he crosses realities. The sharp sting snaps back as he finds himself in the dust of a dry field of sprouting greens. He doesn’t recognize the fauna. He learned to raise cattle over crops.
Much too dry at this crucial stage of growth. The plants won’t yield without moisture, and soon. Kneeling, he scoops up a handful of dirt only to find the dust covers a translucent hand.
“JC.”
“No reason to panic, Commander. We’re not cemented into Scott’s dreamscape. We observe. If the Sandman’s not here I reach out to another sleeping crewmember.”
“Are we a threat to Scott?”
The whirling buzz of a metal grinder sends white-hot sparks from the door of a durasteel shed. The nose of a cockpit tractor oddly shaped more like a Mecat than a combine protrudes from the barn. A young boy strolls past, kicking at a rock with his hands shoved into his overall pockets. He scoops up dirt with the toe of his boot and punts the dust into the wind. He lets out a deep breath and stares into the noon sun.
“Scott! Get in here!”
He sighs.
“Now, boy!”
Scott races into the barn. The older man hands him a tractor engine component hemorrhaging oil.
“Dad, I can’t keep repairing this. It needs to be replaced.”
Reynard figures Scott must be no older than eight. He read the Lieutenant’s service jacket and knows he was a mechanical child prodigy.
“That won’t happen as long as you like eatin’.”
Scott twists open the component and dumps the contents on a workbench. He pulls a cracked gear and spring from the oil puddle. “I guess I won’t eat. This spring’s not fixable.”
Grumbling, his dad takes the gear. “Get your chores done.”
Scott struts down the path to the old quarry pond. With each step he ages. Scott smiles when he sees the curly-headed Becky Farewell. Like him now, she must be fourteen with nature blessing her early with puberty. Her top stretches enough to cover her budding body, but it’s time to hand-me-down her clothes before she grows any more.
“Too hot to work? I’m going for a swim,” she says.
“Dad broke the tractor again.”
“Couldn’t you fix it?”
“If I had the part. All I ever do is fix the tractor. Wish I was old enough to join the Coalition Space Fleet and battle the Mokarran.”
“You wouldn’t get to fight. They’d have you fixin’ fighters.”
“Still be better than here.”
“You sure didn’t think that when we were in the barn loft together,” she teases.
Even in the heat of the day, the quarry remains empty.
Becky pulls off her blouse.
“What are you doin’?”
“My mom will switch me if she knew her fourteen-year-old daughter went swimming unchaperoned. Help me with this.” She pulls up her long, curly locks, exposing her nearly naked back.
Scott tugs and pulls but can’t unhook her bra.
“You can dismantle every piece of equipment on the farm and can’t help me undress.”
Embarrassed, Scott’s glad she faces away from his reddening face. “You’ve never wanted to skinny-dip before.”
“We don’t have to,” she reaches behind herself to rub her open palm over the front of his overalls, “but it’s too hot for the barn loft.”
He drops to the dirt and yanks his boots off.
Becky dives into the water. As she swims under the surface, Tri-Star Federation Mecats firebomb the countryside.
Scott grabs his boots. “Get out of the water!”
Plasma bolts scorch the treetops.
Gray smoke hazes the skyline. Plums of black pillars signal burning structures. Becky breaks the surface.
“We have to hide!”
“My family…I’ve got to get back to the farm—my family.” Becky panics.
“We’ve a bunker! We’ve got to get to the bunker!”
Scott loses all manly urges and races to his farm, leaving Becky alone to find her own way through the thickening gray smoke.
••••••
“DID THIS HAPPEN?” Reynard asks.
“Most likely. Or a close approximation. It’s a memory dream. I don’t detect a Sandman, but guilt over abandoning the girl and being unable to defend
