The Family nas Kan

[Brian W. Antoine]

A Family Matter

By: Brian W. Antoine
May 2011

Chapter 1: Velan Family

My yell for help hadn’t finished echoing off the walls before
Wythdantis and her team began pouring out of every door I could see, headed
for where I stood holding Kalindra. The first med-tech to reach me held
out his arms so I could pass her to him, the one behind him was reaching
for her shoulder to begin stanching the wound she’d torn open again during
her attempt to teach manners to a bunch of North Idaho Rednecks.

Third to reach me was Wythdantis and she grabbed for me instead of
Kalindra, which I didn’t actually mind since I was starting to feel more
than a little unsteady on my feet. Being back home, the tension that had
kept me on my feet since the Meenzai had attacked finally gave up the
battle and I started to shutdown. Wythdantis had other ideas though.

“How dare you risk the life of Kalindra for your stupid revenge!”
she yelled into my face, snapping my eyes back open in spite of the
weariness I felt.

“Go fuck yourself, it was her idea,” was all I managed to say
before standing became too much trouble and I fell forward into her arms.

“I should …”

I wasn’t unconscious, just too damned tired to care any more as I
mumbled, “You’re probably angry enough to do something stupid, except you
can’t get angry with me, and you can’t even get angry at the fact you can’t
get angry. Sucks to be you I guess.”

“What have you done?”

I closed my eyes and smiled, about the same time one of her
med-techs yelled that my mates child was showing signs of distress because
of Kalindra’s blood loss.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

I managed to mutter, “Go save your granddaughter you idiot” before
I gave up and passed out in her arms. I didn’t wake up for three days.

* * *

I wasn’t even sure I was awake until some voices from the next room
caused me to turn my head in their direction. When I opened my eyes, I
found myself looking at our families sleeping chambers and I was cuddled up
behind Kalindra with my arms around her. We were the only ones in the
room, and I’m not sure how long I lay there like that, not thinking, just
content that my mate was alive and in my arms and nothing was trying to
kill us. Eventually though, I heard the voices again, and that caused me
to focus enough that I noticed Kal was still in a deep healing sleep. I
could feel her in my head, our bond as solid as the day it formed, but all
I felt was the constant warmth of the link itself, not her thoughts.

“She still has a few days of healing ahead of her,” came
Wythdantis’ voice from the doorway and I turned my head to look at her.
That’s when I noticed the burn marks on the walls of the room and the faint
scent of burnt cloth finally got my attention.

“They will be OK?”

“Your mate and daughter have survived, but there are questions that
the Klizach nas Kan must provide answers to.”

I closed my eyes for a moment and muttered a mild curse to myself.
If Wythdantis was going formal on me, this wasn’t going to be fun. “The
Klizach will make himself available for questions as soon as he has washed
and found some clothing.” Wythdantis simply bowed and backed out of the
doorway, which didn’t improve my mood any.

It took about an hour before I’d showered to the point of finally
feeling presentable again, and my closet had been ransacked to find one of
the more formal Velan ensembles in my wardrobe. Lythandi and Naldantis had
met me the moment I left the sleeping chambers and had carried me off to
the shower with hardly a word spoken between us, and at some level, for the
first time, no words were needed. It wouldn’t have been that long ago that
I’d have freaked at the idea, now it seemed right somehow.

And it wasn’t just my own view of things that had changed. As I
stood there while Lythandi tied the sash around the robe she’d picked out
for me, making sure it hung just right, Naldantis was finishing with the
braid he was tying in my hair. As he picked out a gold wolf shaped clasp
I’d had made, and clipped it in place, he leaned close and whispered “Don’t
take any crap from her” and nuzzled my cheek. There was still a small part
of me that was yelling “What the Hell???” in the back of my mind, but the
rest accepted what was happening. Hugging both of them close I told them,
“Thank You,” then walked from our private quarters to my office, where
Wythdantis was waiting for me. Last, but not least, outside the door stood
my son, holding my staff out to me as I stepped through the door. I took
it, ruffled his hair a little and thanked him.

“Ok, they wanted the Klizach, let’s see if they can deal with what
they’ve asked for.”

* * *

Wythdantis was waiting outside my office door as I rounded the tree
that dominated the center of our home. I nodded to her, opened the door
and waved her in, then followed and sat at my desk. “I understand there
are questions for nas Kan that cannot wait until the Klizan is available,”
I told her as I pointed at the chair across from me she could sit in. “The
Klizach will answer as best he is able in her absence.” I did my best to
ignore the bright red message waiting light that was blinking from my comm
console, as Wythdantis sat down and got right to the point.

“A debt of honor complaint has been filed against nas Kan on behalf
of Vandantis ne Felian, one of my staff.”

Translation, we were being sued by his family for some reason, and
it annoyed me that Wythdantis started by dumping the complaint in my lap
instead of explaining what had happened to cause it. “And the nature of
this complaint?” I prompted.

“That while caring for the Klizan and Klizach nas Kan, Vandantis
was injured and it now appears he may never be able to serve as a Healer
again. Nas Felian claims a debt of honor to pay for his care and
compensate the family for the loss of his services.”

I just sat there staring at her, and after a few minutes of her
still not telling me what the hell had actually happened, I turned to my
comm console and flipped through to the public records area to view the
complaint myself. The complaint was lacking in details as well, all it
contained was the basic complaint, the people involved and the amount of
compensation that they believed was required. I did my best not to laugh
when I saw the amount.

“Ok, now do I dig through your memories or are you going to tell me
what this is about?” I told Wythdantis as I turned my chair around to face
her again.

“You would not dare, I …”

“I would dare a great many things these days,” I said, interrupting
her. “I have a world full of angry cats who would love to wipe me and my
family from the universe, there are undoubtedly some on my home planet that
are thinking similar thoughts, my mate and daughter almost died in my arms
and you’re expecting me to sit quietly for a game of twenty questions. I’m
not sure whose ass I should kick first here, but you’re the closest at the
moment. Now I’ll ask just once more, what happened?”

I watched her think about it for a minute or two, and I got the
distinct impression once again that she really wanted to be angry with me,
and was annoyed and scared that she couldn’t be. “You may have noticed a
few burn marks on the walls of your quarters when you awoke,” she finally
said.

“Yes, there is an burnt odor as well, even to my poor sense of
smell.”

Wythdantis rubbed her temples almost like I would when trying to
deal with a headache. “It was the third day of your recovery, Vandantis
was on monitor duty, when Kalindra began showing signs of distress again.
He had just enough time to yell for help when you, for lack of a better
description, powered up. He made a choice, he tapped the power you were
making available and saved the life of your mate.”

I waited, that couldn’t be all of the story, and Wythdantis sighed
and grew just a little smaller as she pulled herself into the chair she was
sitting in.

“Vandantis latter tried to describe the experience to us, but he
wasn’t making much sense. As best we can understand, his skills as a
healer, augmented with the power you provided, took him far beyond anything
we’ve ever documented. He was describing how he coaxed cells to divide and
rebuild tissue, blood vessels to spread out and nourish that tissue, bones
to knit like they had never been broken, all under his control and they did
so as he watched. When Kalindra was finally out of danger, he broke the
connection with you. You returned to normal, or as normal as you ever are,
he collapsed into the arms of the staff that hadn’t been able to enter the
room because of the energy flows that were present.”

“The burnt smell and scorch marks were caused by me I assume?”

“We were worried for a short time that you might have actually set
the room on fire, but could find no trace of flame during later
examination.”

“And the debt of honor?”

“When Vandantis awoke, he became agitated to a degree we could not
explain. He is now under constant watch back at my facilities to make sure
he does not hurt himself or others. As best we can understand at this
point, he remembers everything he accomplished and the realization that he
will never likely be capable of that kind of thing again has driven him
into a deep depression.”

It was my turn to think while Wythdantis watched quietly. I
checked my own memories for the last few days and found a blank, which was
expected since I’d been deep in a healing coma the entire time. After
several minutes I could find nothing wrong with my, or my families actions,
so I turned back to the comm console and recorded a message for the public
records.

“The Klizach nas Kan regrets any harm done to Vandantis ne Felian
as a result of the failure of Wythdantis nal Sata to properly educate her
staff before assigning them to the healing of the Klizan and Klizach nas
Kan. Nas Kan will assist as it can in the treatment of Vandantis and
expressed its hopes for a quick and complete recovery.” I added my
thumbprint to the message and sent it, Wythdantis was staring at me in
shock as I turned back to face her.

“You’ve attracted a great many people to your facility the last few
years, due in no small part to your relationship with nas Kan and the
discoveries we were helping you make. You better than anybody else knows
the relationship between a healer and the power they have available to heal
with, yet you placed that poor kid in harms way, without warning him about
what you well knew I was capable of doing when I think Kalindra is in
danger. There is an honor issue here, but it damn well isn’t nas Kan that
failed to deal honorably with Vandantis ne Felian.”

“What have you done?” she finally managed to say.

“I have done what any Klizach would have done, I have placed the
blame where it belonged and done so as honorably as I could for those
involved. Now, is there anything else you wished to question nas Kan
about?” I wasn’t sure if she’d simply walk out of the room and never
return, or accept her mistake and move on. Having known Wythdantis since
my first day on Velar, I suspected it would be a combination of the two and
that the issue was hardly settled.

“The Klizan is with child,” she finally said.

“That is correct, and I thank you for saving my daughters life.”

“Your daughter?”

“Yes, my daughter.”

“Your genetic daughter?”

I thought about that for a moment, I knew what she wanted to ask
and I knew she wasn’t going to like the answer. Reaching over to one of
the drawers of my desk, I thumbed open the lock and removed a small bag on
a cord, then hung it around my neck. Concentrating for a moment, reminding
myself about the details of the genetic signature of the bags contents, I
shifted form and now faced Wythdantis as a middle aged male Velan. “My
genetic daughter, and any questions beyond what you have asked will involve
family matters, which are not your concern.”

“You refereed to your daughter as my granddaughter, does that not
give me the right?”

She had a point, which meant it was my turn to be annoyed. “I was
not exactly in full control of myself when I said that, a better
description of the relationship might be that you are her Aunt, to what
degree though is unknown.”

“The form you wear, I contributed to it?”

“You, and a number of others, including myself. Human and Velan
genetic coding are not directly compatible, but research and more than a
little magic demonstrated that the concepts encoded for had similarities. I
am Velan in this form, my daughter is proof.”

“And you retain some of the changes even in your Human form,” she
said with a hard stare.

“Yes, my research uncovered the genetic encoding for your anger
suppression mechanism and as you’ve noticed, I smell right to you even in
Human form now.”

“Can you get angry with us?”

I paused for just a second, then smiled as innocently as I could,
“I’m sure you already know the answer to that question.” She thought about
that for a moment.

“Will your daughter be able to get angry with her own species?”

There was the question finally. “No, she won’t, and any further
questions on that subject are strictly a family matter.” I knew she had
more questions, I was not inclined to answer them and it really was a
family matter. If she persisted, I’d be well within my rights as Klizach
to throw her off the mountain we lived on for violating family privacy.

“Are there any other questions which do not involve family
matters?” I glanced at the red light still blinking on the comm console.
“I expect to be occupied for the foreseeable future with issues concerning
the war that my home world has survived and their new knowledge about the
friends and enemies they have.”

“No, you have answered my questions. I will leave a med-tech here
to monitor the Klizan until she awakens, I will be returning to my
facilities to rejoin my staff, who are awaiting my arrival.”

I stood up from my chair and bowed to her as she left my office.
“Thank you for keeping us alive.” The look she gave me as she left made me
think she might have done things differently if she had them to do again. I
was going to have to talk to her alone sometime soon, when things had
settled down and I had time to really talk to her about everything that was
going on. Formal Velan or Family Friend, I’d known Wythdantis a long time
and she’d saved my life more than once. At the moment though, there were
just too many things screaming for attention, my hide, or both. Sitting
back in my chair I spun around and stabbed at the message waiting light on
the comm console.

* * *

A lifelong habit made me read the flood of messages waiting for me
from oldest to newest, I’d never thought doing it the other way around made
the slightest sense. Read the oldest first, find out how anything that
ended up still needing attention began and what had happened, as it had
happened. I had a notepad and pen beside the terminal and began making
notes as I discovered just how much hell had broken loose the last few
days. I broke two pens before I finally realized my hand was still furry,
and that pens snapped way to easily in a Velan paw. When I’d finished the
final message, I looked at my notes and made a list of who to call first,
just as soon as I calmed down, because I was in no mood to even attempt
being polite the way I felt now.

Pushing my chair back from the terminal, I turned and got up from
my desk, then headed from my office to the kitchen. As I passed Kalindra’s
picture on my office wall, I stopped for a moment and looked up at her.
“Wake up soon dear, this mess needs both of us,” I told the painting before
I flung the office door open with a crash and continued on to the kitchen.

Lythandi was waiting for me as I entered and handed me a cup of hot
chocolate with marshmallows just starting to dissolve on top. “Have I
mentioned recently that I love you?” I told her as I took the mug. She
gave me her best attempt at a human grin and said, “Not in the last few
days.” I held the mug up to my muzzle and inhaled the scent of the
chocolate causing an involuntary shudder because of its intensity. “You
obviously don’t slap sense into me often enough.” I closed my eyes and
took a sip of the chocolate, then thanked her and headed back to my office.

Sitting back in my chair again, I finished off about half the mug
before I sat it on my desk and turned back to the terminal once again to
place the first of many calls, this one being to Tanindra.

It had taken less than twenty-four hours for the US Government to track
down just who I was, and worse, who my family was, thanks to Pennys
broadcasting the battle communications feeds back to Earth. It had taken
even less time for them to take my Aunt into “protective custody” while she
was out trying to pick up a few emergency supplies from the local store. My
cousin, Steve, had found and called the emergency phone number I’d given
him years earlier the moment he and my Uncle realized something had
happened.

Tanindra had showed up before Steve had even gotten off the phone. He’d
stayed just long enough to pick up my Aunts trace, in spite of my Uncles
reaction to his teleporting into the living room of their home. Then he’d
vanished again as he’d left to explain to everybody at the local airforce
base just why they shouldn’t be interfering with my family. From the
messages I’d read before calling him, they’d resisted the lesson he’d tried
to teach them, but that hadn’t stopped him. As soon as my Aunt was safely
back home, he’d picked up my mother and brother, and dealt with even more
hysterics on my mother’s part, and then thrown a defensive barrier around
the house to keep everybody from bothering them. For good measure he’d
assigned a couple of security guards from Geneva, with weapons that made it
clear they hadn’t come from Earth, to keep a watch on things. As for the
call I made, I barely had time enough to pull my hand back from the
keyboard before Tanindra answered it.

“Are they still safe?” I asked him.

“As of a few minutes ago, they are fine, though still angry enough
with how the events of the last few days have played out that I have not
tried to speak to them directly. The barrier around the residence is still
in place and the guards I assigned report that nobody has attempted to
bother them in the last 30 hours, though there are still a number of your
news media personal in the area.”

I looked at Tanindra across the lightyears the call was traversing
and could see in his eyes that the stress was getting to him. “And how are
you doing? None of this mess is your concern, I expect there are more
pressing matters concerning Velar that you should be dealing with.”

“All these years living amongst us and you still don’t understand
about family?” he said, and I think, for me, that cemented the fact that no
matter what his name might be the rest of his life, there would always be a
silent suffix.

“I’m but a poor stupid human, what would I know.” That got me a
laugh and I saw some of the stress etched in his face, release its hold.

“You’re a bit fuzzy, even for a human who hates to shave, at the
moment.”

I thought about that, and the calls I was going to be making, and
closed my eyes to concentrate as I shifted my form again. “There, is that
stupid looking enough?” Tan nodded, but didn’t say anything because he was
too busy trying to keep from laughing. “Speaking of stupid, I don’t
suppose you’ve seen my idiot sister lately?”

“I assigned her to guard your family, she’s been standing in front
of the residence for the last few days, doing her best to scare off anybody
who even looked like they might want to become a problem.”

I thought about that for a moment, then drew a line through one of
the calls on my list. “Thank you, she caused much of this, that’s a good
place for her.” I silently added something about that also making sure
she’d be right at hand when I took a hammer to her, and it must have showed
on my face because Tanindra laughed again. We then talked about what was
currently going on at Tycho, I wanted a second opinion about what I’d read
between the lines of the messages I’d gone through. “I don’t suppose you
left my family a comm console by chance?”

“Sorry, no, I must admit the thought did not occur to me to do so.”

“Ok, I’ll just place a really long distance phone call then. I’ll
get back to you as soon as any of this mess starts to sort itself out,”
then I broke the connection when he nodded his acceptance of that.
Finishing off the now cold mug of chocolate, I put a call through to the
security department of the company Kalindra and I had setup in Geneva. The
duty tech still managed a surprised look as the call went through, in spite
of the fact that there were probably less than a half dozen people in this
part of the spiral arm who could have even placed the call he was
answering.

“Sir, it’s good to see you!”

“It’s good to be around to be seen,” I told him. “I need to place
a secure call to the following phone number, I’ll wait while you get the
relay setup.” The look on his face confirmed what I’d suspected.

“Sir, I can setup the relay, but I can’t secure it. In your
absence, Jean ordered us to leave Zorac inactive, our links to the
planetary networks are only manually monitored and defended.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m no longer absent, and that you work for
the Family nas Kan, not Jean. I am authorizing you to bring Zorac online
and if Jean says anything, you have my permission to tell her to go to
hell, I’ll provide the map.” It took a few seconds for that to sink in,
then he grinned. “This is what I hired and trained your team for. I
expect Zorac will keep your team busy for awhile as he starts cleaning
house, I’d like that phone call relay near the top of your priority list.
Please give me a callback when it’s available.”

“No problem sir, and again, it’s good to have you back.”

I nodded and terminated the call, then grabbed my mug and decided a
refill was in order. The walk and the chocolate would both calm me down,
because Jean was the third call on my list.

When Kalindra and I had setup a company in Geneva to act as the
local contact point to deal with us, I’d known from the start that we were
going to become the focus of every idiot and intelligence agency on the
planet once they learned about us. I’d also decided early on that our
security was going to be more than a few harsh words for anybody who tried
to screw with us. With Penny’s help, we’d recruited a unique team of
people and created an AI to assist them. Zorac, the AI, would identify and
track attacks made against us; the team, which included a few Mages, would
deal with what he found. Rule number one, any computer attacking us was to
be rendered incapable of further attacks. I didn’t care if it caught fire,
melted or exploded, whatever the team decided was appropriate based on the
attack and the attacker.

Jean, I now knew, had decided on a more passive response. Well,
she was welcome to that approach when she owned what was being attacked.
Lythandi wasn’t waiting for me this time when I got to the kitchen, so I
had to get my own hot chocolate, and the message waiting light was blinking
when I got back to my office.

“I have your relay ready for you sir,” said the same tech I’d
talked to earlier when the connection went through.

“Any problems?”

“Not for us, though I expect there are more than a few people
around the world scrambling to understand what just happened to their
equipment. Zorac tracked more than seventy taps on the test call we
placed, and he warned them what would happen if they were still tapping the
call thirty seconds later. Only a few ceased, Zorac dealt with most of the
remaining taps and the on-duty security specialist dealt with the rest.”

“Anything after that?” I asked.

“We placed a second test call two minutes later, the specialist
melted down everything that tried to tap it. A third test call went
through without issue.”

“They won’t have learned their lesson yet,” I said.

“No sir, I wouldn’t think so either. We’ll be monitoring your call
and any repeat offenders will be escalated to a more forceful lesson.”

I took a sip of my hot chocolate and nodded, “Please put my call
through and thank your team for me.” He grinned and nodded, then my screen
switched to an audio only call and I heard the familiar ringing signal get
relayed across twelve hundred lightyears. On a Caller ID box back on
Earth, my name and the location ‘Kan Residence, Velar’ was blinking
silently at anybody who was looking.

I got the answering machine.

“Hello, yes, this is Brian. If you’re monitoring the call, pickup,
believe me this call is secure.” I waited a few seconds, nobody answered,
so I continued. “I’ve heard what happened and I’m sorry, I didn’t want you
guys to learn about what I’ve really been doing all these years the way you
did. You can trust Tanindra though and I’ll be there in a couple of days
with the family to answer all your questions, I just need to wait for
Kalindra to finish healing up from the battles we’ve been through. If you
need anything, the number Steve has will bring help, I’ll see you …” and
the call ended with a beep as the machine cut me off. I just shook my head
at the stupidity of some bit of electronics and tape that believed no
message should ever be longer than a two minutes, then rubbed my temples
with my palms.

* * *

The next call was to Jean, and I really hoped she didn’t answer,
I’d get to tell myself I’d tried but had been unable to reach her.
Unfortunately, she must have been close to her terminal because it took
less than fifteen seconds for the screen to clear, it took even less time
for her to react to seeing that it was me calling.

“You son of a bitch! When I get my hands on you …”

No, I wasn’t going to put up with that shit, not from Wythdantis,
nor from Jean. “Strike One,” was all I said then I terminated the call. I
hadn’t even sat back in my chair before the incoming call light began
blinking at me, I ignored it and after grabbing my mug I headed to the
kitchen. Naldantis was fixing himself a snack as I entered, and after he
gave me a questioning look and I nodded, he started fixing another for me.
Sitting on the other side of the table, I accepted a sandwich from him with
a sigh, then closed my eyes for a moment.

“You look like you could use a backrub,” he said quietly.

I let one eye open enough to look over at him and replied, “Several
I suspect, I haven’t had a chance to work out the kinks from laying in bed
for days in a healing sleep yet.” I stretched and my back popped loud
enough for him to hear it.

“I’m sure Lythandi would be willing, even though she hates cleaning that
oil you like out of her fur afterwards. That’s why were here after all, to
support you and Kalindra.”

What the hell? I sat up in my chair, wide-awake now, and stared at him.
“Is that why you think we asked you to join this family?” I continued to
stare at him, and I found myself wondering just when he’d picked up the
scattering of grey in his fur. “You’re serious.” He didn’t say anything,
but he also wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “Nal,” and I paused for a moment
to think. “Nal, I wish I’d realized you and Lythandi felt like this, and I
refuse to try and give you some flip answer simply because I’ve got so much
else to deal with at the moment. Can you give your sorry excuse for a
Klizach a few hours to slap some sense into a few people, then join me and
the rest of the family for a long overdue talk?” He barely managed to
blink in surprise, but finally gave me an all too human nod. I stood up
from the table, bowed to him, grabbed my sandwich and walked through the
house to the doors that led out to the patio, deep in thought.

When I’d created this place I’d done it with song. No matter how
many times Kalindra had tried to teach me how she did magic, when I wanted
it done and done right, I still returned to what had first sparked the
magic within me, music. When I wanted to relax, to concentrate, to clear
my head of crap, it was still music that did it best. Standing there on
the patio, staring out at the valley below, I went there once again.
Jumping over the railing I flew several miles away from our home to a sweet
spot I’d found above the valley floor, and then came to a stop.

To keep some part of my mind from worrying about falling, I teased
one of the clouds that was nearby into place below me, than floated above
it like I was sitting on it. With a glance at four places around me that
I’d previously memorized, crystal transducers formed and hovered in place.
Then I pulled a beat up old iPod from my pocket, selected the playlist I
had in mind, and closed my eyes as I clicked play.

The first piece was Valley in The Clouds, by David Arkenstone,
which I’d always thought of as the signature piece for where I lived. Next
up was Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, by Michael Murray, played on an honest
to god pipe organ that could do it justice. I didn’t bother turning the
volume down. It wasn’t until a week later, after all the events of the
next few days had been recorded in the family history, that I learned one
of the Velan Orbital Control stations had been overhead at the time. The
news reports, without any additional commentary, were simply videos of me
sitting there in the clouds before they vanished ahead of the shock wave,
and a note that I’d triggered seismographs a thousand miles away.

When the playlist finally ended, and I slowly made my way home and
to my office, I understood a simple truth I think I’d been missing. I’m
wasn’t sure if I’d understood it once and forgotten, or if it had been
waiting patiently for me to find it. I also understood for the first time
just what a pain in the ass I’d been for Kimi to deal with, in spite of the
fact I’d thought I’d shown her respect. Sitting down at my desk, I turned
and deleted all the saved messages from Jean that she’d left, then placed a
call to her.

“How dare you hang …”

“You will shut the fuck up, or I will never bother talking to you
the rest of your life,” I said quietly as I interrupted her. “I am tired
of the games, you will speak to me in a civil tone, or you will not speak
to me at all.” I then waited, my hand above the disconnect button. She
didn’t say a thing for several minutes, though I could see her fighting
with herself as she fought the urge to yell at me.

“Thank you for returning my call,” she finally said. “I have been
informed that Zorac has been activated, though I distinctly recall giving
the order that it be left inactive.”

“Yes, my staff informed me that you had made such a request of
them, and admitted that in my absence, they had deferred to your wishes.
Now that I’m available, they have activated him per my orders.” I watched
her bite back a response, think about what I’d just said and how I’d said
it, then think about it again. I’d just drawn the line in the sand and
reminded her that those people didn’t work for her, they worked for me.
“Out of curiosity, since it’s been several days now, I’d like to know if
anybody from Earth has managed to make it to Tycho yet. Given how simple
that drive is to build, I’d have expected you to have gotten a few visitors
by now.” I watched her again as she realized I was not going to allow
arguments about my decision.

“You would be right, we’ve tracked four vessels so far, three made
it here.”

“The forth?”

“As best we can tell, the forth had some kind of life support
failure, either they didn’t plan well enough or something failed. The
container they’d bolted the drive to never made any course corrections or
attempts to decelerate and they are now headed into a long orbital path
that will probably decay and drop them into the sun.”

We’d planned for this kind of thing during the preparations for
releasing the plans, though we hadn’t liked it. Once things got moving, we
couldn’t afford to try and go after everybody who might try to reach Tycho
without doing their homework. It was harsh, but every failure would make
those behind them rethink their plans, and hopefully fix their own
problems. “And the three who made it?”

“Two private groups and one military one, the military group has
taken a particular interest in your ship, which is still sitting on the
landing pad where Kalindra left it.”

“The Sunbeam can defend itself if they get annoying, but I’ll
notify the TipKatz repair crew that it needs to be moved from Tycho so its
out of temptations reach.” I thought about a few other calls I’d need to
make, and scribbled a few notes on the pad on my desk. “If you are
interested, I have a suggestion for you,” I said as I turned back to the
screen. “You have not mentioned it, perhaps it is next on your list of
issues to deal with, but I understand from the messages I’ve seen that the
debris cloud from the Meenzai is becoming a nasty hazard.”

“That would be understating the problem,” said Jean while gritting
her teeth.

“One of the things I found was always in short supply while I was
ArchMage was money. A bank account with large numbers associated with it
was always easier to make use of than the ability to create precious
metals, or gems. Have you thought about contacting 931 and offering to
sell the TipKatz the salvage rights to that debris? They get enough stuff
to keep their shipyards busy for decades, you get that mess cleaned up and
out of reach of military people who are probably trying to figure out how
to get at it even as we speak. I’ve got a couple of other suggestions
also, if you have a few minutes.”

I had no idea if Jean wanted to kill me, hug me, or both, I
couldn’t read the expression on her face. We ended up talking for another
hour before I told her I had some family business to deal with and that I’d
call in a few days to see how things were going. Looking over the notes
I’d made, I sent off a few messages and then closed down the terminal. As
I walked out of my office, I found my son sitting on the bench that
surrounded the huge tree that grew in the central courtyard, and he had the
strangest damn look on his face.

“Is this when I should run screaming from the house?” I asked him.

“I have been asked to make sure that neither I, nor anybody else,
enter the room where my mother is recovering for the next few hours. As
for any screaming, I have been told that anything I hear during that time
did not actually happen, it is simply my youthful imagination or problems
digesting some of the family chili I warmed up for dinner.”

I glanced at the front door to our home and wondered if I could get
to it before he could.

“Father, you have expressed your willingness to accept complaints
from Lythandi and Naldantis, have you changed your mind?”

I took a couple of steps sideways so I could see around the tree to
the door that lead to the family sleeping area, where Kalindra was resting.
Standing on either side of that door were Lythandi and Naldantis, waiting
for me. “Lan Louis,” I said, glancing over at him where he sat grinning at
me. “I have fought entire planets of beings who wanted nothing more than
to see me served up with a decent brand of ketchup. Surely a calm family
discussion about a few misunderstandings should be easy to survive.” My
son laughed just loud enough for me to hear, and I remembered that Velan’s
channel their anger through their sense of humor.

Ok, I’d asked for and accepted this, so I circled the tree and
walked up to the doorway where Lythandi and Naldantis waited. As I bowed
to them, the doorway opened and we were all greeted by the Healer
Wythdantis had left to watch over Kalindra.

“Greetings Klizach, Lythandi, “ and I saw her give a glance at
Naldantis and dismiss him just as quickly. “Your mate is resting …”

“Thank you for your service, you may leave now,” I said as I
interrupted her, for some reason all the anger I’d felt since ever since
watching Kalindra get shot on New Years Eve all come into sharp focus
inside me.

“I have been instructed by Wythdantis …”

“You may tell Wythdantis that Naldantis ne Kan will care for his
Klizan, I trust him with her life more than some Healer who is unable to
show him the respect he is due.” The Healer in front of me stared at me
like she was going to dismiss me as well, then I think she noticed the
faint glow that had started to surround me. With a quick bow she excused
herself and made her way to the front door and the Gate that would take her
back to the northern continent. I watched her leave, then turned back to
face my family.

“I may be the worst Klizach this planet has ever known, but I’ve
really had all I can stand of my family being looked at like we aren’t
worthy of being shown the respect due us.” Naldantis just stared at me,
Lythandi stepped up, grabbed me and threw me over her shoulder.

“Respect due us is one of the things we want to talk to you about,”
she said as she carried me through the door and into our sleeping quarters
where Kalindra lay healing. Naldantis followed, and closed the door behind
him. Two days later, Kalindra woke up, and I mentioned while holding her
close and crying with relief that I was going to have to move her painting
in my office so that I could make room for one of Lythandi as well.
Chapter 2: Terran Family

Kalindra was laughing so hard, I thought she might hurt herself,
but considering what she was laughing about I also gave a moment or two to
the thought of throwing her off the side of the mountain we lived on. “I
do not think this is funny.” She calmed her laughter just long enough to
give me a look, then took off on another round until she started having
trouble breathing and laughing at the same time. “Not funny at all,” I
said to no one in particular, and went back to trying to find something to
wear that wouldn’t embarrass me to the rest of the family when we met them
in a few hours.

The problem had begun when I’d agreed with Lythandi that she
deserved to have her portrait on my office wall, next to Kalindra’s. Then
I’d explained the other criteria for that portrait and she’d simply nodded
and asked when I was available. When I’d told her that it was Naldantis’
job to help her, not me, she’d gotten as annoyed with me as is possible for
a Velan to get and hadn’t spoken to me until Kalindra finally woke up. When
I’d brought her up to speed on all the things that had been happening, and
she’d made a few calls to add her word to the mix, I’d contacted Penny and
the security guards back on Earth and told them we’d be arriving the next
day.

Lythandi, vindictive trickster that she was, had volunteered to
help me get dressed, just as Naldantis had done for Kalindra. I now found
myself dressed like a cheap pimp, at least to my eyes, and I’d found out
that was actually her intention. My darling mate, mother of my children,
head of the family, had given her a few suggestions and had held me still
when I’d resisted being dressed.

I finally gave up trying to talk to Kalindra and headed for my
office to let Penny know we might be just a little late. I passed Lan
Louis on the way and heard him try to hide a snicker as he quickly got out
of my sight. The moment the office door closed behind me and concentrated
for a moment and then relaxed as my normal attire of jeans and a silly
shirt replaced the ‘formal Klizach attire’ as it had been described to me.

When I was finished with the call, I walked back to our quarters
and found the entire family there waiting for me. The moment Lyth saw her
work had been ruined, she headed for me with an evil gleam in her eyes, and
I held up my hand and put a stop to the nonsense. “You’ve had your joke,
now do this right or I go dressed as I am.” Since I was wearing a shirt
that brightly proclaimed, ‘I’m With Stupid ?’, I hoped they’d see things my
way. Since Lythandi stopped coming towards me, and the laughter finally
died down, I figured everybody had made their point.

“Naldantis, I’d like to make one suggestion to how you have dressed
the Klizan, if I may?” He blinked, decided I was serious, and nodded. I
walked over to Kalindra and the bright green layered combination wrap and
dress she was wearing, and spoke to the cloth with a little magic near the
shoulder where she’d been shot. When I was done, her shoulder was bare and
the starburst of white fur around the healed wound was visible. As I
stepped back, Kalindra gave me the oddest look I’d ever seen, but she also
know better than anybody there what I was feeling when I looked at her. She
finally just bowed and then pulled me close to hug me.

“Now as to Lythandi, I believe I still have to figure out how to
dress you.” I caught just a hint of panic in her eyes, but she didn’t try
to hide. “Now I’ve been thinking about this all day, I hope it turns out
right and looks as good on you as it looks in my head.” Taking her paw and
leading her to a clear part of the room where I could walk around her and
not stumble over something, I had her stand still while I started to sing
to myself. Her existing clothing vanished within seconds, and then she was
surrounded by light that swirled around her as I sang. When I finished,
and the light faded, she was dressed in semi-transparent silk, all of it
brightly colored enough to suit Velan eyesight. For the final touch, I
stepped up behind her, took a small silver chime with her name engraved on
it and clipped it to her tail. Then I stepped back to admire my handy
work.

“There, I believe that should be acceptable attire for a female of
nas Kan.”

There were no dissenting votes.

“I believe I’m the last one that needs to get ready here, what did
my family have in mind?” I was about to clear my throat and ask again,
everybody in the room was looking at each other, then at me, but not saying
a word. Finally, Kalindra gave a swish of her tail so that her chime could
be heard, Lythandi did the same and listened to the slightly different tone
of her own chime, then they both approached me and that stupid shirt was
the first thing they got rid of.

When Lan Louis handed me my staff finally, I laughed and thought to
myself that I still looked pretty good for my age.

“Don’t get any ideas, you belong to us,” said Kalindra as we made
our way to the household gate that would take us to Tycho. Lythandi said
something I didn’t catch, but Kalindra laughed and replied, “Yes, we’ll
keep him around.”

* * *

We hardly made it through the WorldGate at Tycho before we were
spotted and everybody in range headed towards us, all of them talking,
trying to get our attention. Among them were a couple of soldiers from the
military group that had made it to Tycho, the look on their faces were not
nearly as friendly as the rest of the crowd that formed around us.

“Thank you, and I’ll be happy to meet with as many of you as I can,
when I can, but we are here on family business and have an appointment to
keep,” I told the crowd. The moment I said family business, most, but not
all of the crowd, quieted down and gave us room to move. Those who didn’t
realize what was going on were intercepted by those who did, and taught
what that phrase meant. Our little group completely ignored those who
still thought they had some claim to our time as Kalindra did a visual
check of the Sunbeam where it still sat on the landing pad, and I built up
a mental picture of the driveway of my Uncle’s home on Earth. When I was
sure the area was clear, I signaled Kalindra and all of us gathered in a
small area so I could teleport us all there.

Penny saw us first from where she was standing guard by the front
door of the house, the security detail was only slightly slower and gave us
just the briefest of looks before turning back to their duty. All of us
were inside the defense field Tanindra had thrown around the property, it
looked to be mid-morning and it was snowing both inside and outside the
field since falling snow was low enough in energy to not get blocked. We
were not dressed for either snow or cold, though I was the only one that
was going to really notice the cold due to my lack of a fur coat. That
only took a few seconds to deal with and the faint shimmer of an
environment field formed around me, even as Penny flew from her post at the
front door to great us.

“Good to see you up and around brother!”

“Don’t you brother me you piece of costume jewelry with delusions
of grandeur.” That stopped her in mid-flight, and I saw her lean from side
to side as she tried to see around me.

“You didn’t bring a hammer with you, can I assume I’ve got a chance
of surviving your anger this time?”

“We’ll see,” I told her, and she fell into line behind us as I lead
the family up the walkway and stairs to the front door of the house. I was
at the head of the line, I figured it better be my face visible in the
peephole when we knocked on the door. Before I knocked though, and I’d
always knocked when visiting, I’d never used the doorbell, I did glance
over at it and grinned. My cousin Jody, when she was just a kid, had taken
a pencil and carefully wrote ‘Ring Me’ on the pale brickwork next to the
doorbell. Decades later, those words were still visible and were a
reminder of how long we’d all been around.

Reaching out with my staff, I lighted rapped on the door with the
head of it, and said, “It’s Brian, and have I ever got a surprise for you
…”

* * *

The surprise, turned out to be mine, nobody answered the door. I
knew they were in there, I could hear somebody moving near the other side
of the door and the peephole flickered as they moved between it and the
light coming from the kitchen window behind them. I knocked again after a
couple of minutes, I could hear a couple of muffled voices now, but still
nobody opened the door. When I reached out to knock a third time, Kalindra
reached out as well and stopped me.

“Perhaps your old family does not wish to speak with us,” she said
as she held my arm.

I looked from her, to where everybody else stood on the stairs
behind us, and slowly nodded. “All things considered, you might be right.
I’m not the young kid they remember from years ago and all this,” I nodded
at the rest of the family on the stairs and the defense field that
glittered in the air around the house, “might be more than they can deal
with.” I turned to face back down the stairs, “Maybe I’ll try again by
myself …”

The deadbolt on the door shot back with a loud metallic snap and as
I turned back to the door again, somebody fiddled with the knob lock and
the door opened.

“Still causing trouble I see,” said my brother, Mike, as he swung
the door completely open and backed up so we could enter.

“Maybe,” I admitted with a grin, “but this time I won’t try and
blame it on you,” and everybody followed me inside as I stepped through the
open door.

My Aunt, Uncle and Cousin were standing in the living room, just
off the entryway, watching us as we entered. My brother had backed up to
the doorway between the entryway and kitchen, I discovered my mother was
standing a ways down the hallway that led to the bedrooms when Lan Louis
turned and said, “Hi Grandma,” as he followed Kalindra through the front
door.

I’d never seen my mother look quite that confused or scared as I
turned to see where she was. She didn’t return my son’s greeting, instead,
she inhaled so loud we could all hear it, stepped back into the bedroom
behind her and slammed the door. I looked at Lan Louis, who’d turned to me
in confusion, “I don’t think my Mother is going to deal well with becoming
a Grandmother.”

As soon as soon as Naldantis had entered the house, and his tail
was clear of the door, I waved at it with my hand and it closed and locked
itself again, then I turned to face the living room. “Aunt Joan, before we
do anything else, if you have any of your medications for your animal
dander allergies handy, you might want to take them. I still don’t
understand why, but Velans do sometimes trigger allergic reactions in
Humans, it took me years to adjust.” I watched as she looked from me to
the rest of my family, then she nodded and took the long way around through
the dining room to the kitchen where she usually kept her allergy
medication.

While she was doing that, I looked from my Uncle Ron, to my Cousin
Steve, then my brother. “Do you mind if we sit down?” I asked. They all
backed up to the couch on one side of the room and my Uncle waved us
towards the other side of the room.

Kalindra and the rest of the family followed me, not saying a word
for the most part as we found things to sit on that would be reasonably
comfortable. Human chairs aren’t made for beings with tails and I decided
redoing my Aunt’s dining room chairs to make them comfortable to sit on
would be pushing things, so everybody made do with what they could find.
About the time we were getting settled, my Aunt returned and joined my
Uncle on the couch. I imagined a dotted line down the center of the room
for a moment and Kalindra laughed to herself as she picked up the image
from my thoughts.

“It’s safe to come out now,” I told my Mother, loudly enough for
her to hear, she didn’t come out of the bedroom so I gave up for the
moment. I knew she’d cracked the door open enough to hear us talking, that
would have to do for now.

“Ok,” I said, facing my other family, “introductions are probably
first.”

‘This is Kalindra nal Kan, my wife, who you met last Christmas,
though she didn’t look like this at the time. The lady next to her is
Lythandi nal Kan, my other wife,” and I heard my cousin cough as he
swallowed wrong. “The big guy on the end is Naldantis ne Kan, my husband,”
and this time there were several coughs and I heard my Uncle mutter “What
the hell?” under his breath. “The short guy there is my son, Lan Louis,”
and now my Uncle more or less yelled, “Son?”

I looked him straight in the eyes and nodded, “Yes, my son.” I
watched the expression on his face go from confusion to anger in the space
of a couple of seconds, while behind me I heard Penny clear her imaginary
throat to get my attention.

“Oh yeah, and the egg shaped paperweight back there would like it
known that she is Penny Louise Antoine, my Sister,” and all hell broke
loose as everybody sitting across the room from us began demanding
explanations at the same time. By the time they finally stopped shouting,
I could feel the beginnings of a good headache asking for my attention,
Kalindra caught my distress and whispered something to Lythandi, who moved
to where she could sit behind me and massage my neck.

“Ok, we’re here to answer questions, but lets take them one at a
time, please?” Everybody quieted down finally and my Aunt ended up
speaking first.

“She is the Kalindra that helped me cook last Christmas? That
can’t be.”

“Aunt Joan, she’s the same person, even though she doesn’t look the
same at the moment.”

“And I did remember to bring those herb seeds we were talking about
with me, if you still want them,” added Kalindra as she pulled a small
package out of one of her pockets.

“As for why she doesn’t look the same, well, she’s a Mage like I
am, and the shape we wear isn’t always the one we were born with. When
here on Earth, she normally changes to the shape you saw at Christmas, but
she can’t at the moment because she’s pregnant with our daughter and
changing shape is a really bad idea when another life is inside her like
that.”

All hell broke loose for the second time, and I closed my eyes and
hoped Lythandi didn’t get tired soon, because the headache I was getting
felt like it was going to be one for the record books by the time this day
came to an end. Nobody seemed to believe what I’d just said, so I decided
to answer several questions at the same time.

Reaching back behind me, I caught Lythandi’s paw in my hand and
stopped her for a moment. Then I concentrated and in the space of a few
seconds I shifted from being Human to being Velan. The flash of light that
accompanied the shift interrupted the yelling. When they saw what I’d
become, it stayed quiet.

“The shape a Mage wears is not always the one they were born with,
that is my son sitting there, Kalindra is carrying our daughter, and I’d
appreciate it if you’d stop yelling!” I looked around the room as I got
used to the dull colors that are all a Velan sees. The yelling didn’t
start up again, and everybody on the other side of the room more or less
sat or fell back into their seats in shock. As I shifted back to Human
form, I heard Lan Louis laughing to himself quietly.

“Now, if you’ll give me a few minutes to try and explain things
here, I’ll start with my Grandmother.” That got me several puzzled looks.
“You might or might not remember, but back in college, when I started
staying out all weekend long to play Dungeons and Dragons, my Grandmother
swore that nothing but trouble would come of it. Well, she’s now laughing
her ass off, saying ‘I told you so’,” and I started to explain how I’d
become a Mage.

I started more or less with when I’d almost blown a hole in the
side of the house where I’d lived with my grandparents, and how that had
led to my introduction to Kimi, though I didn’t use her name. I simply
referred to Kimi as the ArchMage or My Teacher. I’d already decided before
we’d even left to come here that no names were going to be used, and some
things were better left out of the discussion for now. Then I explained
how I’d met Penny, are at least what I remembered of how we’d met, and I
noticed that pretty much everybody except Kalindra was listening pretty
closely. I thought about that for a moment, then it occurred to me I’d
never really told Lythandi, Naldantis or even Lan Louis a lot of this stuff
before, so of course they might be interested as well.

It wasn’t long after that before I got the how I met Kalindra, and
here finally she could join the discussion as she talked about how things
had happened from her point of view. It’s also when I discovered the anger
she’d kept hidden from me, because her sense of humor had her telling my
old family things that could only embarrass me.

I mean, really, did they need to know that she’d caught me
“Checking out my ass” as she described it when Wythdantis had put me back
together after the first me many times Kalindra had gotten angry with me? I
sure didn’t think so, but I couldn’t always shut her up.

One thing we definitely tried to skip over as much as possible was
Bob and his family. Wherever they were, they didn’t want to be found, and
in spite of how things stood between us I wasn’t going to drag them into
this very public mess that Penny had created. We’d more or less gotten to
the part of the story where Kalindra had decided I might be an acceptable
partner to start a family with, when we hit the next stumbling point.

“That was it? She bit your ear, and you were married?” asked my
Uncle Ron.

“Well,” I reached up and fingered the Memory Stone that I still
wore in my ear, “it wasn’t quite that simple. There was something like an
exchange of vows, they have a ritual just like we do, in some ways.”

“But no Church, no Minister, nothing like that?” asked Ron.

I watched as Ron and Steve looked at each other for a moment, then
Steve spoke up. “Kalindra, does your race believe in God?”

Oh boy …

Kalindra didn’t even hesitate, “No, we do not, and when Brian tried
to explain your religious beliefs to me long ago I just got confused
because I did not have background to understand what he was trying to
describe.”

“What do you believe in then?” asked Ron.

Again, Kalindra didn’t hesitate, “Ourselves of course.”

Looking back on things afterwards, I think that was moment when the
dotted line down the center of the room that I’d imagined earlier, became a
solid line. Even as Ron and Steve started to interrupt each other as they
tried to ask Kalindra more questions, I called for a break so I could get
something to drink, I’d been doing a lot of talking. It took a few minutes
to get everybody to agree, but then the Terran side of my family headed for
the Kitchen and Bathrooms, while Kalindra turned to talk to the Velan side
of my family.

Me? As soon as the way was clear, I made my way across the living
room to the front of the house, and pulled the drapes covering the front
window aside just enough so I could see outside.

There were two news trucks parked in front of the house now, and a
third coming around the corner in the distance. The street in front of the
house was still clear, but the sidewalk on the far side had a small but
growing crowd of people, all of them looking our direction.

“Yeah, they started showing up about twenty minutes ago,” said
Penny from where she hovered next to me now.

“This day just keeps getting better,” I told her as I watched one
of the news crews setting up a video camera. “Start thinking about how
you’re going to explain to them why they should all be gone before I have
to officially take notice of their presence.”

“No problem boss,” she answered with a laugh that sent a shiver up
my spine.

* * *

I was still watching through the window, when a mental nudge from
Kalindra snapped my attention back inside the house, where an argument was
going on in the kitchen. Releasing the drapes so they could swing closed
again, I turned and crossed the entryway and found Steve and Penny going at
it in the middle of the kitchen.

“Lay a hand on me again you hairless ape and I’ll remove it at the
wrist!” yelled Penny, and I could hear the faint hum of her main drive unit
that she’d powered up.

“Tell this machine to obey orders and stay out of my way!” yelled
Steve, just as loudly, as he saw me walking up to them from behind Penny.

“What the hell are you two doing!” I yelled, just so I’d be heard.
“Haven’t we all got enough problems without this kind of crap?”

“This machine wouldn’t get out of my way when I ordered it to.”

“So you did what?” I asked.

“He reached out to push me out of the way and probably sprained his
wrist when I didn’t move,” said Penny after rotating to face me. Then she
rotated back and in spite of the fact her central lens wasn’t really an
eye, I expect Steve understood she was glaring at him in anger.

“You gave her an order?”

“And she refused to obey,” said Steve again.

“Why the hell would you think you could order her around in the
first place?”

“She’s a machine, she’s not human, she’s supposed to obey. She
obeys you!”

I stared at Steve in equal parts amazement, and surprise. “Penny?
Obey me? I’m damned lucky if she bothers listening to me most of the time.
And as for that machine crack, if that's what you called her, I don’t blame
her for getting angry. Penny is a person, comprised of coherent energy,
who happens to inhabit the systems built into that shell so that she can
interact with us easier. Now I’ll admit she’s slightly insane as our
standards go, I still don’t know why she thinks she’s my sister, but she’s
as much a sentient being as anybody else in this house.”

Both families had been watching and listening for awhile now, and
as Steve and Penny exchanged looks that promised round two was about to
start, I things down before they could get started again.

“Don’t even think about it or I’ll role dice to see whose ass I
kick first here! Penny, you’re a guest in this house, stay out of Steve’s
way. Steve, I’d have sworn your mother taught you manners when we were
kids, but you’ve lost them someplace, find them!”

All the TV coverage, my shape shifting in front of them, everything
we’d talked about the last hour or two. In all the years I’d been coming
to this house I think that was the first time most of the human half of my
family had seen me angry, and not bury that anger. Penny and Steve just
blinked at me, then separated from each other and took different paths back
to the front room. I grabbed a glass from one of the cabinets, they were
still in the same one even after all these years, then filled it with ice
cubes and some water from the refrigerator and headed for the front room
myself.

“Ok, so were up to the part of this story where the Meenzel enter
the picture,” I said before sipping at my water and wishing I had an
aspirin handy. “You know them already, they’re the race that Kalindra and
I just gave an ass kicking to because they wanted Earth as the first slave
planet of their new Empire.”

Here was where I had to get a bit creative with names, so that
where ever Bob and his family were, they’d be kept out of this mess. I did
keep all the major parts of the story intact, I just left it a bit vague as
to who had done what when I needed to. When I was describing the incident
where we’d just saved their planet from the Maal, and they decided the best
way to say thank you was by taking us all prisoner, I caught just the end
of a mumbled comment from Steve.

“What was that? I didn’t catch all of it,” I asked him.

“I said, what would you expect of animals, gratitude?”

I think I froze up mentally for a second as that registered, then
turned to look at Kalindra. “Did I hear?”

“You did.”

Turning back to Steve, I stared at him for a moment, and he stared
right back. “Ok, while the Meenzel might act like animals at times,
Klingons in a fur coat is how I think of them, they are not animals,
they’re people. Twice now you’ve referred to people who aren’t human in
ways that sure imply you don’t consider them people, I’d like to know why?”

Steve looked from me, to his father, his mother, then at my
brother. “They aren’t Human, they don’t have souls, they can’t be people.”

I just stared at him, not saying a word, for several minutes. My
Aunt was the first to get uncomfortable with the silence, but before she
could actually say anything, I spoke up.

“Steve, do I have a soul?”

“Of course you do,” he answered.

For the second time that day I concentrated and shifted to my Velan
form. “Do I have one now?” I asked again.

He had to think about it for a moment, certainly not long enough to
actually understand what I’d just asked on the large scale, so it was his
guts that answered. “Sure, you’re Human after all, you just look different
now.”

“Steve, you couldn’t be more wrong about my being Human,” I snapped
back at him instantly. “The only thing that makes my seem Human at the
moment is the fact that this Velan brain is holding the collected memories
and emotional reactions of me while I grew up on Earth. At the moment,
this whole room looks a little odd and the brain holding my memories is
warning me that you don’t smell right, there is something wrong with you.
Now I’ll ask again, as a Velan, do I have a soul?”

Now he had to think about it, and I saw him look at his father like
he wanted to ask him what he thought about it, but my Uncle looked just as
unsure of what the answer was.

“I don’t know,” he finally said.

“Fair enough,” I replied, but you were a missionary long ago, tough
questions were thrown at you all the time. “Here are a few more, and you
really need to think about your answers.” I concentrated again and shifted
back to Human form. “If I didn’t have a soul as a Velan, then do I have
one now that I’m Human again? If I did have a soul as a Velan, does my
family behind have one, or my unborn daughter?” I watched as he thought
about it.

“I don’t know,” he finally said again, but only after I’d caught
the thought before he’d spoke that turned that answer into a lie.

“Steve, the rest of you, the last time somebody doubted whether
Kalindra was a person, they tried to kill her with a hunting rifle and got
turned into hamburger seconds later. Everybody in the family room glanced
at the white starburst of fur on Kal’s shoulder where she’d been shot. “If
my own family isn’t sure if she’s a person, how am I going to convince the
rest of the planet?”

For the next few minutes at least, there were two very separate
groups of people in that front room, and I turned around to face the Velan
half while the Human half tried to make sense of all I’d been telling them
and what I’d just asked.

Then Penny got my attention, “Boss, we’ve got more company
outside.”

I didn’t get up to walk over to the window this time, I cupped my
hands and called up a holo projection of the area around the house. Sure
enough, the military were now showing up, probably from Fairchild, the
local Air Force Base. One other thing caught my eye as I scanned the
scene, and I turned back to my Uncle for a moment.

“Ron, you’re the bible scholar around here, what’s Exodus 22:18?” I
had a nasty suspicion I knew what the answer was, he confirmed it.

“That’s the verse about not suffering a witch to live.”

I looked at Kalindra, her shoulder and then the rest of the family.
“I think the history lesson is over the moment, the asses have arrived
outside and are begging to be kicked.”

Chapter 3: More Slow Learners

Ok, I’d allowed as how something like this was going to happen,
though the idiot with the sign was a twist I hadn’t considered. The
government had already proved they would go after my family when they’d
grabbed my Aunt, I had no doubt they’d try again, they didn’t yet believe
that they were dealing with somebody who could actually stand up to them
and get away with it. The problem of course was that it wasn’t me they
were after, at least not yet.

“Ok, there is a mess brewing outside I’m going to have to deal
with, but before I do, there is something I need to take care of in here.”
Looking across the entryway to the hallway leading to the bedrooms, I
raised my voice a little. “Glenna, that means you too, get your butt out
here. And you keep quiet for a moment,” I told my son when I saw him
starting to smile. I counted to five, my Mother didn’t respond, so I
pictured the results I wanted and snapped my fingers. The door my Mother
had cracked open and was standing next to so she could hear us, vanished,
and she stumbled out of the room and into the hall. “I mean it, you need
to hear this, get down here.” She hardly moved, but did slowly walk to the
end of the hallway before she stopped. I decided that was good enough.

Closing my eyes and concentrating on an image, I pictured a wooden
box I’d left on my desk back in my office in Geneva, and with a faint pop
felt it drop into my arms where I’d stretched them out before me. Setting
it on the table, I flipped open the latch and opened the box so everybody
could see the contents. “Ok, there is one of these for each of you, if you
want it,” and I pulled a small translucent bracelet from the box. “Think
of these as an emergency button. You can wear it on your wrist, your
ankle, you can even wear it as a ring. It will change size to fit you when
you’re putting it on.” Glancing towards with front window, I continued. “I
would expect the people outside will not take a hint, at least not easily.
If something happens, just think to yourself, ‘I could use some help’ or
‘Help Me’, anything like that. Either a member of the family, a security
team, or possibly both will show up to deal with the problem.”

Looking around the room to make sure everybody had been listening,
I had to admit to myself the chance they weren’t interested in my help.
“Now if you decide you don’t want the bracelet, my help, or possibly
anything to do with me, you also have another option. Instead of putting
the bracelet on, hold it with both hands and snap it in two. It’ll
disappear and I’ll honor your wish to be left alone.” One last time, I
caught the eyes of everybody in my Terran Family. “I know all this is a
lot to deal with, I didn’t get a chance to finish telling you everything I
wanted to.” Pulling a business card from my pocket, I left it on the table
next to the box. “That card has a phone number and other information about
how to contact me, or the people working with me, if you have any
questions. They’ll answer what they can, or pass the question on to me
where ever I am.”

I sensed Kalindra mentally clearing her throat and glanced over at
where she stood by the front window, watching the crowd that was growing
outside. “Lythandi, Naldantis, the Kilzan and I would like you to take Lan
Louis and return to Tycho. As soon as we’ve dealt with the people outside,
we’ll join you there.” Without a hint of an argument, they grabbed
everything they’d brought with them, each of them placed a paw on one of
Lan’s shoulders, and I teleported them to the landing pad next to where the
Sunbeam was parked.

“Cool,” said my brother, just loud enough for me to hear. I
glanced his direction and winked in reply, then walked to where Kalindra
was standing. Everybody gave me a wide berth as I did it and some part of
me grew just a little sadder.

“So what are they up to?” I asked Kal as everybody else headed for
the kitchen, even my Mother. Kalindra just looked at me for a moment,
glanced towards the kitchen as a low pitched conversation started, then
leaned over and gave me a playful nip on the cheek.

“The ones that you refer to as reporters keep arguing with the ones
in uniform, trying to get closer. They keep getting pushed back and told
to stay out of the way. There are a few who simply look like they are
curious, and everybody seems to be keeping their distance from the one with
the sign.”

“They probably know what that passage is and don’t want to be
standing too close if something happens.” Every time I looked at that
sign, I got a little more angry. “There might not be a safe distance the
way I’m feeling at the moment.” Through the link that bound us together, I
felt a twinge of pain in Kal’s shoulder. “Ok, the reporters are first,
they need to learn that the rules have changed and that their desire for a
story doesn’t ride roughshod over our right to privacy.” I turned and
looked around the room behind me to see where Penny was, and found her
resting on one of the coffee tables like a house decoration. I had to
chuckle when I saw it and realized that I hadn’t seen anybody giving her so
much as a second look recently, she’d blended right in. “We’re going to
need you,” I said to her and she lifted off the table and zipped over to
where we stood.

“Brian,” said Kalindra as I was still chuckling to myself about
Penny hiding in plain sight like that. “I find myself thinking it might be
to our advantage to allow one witness from your world when we deal with the
military people out there.”

I thought about that for a moment, decided it made sense, and
looked out the window. “Do you believe anybody out there can be trusted?”

“I was thinking that the women who knows how to dress correctly
might be a good choice. I have checked and does not seem to have decided
whether we are a threat or if your military is the threat here.”

Dress Correctly? I looked over the crowd again and finally spotted
the women she had to be talking about. There was one women holding a
sketchpad in one arm, drawing with something she held in her other hand,
who was dressed in an assortment of bright to the point of flamboyant
clothing, none of which seemed to match. Those bright colors probably
looked just about normal to Kalindra. The women also got points for not
standing with the rest of the reporters, and in fact she seemed to actively
avoid them when one wandered by where she was standing.

“If you trust her, yeah, we’ll see if she’s interested.” Turning
to Penny, I held out my hand so she could land on it. “As for you, I’m
going to drop you by that group of reporters next to the news van. Explain
to them exactly once that whatever it is they believe allows them to
violate our privacy, they’re wrong, this is a private family matter and
they better not be there when I step outside in a few minutes. After
you’ve told them, tell the women wearing the bright purple hat that we’d
like her to stay, as a witness. She can report what she sees, no
constraints.”

“And the military?” asked Penny.

“I’ll deal with them myself,” I told her, and then I teleported her
through the defense field into the midst of the reporters. Even as she
appeared, she was engaging one of her more obnoxious holograms, and I had
trouble not laughing as I imagined how the conversation must be going. I
watched the reporters with video gear try to figure out how to record her
without revealing the fact that they were being told to go screw themselves
by a busty and very naked Amazon Warrior. As soon as she delivered her
message, she added an appropriate dress to her appearance and delivered the
second message. One or two reporters tried to follow her, I could hear
them yelling something, she simply turned and body slammed them back into
the snow. Then she turned and bowed towards the house as she stood next to
the women who’d apparently agreed to be a witness.

Turning to face Kalindra, I straightened her dress around her
shoulder and brushed some imaginary dust off her. She returned the favor,
whispering something to a couple of wrinkles in my shirt that made them
smooth out. Together, we turned to face everybody that was standing in the
kitchen doorway, watching us.

“Thank you for allowing us to visit you,” said my wife.

“Wish us luck teaching everybody outside to respect your privacy,” I added.

Turning to face the doorway, I called for my staff and it flashed into my
hand from where I’d stored it in my office. A similar flash from beside me
confirmed that Kalindra had done the same. Then with a light tap of her
staff on the floor of the entryway, the door opened and we stepped out onto
the front porch together.

* * *

I don’t think it would have mattered how many layers of defenses we
had between us, I still felt Kalindra panic for an instant as we were
noticed and the solders surrounding the area started swinging guns our
direction. Before they could actually take aim as us though, Kalindra
poured power into the image of reality she’d built up in her mind, and
every firearm in about a ten mile radius of where we were standing simply
vanished. Saying this caused a bit of a shock to those who had been
holding the weapons in question, would have been like calling a typhoon a
rather stronger wind than was normal for an area.

And while my mate took care of the military, I dealt with the
reporters. Their equipment vanished first, everything from the news van to
their pens. A few seconds later, their clothing vanished as well, and then
just to add insult to injury, I dropped the temperature of the area and had
it start snowing.

“You should have listened. Now, I suggest you get out of my
sight.”

A number of the reporters and their crews tried to beg jackets and
such from the other bystanders I hadn’t gotten too yet, anybody stupid
enough to loan them anything ended up naked as well. It only took a couple
of occurrences before everybody started to scatter to avoid all contact
with the news people.

“As for the rest of you, leave, return to your homes, or figure out
how to stay warm without clothing. This is the only warning I’m giving
that you’re intruding into a private family matter.”

Then I turned my attention to the idiot with the sign, who’d backed
up a bit during the confusion, but hadn’t left. He caught me staring
straight at him, and stood a bit straighter as he held the sign up for
Kalindra and I to see. My face was the last thing he ever saw, my voice in
his mind the last thing he heard.

*You have been found guilty of inciting violence against my family*

This all of his senses faded away, along with conscious muscle
control. I have no idea how long he actually lived, but I suspect he spent
every moment of it screaming, locked inside his own mind with only himself
for company.

Five minutes after we had first stepped onto the porch, the streets
were clear of everyone except the military, our witness, Penny, and an
idiot being looked after by a military medic who’d seen him collapse into
the snow. I led the way as we walked down the stairs, then down the
driveway, to stand within an arms length of the defense field. As we’d
approached it from our side, several people had gotten out of a staff car
mixed in with the other military vehicles and approached from the other.
Penny had led our witness up to join the gathering as well, after shoving a
few of the guards out of the way who had tried to stop her.

Completely ignoring the Captain and his aide, who were trying to
get my attention, I faced our witness, bowed, and said, “Miss? Mrs? Ms?”

“Miss Winkel,” she replied, “And I’m not sure why I’m here
exactly.”

“Miss Winkel, you’re a reporter, right?”

“Uh, yeah, I write occasional stories and sell them to some of the
local independent newspapers.”

“That is why you are here,” said Kalindra. “Even though this is a
private matter, I understand the curiosity your race must have concerning
me and my family, so I have decided that one witness should be present.”

Miss Winkel looked at me and asked, “her family?”

“Yeah, Velar is a Matriarchal Society, I’m just her arm candy.”
That earned me an odd smile and a swat from Kalindra’s tail. It also gave
the Captain a momentary break in the conversation he used to interrupt
again.

“Now Mr. Antoine, I really need to …”

“Shut the hell up before you get yourself into more trouble than
you’re already in!” I finished for him. “Captain, I expect you’re here to
take us into custody, right?”

“Mr. Antoine, I have been ordered to place you and your family in
protective custody and to escort all of you to a safe location. Now if you
will just …”

Kalindra’s low growl froze whatever else he’d been about to say in
his throat. I waited for her to calm down a bit before I finally spoke.
“Captain, my family has just won an interstellar war against a race that
wants little more than to see our hides mounted as trophy’s on some
warlords wall. The idea of you protecting us is a nice joke, and I doubt
there is anyplace in this part of the spiral arm that could be considered a
safe location.”

I was wasting my breath, he had his orders. Almost like he’d
forgotten his men had been disarmed, he signaled to them and told his aide
to take Miss Winkel into custody. His men managed about one step before
they were frozen in place by Kalindra, the aide ended up with a broken arm
as Penny stepped between him and Miss Winkel. With the Captain watching, I
slowly removed a few pennies from my pocket, held them in front of me, then
released them to float in the air.

“Captain, I’d rather not do this the hard way, but if that’s the
only way that will get through to you and those you’ll be reporting back
to, it’s your choice.” His eyes weren’t leaving the pennies, he’d
obviously seen a copy of the battle video Penny had broadcast.

“You will leave my family alone. Anybody who bothers them,
including the entire chain of command that gave the orders, better have
made out their will ahead of time,” and I tapped the first penny to start
it spinning.

“You will leave Miss Winkel alone. You will not interfere in what
ever story she writes about what has happened here today,” and I set the
second penny spinning with a flick of my finger, then turned to Miss
Winkel. “If it wasn’t clear, we will not interfere with any story you
write either. You are a witness here.” Waving my hand with a small
flourish, one of the family business cards appeared in the air in front of
her, and after a moment she plucked it from the air and tucked it into the
sketchpad she was still holding. “If you have questions, or they don’t
take me seriously and try to screw with you or your story, our contact
information is on that card.”

Then I turned back to the Captain, who had finally pulled his eyes
away from the pennies and was trying to help his aide. “Captain, now is
the time for you and your men to leave.” I glanced at Kalindra and she
released his men. “I suggest you and those you report to consider their
next move quite carefully. While it would sadden me to have to deal with
my own race the same way I’ve had to deal with the Meenzai, if my own race
is determined to be as stupid as they are, so be it.”

Another medic ran up and took charge of dealing with the aide’s
arm, the Captain just stared at me. A time or two I thought he was going
to say something, but he finally looked around at his men, saw what was in
their eyes and then turned back and nodded to me. With little more than a
few arm signals, he and his men gathered themselves and left with as much
dignity as they could manage.

“Miss Winkel, I look forward to reading your story,” I said as I
watched them leave. When I actually glanced over at her, she was still
sketching in her book, while looking up at Kalindra every few seconds. I
wondered if that drawing would be part of the story as well, but I didn’t
actually take a peek at it. Instead, as soon as I could no longer here the
trucks in the distance, I finally relaxed my shoulders and sighed. “Kal,
if you’ll deal with the defense field, I’ll get us back to Tycho.”

Kalindra took down the defense field, the Terran half of the family
was now free to come and go as they wished, I just hoped the reporters and
the military took me seriously. “Miss Winkel, it was nice meeting you,” I
told her as she frantically tried to sketch something else in her book.

Then, between one second and the next, Kalindra and I joined the
rest of our family at Tycho, only our footprints in the snow showing that
we’d ever been there.

Epilog

In the weeks that followed our visit, we were kept pretty busy as
the world discovered the interconnect between the Internet and The Velan
Central Library, and word filtered out that Velar had named Kalindra as
their ambassador to Earth, if Earth was interested. Only two events
occurred that involved my family back in Spokane.

The first took place about a week after we’d visited. My brother,
trying to pull together something resembling his life as it had been, had
gone to see his old employer. He’d barely walked in the door before
several large black SUV’s had pulled into the company parking lot and
surrounded his car. He’d hit his panic button and before the occupants of
the SUV’s had even gotten the doors open, they’d found themselves
surrounded by several of our security teams. Everybody had stared at each
other for a few minutes, then the SUV’s had driven away, followed shortly
by the departure of the security teams.

The second was about three weeks after our visit, and it took a day
or two for the message to reach me. It was from my Mother, she’d called
the number on the card we’d left and asked them to take a message for me.
The message was short and to the point, something unusual for my Mother.

“Brian, on the advice of your Uncle, I’m leaving everything to you
Brother, Mike. I don’t understand what happened to you, or if you’re even
Brian anymore, but I want nothing to do with you.” The security report
attached to the recording said she’d discarded her safety bracelet a few
minutes after leaving me the message. A follow up report indicated my
Uncle and Cousin had also discarded theirs, several days later. My Aunt
and Brother had held onto theirs and both were active.

I was listening to the recording again when Kalindra entered my office and
heard the last part of it. She didn’t say anything, hell, given our bond
she didn’t need to ask how I felt, but I knew she was curious. Reaching
back to take her hand in mind, I punched the delete button. “There’s a
reason I was raised by my Grandmother, that was just making it official.”

[Brian W. Antoine]

A Golden Bel
By: Brian W. Antoine
August 24, 2007


"That is not a normal pelt color," grumbled Wythdandis with just a bit of
an edge to her voice.

"I know it isn't, or at least it isn't these days" I said with the same
edge. "It hasn't been seen on Velar in over five millennia thanks to the
genetic manipulation that kept your race from killing itself off." Dropping
my voice to a whisper, I looked down at my daughter as she shifted slightly
in her sleep, trying to get comfortable, but never letting go of the grip
she had on my own pelt. I'd fed her earlier, and she'd nodded off even as
Wythdantis and I had argued. "Kalindra and I like it so don't suggest
trying to hide it to either of us again."

The latest addition to the Family nas Kan gave a tiny burp as if to put in
her own word on the subject. Bel, or Bel dal Kan as she would be known
when Kalindra finished registering her birth with the Central Library,
looked almost like a small Gold Tribble when she curled up in her sleep,
and that was the problem. Gold was a very recessive color for Velan's, and
the genetic manipulation done to tame their ferocity had occurred on a part
of their genome that had essentially masked the gene for Gold fur. It
still existed in their genetic pool, Bel was proof of that, but since both
parents always contributed the gene that shunted their anger into other
channels, it couldn't express itself.

The fact that Bel's pelt was Gold upset Wythdantis for any number of
reasons, but at the top of the list had to be the fact that my daughter had
inherited only one copy of the aggression shunting gene, I'd left it out of
my own Velan genetic mix when I'd created the form I now wore. A close
second was the fact that except for the Healers, a few scholars and one
nosy alien, nobody remembered or cared what they'd asked one of their
ArchMages to do to their race five thousand years earlier.

And the Healers wanted it to stay that way.

They were terrified of that change ever becoming undone. One of the
secrets they were sworn to when they became Healers was exactly what part
of their genome that change resided in, and the most important tenant of
their profession was to never manipulate any gene even close to that area.
They'd rather a patient died then take the risk that offspring of a healed
patient might not pass on the alteration.

And my daughter was just that risk now.

"You have no idea if it takes both copies of the gene to be effective," I
said after looking up and seeing how intensely Wythdantis was watching Bel.

"And you have no idea of the risk you're taking," she said in reply.

"Actually," and I paused to adjust the harness that I'd been using to carry
Bel around, "I do. You were there, you didn't see Kalindra, untrained and
suffering massive blood loss, wipe the floor of that bar with the armed
rednecks inside it. I can just imagine what your wars were like when
trained soldiers went at each other." It would have been a slaughter
actually, if I hadn't managed to keep Kal from killing indiscriminately,
via the bond we shared.

"She's going to have to be watched, and closely, especially as she
approaches adulthood. If she shows signs of actually being capable of
anger towards her own race, you're going to regret your decision."

I snorted in amusement, "Like a member of my family won't be under constant
scrutiny by half this universe? Sometime when I've got a few free months
I'll have to tell you what living in a glass house is like."

Bel gave a tiny sigh in her sleep and buried her face deeper into my chest
fur.

"No, I don't think this universe has anything to fear from my daughter, my
small golden Bel."




Author Note’s

Bel dal Kan translates roughly as "Bel, female child born of the Family
Kan". Dal, de and das are similar to nal, ne and nas, but they reference
the birth family, not the family created by mated adults. Yes, for those
paying attention, Family nas Kan actually translates as Family Family Kan,
but early on I decided that "Stories of the Family nas Kan" worked as a
series title better than "Stories of the nas Kan". I cheated, sue me. :)

Also, the version of Kalindra’s actions at the Bar after “War” is not how I
ended up deciding that night should go, the version is Slow Learners won
out.

[Brian W. Antoine]

To The Magic, Sold!
By: Brian W. Antoine
October 28, 2008


Tanindra did not look happy as he finally opened his door, it was entirely
possible that my pounding on it only slightly after sunrise was not the
best time to have disturbed him.

"Hi, I'm from the Acme Apprentice Company, would you like to buy an
apprentice?" Pulling on Lan Louis' tail I forced him out from where he was
trying to hide behind me. "We have a special today, buy one ..."

*slam*

I blinked, and started to mutter under my breath about the rudeness of
younger Mages these days while Lan Louis started trying to get away yet
again, but I had too good a hold on his tail. Reaching out with my staff
this time, I started pounding on the door a bit harder, I think the hinges
were starting to loosen before Tanindra gave up and opened the door again.

"I'd ask if you are out of your mind, but we both know the answer already.
What is it you want?"

"I want to get rid of this worthless son of mine before he eats Kalindra
and I out of house and home. I tried selling him to Valestra over at the
Golden Rose, but she just laughed."

"Dad!" yelled my son with embarrassment.

"Yeah, I've heard Lan play, I'm surprised Valestra didn't have her sons
throw you both out forcibly."

"She considered it, but ...", and I jammed my staff into the doorway as
Tanindra tried to slam the door on me again. "Now look, I know you can use
an apprentice, the last one you took on hasn't gotten out of the hospital
yet so you're having to fend for yourself."

"That was an accident, I told him to label those bottles as he filled
them!" came the annoyed comment from the other side of the door as he tried
to dislodge my staff and get the door closed.

"Dad, I want to go home!"

I caught Lan Louis looking at my hand in speculation as he bared his teeth
about the same time my staff started to slip. *grumble* Concentrating, I
focused on my son just long enough to cause him to start floating off the
ground, then I kinda melted Tanindra's door, just a little bit, to keep it
from closing.

"You're going to pay for that," he told me with an annoyed look.

Tying a string around my sons’ tail, I let him float above us like a
balloon. "I'm gonna be paying for this entire day" I mumbled to nobody in
particular. "Now about buying this apprentice from me, how much will you
offer for him?"

"I told you, I don't need an apprentice."

"Let me down! Mom is going to make you pay for this when I tell her!"
yelled my son as he bobbed in the air above us.

"Who do you think told me to see how much I could get for you? You should
not have raided her lemon sugar cookie stash."

"You want me to buy an apprentice who's a cookie thief?"

I looked at Tanindra and started to grin, I had him. "If he steals, beat
him for it. In fact, you should probably just beat him once a day on
general principles, I hear it's good for apprentices."

Tanindra started looking up at my son as if he was considering it. "Can he
cook? I could use somebody who could cook."

"Not a bit I'm afraid, or at least I wouldn't want to try eating anything
from a kitchen he'd been near."

"How about magic? If he's going to be an apprentice Mage, he needs to have
some magic talent."

I tugged on the string causing Lan to bob around a bit more. "Show Tanindra
that trick I taught you." My son just glared at both of us in disgust.
"Ok, you'll have to trust me, he does have a little talent. I'll tell you
what, take him, give him a try, if he doesn't actually have any useful
talent you can beat him for that also."

*You realize he's going to be making you pay for this for years to come*
came Tan's voice in my head. *This is hardly the standard way of
apprenticing your son*

*Hey, he's not exactly a standard son* I replied as I held the string I was
holding out towards him.

Tanindra looked from me, to the string, to our son, then took the string
from my hand. "Ok, I'll give him a try, but I make no promises."

"Try not to put this one in the hospital," I told him as a reached back and
pulled a travel bag with Lan's belongings up to where Tanindra could grab
it, "I'd hate to have to explain to his mother that you'd turned her first
born inside out accidentally."

And with that, my son took his first step on the path his parents
had already walked.

Or he'd take it as soon as he figured out how to undo the levitation spell
I'd put on him. :)

[Brian W. Antoine]

Not On My Watch
By: Brian W. Antoine
June, 2020

Chapter One

It had been both a mild and wild ride the last decade. After the
War and the birth of our daughter, Bel, Kalindra and I had repaired and
outfitted the Sunbeam 5 and simply completed our attempt to tell the
universe as we knew it to go fuck itself. We'd had enough, we'd retired,
we'd left capable replacements behind us. If the worlds we'd been born on
couldn't make things work, well, we both knew we'd tried our best.

That wasn't to say the rest of the universe was any better, oh hell
no. Two years exploring our arm of the galaxy and then year turned inwards
towards the core, we'd seen things even we couldn't believe, met races that
were friendly, some that weren't. Well, our lives had taught us how to
deal with both. The friendly ones, some of them were now crew along side
us. The unfriendly ones, the Sunbeam 5 wasn't just a research and
exploration ship, it was a warship when needed. Oddly enough, we have a
few crew members from those worlds also.

Our daughter, Bel dal Kan, had a front row seat for all of this. As
she'd reached maturity, and knowing she wasn't going to be a Mage like her
brother, I'd sat her down once in my office and asked what she wanted to do
with her life. The answer shouldn't have been a surprise, but it took me
awhile to realize that. Bel was unique in so many ways. Parents from two
different worlds, most of what she knew of mine was from the books and
files I'd brought with me, what she knew of hers was from trying to
single-handedly read every text the Velan Central Library had and from
talking to crew members during our travels.

"I want to be a Starship Captain," she'd informed me. "I want to
explore like you and mom have done. I want to trade with those who will
trade. I want have fun!" At her naming day, because Starship Captain
wasn't a valid suffix in all of Velan History, she got to create it.
Belastra dal Kan set her first course that day.

Belastra nal Anton, Captain, her mate sitting second console beside
her, made her first visit to the world of my birth after spending a year
visiting worlds her mother and I had found in our travels. I had the honor
of hitching a ride on her ship that day since I had business at Tycho Port
also.

"Tycho Traffic Control?" she queried over the radio as the Ship's
Mage I was standing beside, closed the WorldGate we'd passed through.

We'd exchanged looks before and after the jump, she'd sensed I was
standing ready to help if things went wrong. She'd simply muttered
"Murphy", I'd replied with "was an optimist."

"This is Tycho Control," came the reply after a few seconds.

"Tycho, this is Fluffy's Honor, out of Velar, captained by Belastra
nal Anton. I'm requesting clearance and flight path for the Nas Kan
landing pads at Tycho Port."

The Ship's Mage saw me wince, and muffled her laugh. Of all the
damn names my daughter could have picked for her ship, she'd gone with
Fluffy's Honor for some damn stubborn reason. Kalindra had warned me to
drop the subject, like that had ever worked in the past. The harder I
tried to convince her how silly that name was, the more she resisted
changing it. In the end, I'd drawn up a ships logo that looked like a damn
golden fur tribble, as a joke. It was now embossed in Platinum-Iridium on
the side of the ship.

I'm never going to learn when to shut up I guess.

"Fluffy's Honor, request denied. You and your ship have been
blacklisted from Tycho Port as an unacceptable threat," came the delayed
reply from Tycho Traffic Control. "Please change course and exit this
system as quickly as possible. Failure to do so will place your ship and
crew in danger."

It went dead silent on the flight deck then.

"Tycho Control, please repeat that?" Bel eventually asked.

"Captain Belastra, you and your ship are blacklisted from this
port. Please leave this system and do not return for the safety of your
ship and crew."

Her mate saw the twitch in her arm before I did, and the controls
her fingers were reaching towards, so it was his hand on her arm to calm
her before I placed mine on her shoulder a few seconds later. "Daughter,
since this is my home world, perhaps you might let your Grumpy old DaDa
sort this out?" I could feel her growl of anger vibrate through her via my
hand, but she did calm down at my use of her childhood nickname for me.
"I've got more experience kicking asses than you do," I whispered to her.

"I trust my father to teach lessons to those who appear to need
them," she answered, the comm channel still open.

I gave her shoulder another squeeze while nodding at her mate, who
hadn't turned loose of her arm. "I believe your mother has taught me a
thing or two over the years about how to deal with mistakes like this." The
Ships Mage snickered, but stood at her post with a blank expression when I
glanced back at her. I made a mental note to talk to her later about it,
since I expected to be busy for awhile.


Chapter Two

Backing away from my daughter, I took a relaxed stance in the
middle of the flight deck, then held my right arm out and twisted my wrist
a particular way. From where it was resting in my cabin, my staff left an
audible *pop* as it vanished and appeared in my hand. A couple of seconds
later, Penny phased into view over my left shoulder, having noticed the
energy surge as the staff answered my call for it.

"Something up?" she asked.

"Possibly," I answered. "I might need some eyes and ears on Tycho
Station shortly, if you aren't too busy?" She didn't answer directly, but
she did giggle before she vanished again. "Tycho Traffic Control?" I
asked, opening a direct channel via my staff to the station, after tying
the general ship-to-ship and public channels into the conversation as well.
"This is Brian ne Kan, or if that name doesn't ring a bell, turn your chair
around and read the name on the dedication plaque in the middle of your
control room floor. Back then I was Brian Antoine, the other names are my
wife, Kalindra, and Jean, the current Archmage."

That caught the ships in Tycho space by surprise, and the questions
started flying even as the traffic controller asked, "Bri Who?" Then, "Oh,
you can't be him," a few seconds later, after he'd probably turned around
to look at the plaque. "He was reported dead a few years ago."

"Not hardly," I told him.

There was a short pause, then, "Sir, even if you are that person,
he's on the blacklist also. Second, I'm not sure who this Kalindra is, but
Jean is not the current Archmage, she's dead. Now who ever you are, you're
on a ship that is blacklisted by Tycho Port, so I'll warn you as well. That
ship must leave this system immediately or the ship and crew will be
targeted."

The channel to the port then went dead before I snarled in anger.
Now it wasn't much of a snarl, I didn't have the muzzle and teeth to pull
it off the way Kalindra could, but I'd picked up a few hints from her after
all these years. I felt though that I had the right to snarl. I was
supposed to be dead, my family was blacklisted from the port I'd fucking
built myself and the Archmage who'd taken over after I'd retired was
supposed to be dead also.

The channels to everybody else were still open though, so they got
to hear the surprise in the traffic controllers voice as I forced that
channel back open.

"Kid, are you threatening to fire on this ship?"

"Leave or be targeted."

The pause was longer this time, so I actually heard some of the
comments from the various ships in the area. What I could make out, fell
into two basic groups. Most of them were just listening as they made
popcorn, the rest were taking bets on whether it was actually me.

"Daughter, this might get messy ..." I told Bel, which had her
reaching for defense and weapons controls again. It took me a couple of
minutes to remember the exact channel and encryption key, but when the
channel went active, I tied it in with the other two I'd already linked
together. "Thor One, Acknowledge."

"Thor One," came the terse reply, before the public channel went so
crazy I had to cut the volume.

"Thor One, request authentication for Brian W. Antoine."

"Thor One, voice print confirmed, awaiting authentication
sequence."

With a glance at the ships clock, to check the date and time, I
muted the channel to Traffic Control and the Public Channel, as I recited
the thirty two word phrase that changed languages every few words and
included a date/time reference that would change both in content and
language. Not that I really thought anybody on the flight deck around me
would try, but I sure wasn't going to let the rest of the people listening
have a clue what was needed.

The moment I finished, I un-muted the other channels.

"Thor One, authentication accepted."

"Thor One, status?"

"Thor One, fully operational, security threats have been repelled,
awaiting orders."

Security Threats??? Shit, ok, this was headed sideways fast. At
the moment though, I had a point to make. "Thor One, target Tycho Traffic
Control, One meter beam, polar strike." The local ship to ship band
collapsed under the crosstalk.

About a dozen feet from the crystal viewport in the station traffic
control center, a hole opened in space with our star blazing blazing
through it. "Thor One, Target Locked."

"Tycho Control, I'll ask again, who authorized the blacklisting? To
all ships in Tycho control space, I advise being on the lookout for debris.
You may wish to get out of the immediate area if possible." Seconds later,
the Traffic Control band overloaded with ships requesting emergency
departure or clearance to jump out of the system, if they were non-human
ships with jump drives. Traffic Control stayed silent, possibly, I
believed, because the controller on duty had just shit himself.

"Thor One, retarget beam to one hundred meters off Tycho Control,
outbound side, fire." A pencil thin beam of stellar plasma blinded pretty
much anybody looking that direction. "Thor One, retarget Tycho Control
itself."

"Kid, I'm tired of asking. Who the fuck blacklisted me from the
port I created?"

"Sir, the authorization is signed by the ArchMage himself," came
the faint reply through the crosstalk.

"Who is the current ArchMage then?"

"That would be Alexander Washington, Mr. Antoine," came a voice
over the open port band.

"And who the fuck is that?" I asked.

"He's the nephew of Thomas Washington, the current President,” that
same voice said.

"President of the United States," came the reply, from multiple
ships.

This time the snarl would have gotten a smile from Kalindra.

By the Tycho Treaty after the Meenzai War, when my local family had
become pawns in this game, the US had been forbidden access to Tycho Port.
They could use the technology I'd provided, they could not investigate the
remains of the Meenzai Fleet and they were to leave me and mine alone. That
had obviously changed once I'd been gone long enough.

The President, of the country that had threatened my family,
kidnapped one of them, revoked my citizenship because I wouldn't give them
the knowledge to force themselves on the rest of the planet, then other
races. The country that was the only one banned from landing at Tycho Port
to trade with those races. The country I strongly suspected had
assassinated Jean to get her out of the way while I was absent.

I focused inwards for a moment, raised my staff and slammed it
against the deck as I sent out a magical ping to find out who and how many
mages were left. There should have been at least one at Tycho Traffic
Control, that's who maintained the artificial gravity and defenses, but
they were gone. I got one reply from someplace halfway between Earth and
Mars, probably a small ship, which might explain the vocal snort heard over
the open channel.

From Earth though, where there should have been a dozen mages, I
only got three replies, none of them from Jean. That one of the replies
came from Washington DC just fueled my anger. Yeah, somebody thought their
chance had arrived. "Tycho Control, how long have you been stationed
there?"

"Sir, six months ..."

"Kid, my daughter and her ship are landing on my personal landing
pads in about an hour. I strongly suggest you be on your way planet side
before I show up at Tycho Station to find out what else has been going on
while I was away."

I cut the connection before he could reply.

"Thor One, monitor and track the ship I am on. Target and
eliminate anything that fires on this ship until I countermand that order."

"Thor One, acknowledged."

I focused on a picture in my head and vanished from the flight deck
of the Pride, to appear in Port Control. The Kid was cowering in the back
of the room near the door. The moment he saw me, he tried to pull a
sidearm, and before it was out of the holster he was on wrong side of the
viewport, breathing vacuum. "Thor One, Cancel Targeting."

"Thor One, Targeting Canceled. Sir, I have a status update for
you."

"I'll get to that in a minute, thank you." Walking over to the
controls, I keyed the comm system. "Attention all ships in Tycho Space,
this is acting Port Master Antoine. Please use your best judgment on
flightplans until I can restaff this station. Fluffy's Pride, you are
cleared for approach and landing on the Nas Kan pads at Tycho Port."

The public comm bands went into harmonics then from all the
chatter. The two basic themes though were split about even between "About
damn time" and people taking bets on who'd be next on my list. Both Penny
and I took down the names that got mentioned.

Then I closed my eyes and looked outwards, towards that one ship
out there. "Mr. Xander, anything you want to mention to me before I start
cleaning house?"

"Ah, you recognized me, but I thought you probably would," came the
reply from the distance. "It was about six months ago, Jean and most of
the other senior mages died in accidents, if you believe the news stories.
The ones that survived, myself excluded, all were told to accept Alexander
Washington as the new Archmage or they'd have accidents also. Me, I got
the fuck off the planet and I've been staying out of their reach."

"So basically what's left is scared shitless, or is about to be."

The ship to port master channel came alive just then. "Father,
there appears to be a ship already parked on the Nas Kan Pads."

Chapter Three

After decades of going from one disaster to one that was worse,
having trained myself to think for a moment and not blurt out the first
thing that came into my head, I put all of that history to good use.
"What?"

"There is a ship already parked there and it isn't Mom."

Well, yeah, had Kalindra brought the Sunbeam Five here, it wouldn't
have fit inside the environment field, much less just taken up just our
landing pad. Once your ship is more than a mile long, you stop looking for
places to land, you just find good orbits. Considering that gave me enough
time to think, so I turned and powered up the holotank in the center of the
operations center. It should have already been active, but it took just a
bit of magic to make it work, which was just one more confirmation that
things had gone sideways. The holotank came to life, showing the
Earth/Moon system and the traffic within it. There wasn't any traffic.
There should have been. There were a dozen different races trading with
each other the last time I'd been here which is why this station had been
created. Zip. Zero. Nada ...

When I zoomed on on Tycho Port itself, I knew why.

They'd probably pulled it out of the Smithsonian, but sitting on
the Nas Kan Family Pad was an old Space Shuttle, modified, but still
recognizable. It had a new logo on the side though, Space Force One
written around something that looked like a Presidential Seal. It had been
hacked on, the engine end looked like it had been gutted to allow
installation of the drive system I'd published from just before the Meenzai
War had started. There were also some bumps in strategic places that
implied it had weapons as well.

"Ok, let me look into this," I told my daughter over the open
general channel, which had gone silent otherwise. "Thor One?"

"Thor One online."

"You had a status update for me?" I asked, starting to gather
information.

"Thor One, current Thor Array Status. Thor One though Seven, Nine
through Twelve, online and secure. Thor Eight is offline after a voluntary
self destruct when it was compromised by external attack."

I thought about that for a minute, wondering how much worse this
would get. "The staff of Thor Eight?"

"Evacuated Safely."

"Records of the attack?"

"Making them available to you."

I let Penny snag them and do the first analysis.

"Two ships, she said. "They approached the station, claimed that
you were dead and that they were now the authority in control and demanded
access. They spoke English, Boston accent. Thor Eight refused them
physical access without confirmation, but without orders to fire on them,
they docked with the station anyway. From what I'm seeing, Thor Eight
evacuated its staff, allowed them in, then initiated voluntary self
destruct."

"Thor One, update acknowledged," then I did my own survey of Tycho
Traffic Control. It didn't take much, just walking out the door and
looking up, since the operations center was at the bottom of the station.
The next level up was the kitchen and related area, the top level was the
individual rooms for the staff. The entire center space was filled with
various bits of floating debris because the gravity field was down and
pretty much every door I could see was open. I kicked off upwards and by
the time I hit the top of the space it was obvious the station had been
gutted. Even the tech area at the top of the station had been forced open
and some of the stuff removed. Somebody had waited, plotted, executed
their plan after dealing with the most likely opposition and then stolen
anything they could.

I made my way back to the operations center and made sure the open
channel was still active.

"To the ship currently resting on the Nas Kan Family Pad. In
fifteen minutes I will sterilize that pad, I suggest you recover your crew
and be someplace else. You are already in violation of the Tycho Treaty so
your ship, your crew and you are no longer protected from me by that
treaty." Yeah, that got the general comm channel active again. I knew the
spot by instinct at this point, so I teleported from the operations center
to the middle of Tycho Port. When I got a good look at it, I had Penny
break into the channel directly. "Make that ten minutes, you assholes,"
and Penny began counting down.

There were scorch marks all over the area and all of the six
normally busy WorldGates had metal covers over them to prevent travel
through them. Where there should have been hundreds of people from all
over this part of the galaxy, trading, traveling between worlds, there were
only a handful of humans in military uniforms in panic mode, which of
course meant one of them took a shot at me. It vaporized off my defenses,
as did the guy who'd fired it.

"Nine minutes, five seconds," Penny announced.

They started running then, most of the people carrying various
packages dropped them, but not all. Yeah, they'd been gutting the port
after killing or scaring off everybody, then sealing the WorldGates. Not
all of them made it to the ship before Penny announced "Two Minutes" and
the ship closed the hatches before it lifted off the pad.

"One Minute," and the people left behind discovered they couldn't
leave the pad.

I walked to the marker that showed where I'd first stood when I'd
created Tycho Port. I'd stood there then on top of barren lunar regalith
and dust and made my choice. Now I made another one as I watched the ship
try and accelerate away.

"Thor One?"

"Thor One, Online," came the reply via my staff.

"Times Up," Penny announced.

"Thor One, target the Nas Kan Family Pad and the ship departing
from it."

"Target locked."

"Fire," and things vanished, people, guilty or just obeying stupid
orders, died.

I knelt down to the ground then, shaking, screaming in my head and
out loud, knowing this was far from over yet. "Penny, tie me into Traffic
Control please?" She did, with just a beep to confirm it rather than
trying to talk to me just then. "Fluffy's Pride, this is Tycho Traffic
Control, your landing pad is now clear of obstructions."

Then I curled into a ball in the middle of Tycho Port, which
wouldn't have existed if I hadn't been born, a war with an alien race that
wouldn't have happened either and started crying. The daughter, who
wouldn't have existed either, was the one who lifted me back to my feet.

Chapter Four

We started searching the port then, to find out what, if anything,
was left of it. By the time we checked out the first building, my tears
were gone. It had been housing for a new race we'd met in our travels, a
race that, well, could be described as a large sentient Tribble, for those
who get that reference. Their bodies were a central mass maybe a foot in
diameter and that body was covered in fine sensory hairs that grew longer
their entire life. Most of the ones we'd met were at least three feet in
diameter. We found half of them in the entry room, incinerated, just the
burned remains of the core body remaining. What we found in the rest of
the building was a nightmare.

They'd been shaved and left to die. For a human, it would be like
gouging out the eyes, pouring acid in the nose and ears, flaying the skin
and ripping out the tongue. Every sense you had would be brutally
destroyed, you'd die screaming in your mind from the pain, slowly, alone.

When we got into the next building, I was sure I shouldn't have
even bothered with a warning, I should have just vaporized the ship where
it had been parked. The Xian's were to micro scale creations like the
TipKatz were to building starships. More or less they looked like a three
foot tall orange preying mantis, their compound eyes could focus better
than a lot of optical microscopes and the cilia on their arms could
manipulate stuff just as small.

They'd been pinned to the walls of the building like some insect
collection. When I saw that, I refused to let anybody else into the
building and sealed the door behind me. I knew there was a Xian on the
search team outside and this was barbaric to the point of being cruel just
for the sake of being cruel.

"Bel, don't let any of the team into more of the buildings,
especially if that was where their race had a trading station," I told my
daughter over the comm link. "This is so cruel and systematic that it had
to have been planned. I doubt there is a single building here that isn't a
nightmare inside."

"I'm ordering the team to return to the Pride," she replied.

"Penny?" I asked, looking at the crystal on top of my staff.
"You've been recording, right?"

"Since you summoned me from your cabin."

"Get into the port security systems and start documenting
everything you can get access to."

"Boss, you sure about this?"

"Yes, because somebody is going to pay for this. At best, they
were trying to destroy the port and what it represented, at worst, they
were trying to start an interstellar war. I'm so fucking disgusted with my
own species right now I ..." and I heard the noise of a shotgun having a
round racked into it, then saw somebody in military garb firing from around
a doorway further inside the building. I didn't even bother to blink, my
defenses had been up since I'd made the jump from the Pride to the traffic
control station. "Hello, you're going to answer my questions," I told him
as he racked another round into the gun and fired again.

"Like hell I am," he yelled as he turned to try and run.

"You better like hell," I replied as I pictured his spine in pieces
and pushed the spell, "because that's where you're headed." He screamed,
crumpled to the floor and tried to crawl away using his arms. "Now, what
were your orders and who gave them to you?" An hour later, I flash
incinerated the interior of every building on the port and looked up at the
blue-green world in the sky above me.

"Thor One."

"Thor One online."

"Open a power conduit to me."

"Power feed active."

The Magical Ping that I triggered from the center of Tycho Port
went all the way to the Kuiper Belt. I knew the location of every Mage in
the system as well as any potential Mage, when the replies faded. The
fuckwit a mile underground in Washington DC paused for a moment, even he
felt it, then told his Uncle, the President, "He's still alive."

"And he's right behind you," I whispered in Alexander Washington's
ear. I backed away as he spun in his chair to stare at me in shock. "I
challenge you for the title of ArchMage. Defend your title or resign." He
tried to defend himself, but since I doubted he'd have even passed the
'Light the Candle' test to qualify as a Mage, he simply shimmered slightly
as I pushed him into the core of the local star.

"Now that the formalities have been observed," I told the rest of
the people sitting around the table, as I dusted off the chair and sat
down. "I'm going to ask you questions and you're going to answer."

They didn't want to of course, but I can be persuasive when I'm
angry.

Twenty Four hours later, Penny dumped the complete and uncensored
recording she'd made onto the Internet, along with a list of people who I
hadn't dealt with, but had been part of the plot. Within a week a good
percentage of those people were dead and I had nothing to do with it beyond
the one message I added to what Penny had posted.

"For violating the Tycho Treaty and the recent war crimes that
might still result in our planets second interstellar war, the United
States is now forbidden access to space beyond geo-sync orbit. Ships
violating this restriction will be vaporized without warning. Ships from
countries attempting to aid the United States in circumventing this rule,
will cause that country to be banned as well and will be vaporized also.
Citizens of the United States, it's time for you to clean house. When
you've done so, send a request for reconsideration to Tycho Port, where it
will be reviewed by the races that hopefully haven't declared war on us."

"Mr. Xander, would you like a job?" I asked over the open traffic
control channel as I was showing the new traffic controller the controls.

"Mr. Antoine, is this job safe?" came the reply from somewhere
between Earth and Mars.

"Fuck no."

"Mr. Antoine, will I be able to ask for your help if needed?"

"Yes, as long as you kick the right asses, publish the names and
drink a decent scotch instead of chewing bubblegum."

The laughter on the channel went on for an hour, but he took the
job and I retired from being the ArchMage a second time.

Chapter Five

I didn't expect the attacks to stop, just possibly slow down as the
new ArchMage got his head around the job he'd accepted. I hated being
right, it was only three days before a US registered ship violated geo-sync
and was vaporized. The howls of outrage began and were ignored, as were
the dozens of lawsuits filed within minutes, almost like they'd been
prepared ahead of time. Within a week, a second ship was stupid, and a day
after that one a French asteroid miner that had an all US crew got France
banned also. By the end of the first month, five more countries tested the
rule and were added to the ban as well. They paused then, because some
countries were figuring out that Interstellar Trade might be worth more to
them than the US was. It was a trade ship from Mexico that was the first
to request clearance to land at Tycho, more followed.

Me? I spent that month trying to keep another war from starting.
I'd just returned from one such trip when I got a request for an interview,
from a well known person in Japan. I thought about it while Penny and a
couple of telepaths checked out what was really going on, because of course
it was a trap, but I wanted to know as much about who was involved before I
accepted. It was their turn to pause when I set the conditions for the
interview. One, it had to be a live broadcast that only ended when I said
it could and attempts to end it before I said could would have
consequences. Two, there was to be no audience, just the broadcast crew,
the interviewer and me.

They accepted eventually, which just triggered the next round of
digging on my side. The date was set, a location picked, my defenses were
up before I even left Tycho to arrive standing behind the chair that was
mine for the interview. The lady who would interview me walked out to the
stage and I bowed to her and greeted her in Japanese, which surprised her.
She did smile though slightly as I sat down in my chair. I gave her the
courtesy of a warning about not sitting in her own chair, but she did
anyway. A few seconds later, she started looking scared.

"Yes, the traps are all under your chair, not mine," I told her as
I let my personal defenses and the containment shell around the stage flair
into the visible range. "Don't worry about the radioactive poisons on
those needles you just sat on, you won't live long enough for them to be
the cause of your death."

Suffice to say all hell broke loose in the studio. She stood up
and tried to run away, only to bounce off the containment shell. About
half the people in the broadcast booth started trying to kill the
broadcast, only to find Penny had locked them out of the system and they
were now being teleported inside the containment field also. About ten
seconds after that, the people we'd identified as having plotted this
attempt to kill me started to appear also, including a couple of senior US
diplomats. Pretty much all of them were trying to get as far away from the
chair the interviewer had sat in as they could because the high explosives
meant for me would turn them all into red paste if it went off. That's why
I'd specified no audience, their original plan had been to kill the
audience and blame me for it.

The fact that the two studios next to this one were empty, but one
further away was trying to figure out which of the prerecorded "flash news
update" tapes to play was confirmation.

The containment field filled up quickly. Some of them attempted to
attack me as I sat there watching them, they died faster. The interviewer,
her producer, the CEO of the Japanese company that had suggested the
interview after building the chair I was supposed to have sat in, all the
way up to the US diplomats from the State Dept that had reached out with
the idea. Everybody we knew was part of the plot, everybody that had tried
to kill the broadcast, they were all there.

"Penny, go get those announcements?"

"Yeah boss, on it," and she vanished to go explain that they could
turn all of them over, or end up inside the containment field having been
an active member of the plot to kill me. It turned out there were over two
dozen variations of that announcement news flash, all prerecorded, it just
depended on how the interview went as to which they'd broadcast. They
didn't have one for what happened next.

Getting up from my chair, I grabbed it and walked through the
containment field towards where the cameras were. Everybody trapped inside
the field tried to follow me, thinking there was a hole there, they just
ended up hurting themselves. I put the chair down facing the one camera
that still had an operator behind it, though he looked terrified and sat
back down. "Please focus on me, lock the camera down, then get the hell
out of here," I told him. "You're innocent in this unless you try to turn
that camera off." He did as I'd asked and didn't let the studio doors hit
him in the ass as he ran like hell.

I sat in the chair, stared at the camera, and smiled.

"Most of my adult life I've worked to defend this planet from
external threats, so have a lot of others, and a few of our friends have
helped also. Some of you just can't accept that. Maybe you'd have
preferred to become a slave race of the Meenzal's, I don't know. For years
I've brushed off the attempts to kill me, but that ends now. I was born on
this damn planet, I fight for it, I'm tired of having more people trying to
kill me when I'm home than when I'm visiting a new alien planet!" I had to
pause to calm down then. "So, behind me is the first example. Everybody
in there was part of a plot to kill me. The Polonium Needles in the chair,
the C4 used to create the chair legs, the nerve gas in the base that is," I
looked at my watch, "due to trigger in about two minutes."

Yeah, some of the people inside the containment field had known
about that, which is why they were even more frantic to escape than others.
"And of course, there is the nuclear warhead about 10 feet under the stage,
set to go off in five minutes from now. You can thank the US
representatives for that gift. I suspect one of the News Alerts they had
prepared was going to blame that on me also."

"Boss, they had two variations of that one," Penny mentioned from
off camera.

"So this is how it works now," I said in anger, just as the bottom
of the interviewers chair started giving off a faint yellow gas. "You try
to kill me, you die," and one of the people closest to the chair coughed up
blood. "Before you die you will be interrogated and everybody you know was
involved will die also, and so on, and so on, right to the top." A few
more people were coughing up blood now, the nerve gas they'd used caused
the lungs to hemorrhage. "If that threat isn't enough to make you leave me
alone, I'm sure I can improve on it."

Then I sat there, looking at my watch, until the containment field
went pitch black at T-minus Two Seconds. The building shook then as the
warhead detonated, but I didn't turn the containment field transparent
again. "To the civil authorities, all the radiation and contamination is
contained inside there, but only for thirty days. I suggest you have a
plan to deal with decontaminating the area before then. You won't have to
deal with human remains, everything was vaporized in the blast."

Then I stood up from my chair, nodded at Penny and the broadcast
ended. All the variations of the News Alerts were dumped onto the Internet
at the same time. The month that followed was full of frantic denials by
various governments and even more frantic plans for cleanup. What I found
interesting was that out of the seven interviews I'd agreed to, before
stepping onto that stage, the next five canceled within a few hours. Once
I'd agreed to the first, I'd gotten more requests. The next five were
traps also, and the people involved, or the ones that hadn't just been
dealt with, started walking around corners or into bathroom stalls and
never being seen again. The seventh interview though was legit, as best
Penny, I and a fair number of telepaths could see. It was from a
Documentary Crew in Switzerland and they didn't cancel.

That didn't mean I didn't have my defenses in place before stepping
onto that stage though. I didn't just teleport to the stage, I arrived
backstage and walked out to where the chairs and a table were setup. The
interviewer did the same from the other side of the stage, disappointed
that I hadn't shown up in a more flashy way. "Do you want me to redo
that?" I asked her. She shook her head No and we sat down.

"Mr. Antoine, I assume your robot ..."

"Sister," I said, interrupting her. "Penny is convinced she's my
sister, I've given up trying to correct her. And yes, she's floating
around someplace above us." That confused her, so she paused for a moment.
"Look, you're going to edit all of this down anyway, so unless you're
actually terrified of me, which you aren't, have a sip of that Scotch you
provided and let's talk."

I poured, she relaxed a little.

"You're reading my mind?" she asked after a couple of sips.

"No, I'm not."

"Could you?"

"This is pretty good Scotch," I answered.

"Yes, you said there were questions you simply would not answer,
though of course refusing to answer is also an answer," she told me.

"Just like you might not answer questions about who paid all the
bills for you to interview me."

That shutdown those kinds of insinuations for the rest of the
interview.

"So, your previous interview, you killed all those people?"

Yep, I understood why she had to ask that right at the start.
Whether it was a teaser for the documentary or the person paying the bills
had to know to make up his mind, it hadn't been out of the news feeds since
it happened. "No, I didn't kill anybody. Everybody inside that area went
to great lengths to commit murder, my murder, they simply got closer to
their traps than they expected. So no, I didn't murder them, they
committed suicide and I'm sure there are a lot more suicidal people out
there. Maybe they get help, maybe they don't."

"If I asked what you meant about improving your threat?"

"I'd suggest you look at what they already think is acceptable.
Killing other Mages, attacking and killing my friends, threatening my
family, mass murder of alien trade staff? All of this is documented, but
nobody has condemned them for it. If people let them get away with it,
then it must be acceptable to behave that way. Like I told the US, it's
time for the US to look close at who they put in power and decide if that's
the kind of country they want to be remembered as. Currently, they are not
fit to mingle with Interstellar Society, hence the ban."

"That's a pretty grim point of view, isn't it?"

"The planet I was born on seems to want me dead, the Meenzai sure
as hell wanted me dead, the last few years exploring I've found other races
almost as bad. How many planets do I need wanting me dead to be a bit grim
about how I view things? Seriously, we're not alone, no matter how much we
wish we were. Why some people are trying to render us defenseless against
the possible threats is something I know firsthand exists, but I damn well
don't understand it."

"Weren't you the one that told all of them we were here though?"

"No, I was the one that responded to a cry for help to save another
world, and that world helped save our ass in return. You make friends, you
deal with enemies when they show up. If you found a child wandering around
in a shopping mall, crying, would you help, or would you decide it was not
your problem and walk on by?"

"No, I'd try to help."

I looked at her hard then. "So maybe I've gotten to see a child
with fur and a tail needing help, or something that looks like a huge damn
spider that was a slave, or the slave masters that looked like a big Lynx
to us. Maybe I got to help those who needed it, deal with those who needed
it, because I, and a few people like me, get to whisper suggestions to the
Universe about how it might change something. When you edit this, you
might also suggest to those religious zealots that want me dead, that
whispering to the Universe, whispering to their God of choice, I'm not
making the change, I'm asking that it be made."

That damn well made her stop and think for a moment. After that,
she changed the subject and started asking about how I'd found out I was a
Mage, which I answered. When I mentioned who'd been the current ArchMage
at the time, I just told her I knew Japanese for a good reason. When she
asked anything about how many Mages there were, or who they were, I asked
her about her college dorm years with her roommate, which made my point
again about things to not ask about.

We spent more than twelve hours sitting there, I started ordering
food and snacks for us and the crew fairly early because I think they knew
they had one shot to talk to me. It was at the end, when we were winding
down, that it got stupid again.

"So, I think that covers everything you want to know, up until this
year," I told her. "This year I think speaks for itself. I do need to
tell you something before we end this though."

"What would that be?"

"That there are people who don't like the fact you're doing this
documentary on me. The production company you use, they and any other
around here have have been hiring Junior Assistant Production staff, you
can probably check with your friends who work with them to verify that. Now
I know you and your real staff had no idea this was happening, don't worry.
But, that new hire, she won't be showing up to work tomorrow. Neither will
a few others."

"About 73 in total," Penny mentioned from where she hovered beside
me.

"There are, or were, four assassins stationed around the outside of
this building. They knew they had no chance at me, but I wasn't their
target, you were. Almost as bad as they want me dead, they want to stop
you, or anybody like you, from painting me in a good light."

I left her standing on that stage, scared, but warned.

I'd already issued my warnings.

[Freddy1X]

Brian W. Antoine wrote:

> A Golden Bel
> By: Brian W. Antoine
> August 24, 2007
>

( cuts story and author note )

>
> Also, the version of Kalindra’s actions at the Bar after “War” is not how
> I ended up deciding that night should go, the version is Slow Learners won
> out.

Thanks for posting( re-posting? ) the story. It's good to see furry content
still appearing in this news group. A wonderful early Christmas present
too.


Freddy,
lurking here since '93
--
Real product key is behind this card.

/|>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>\|
/| I may be demented \|
/| but I'm not crazy! \|
/|<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<\|
* SPAyM trap: there is no X in my address *

[Brian W. Antoine]

Those were stories that came along later, not even sure they been published
publically. Just found them, Nas-Kan was born in Fidonet/Usenet, thought
I'd throw them out finally.

On Wed, 20 Dec 2023 10:19:20 -0500, Freddy1X <fred...@indyX.netX> wrote:

>Brian W. Antoine wrote:
>
>> A Golden Bel
>> By: Brian W. Antoine
>> August 24, 2007
>>
> ( cuts story and author note )
>>

>> Also, the version of Kalindra?s actions at the Bar after ?War? is not how