LotS/The Story/Playing with Fire (Part 2)/Intro

Decades ago, on an asteroid in the Jospur System...

"Holy crap..."

"Yeah, that's what I said."

"Sweet Jesus..."

"Yep."

Brian Tabares continued in the same vein for several moments. Blasphemies and profanities crackled in Simone Renshaw's ear -- abusing her helmet's speakers. She couldn't blame him. When she'd seen it for the first time, the things she'd said to herself might have made her grandfather rise from the grave and shove a rosary down her throat.

"Think they knew it was here?" she asked, when he was done.

"Huh?"

"Professor... Damn it! What was he called?"

"Bonderbrand."

"Yeah..."

The name may have slipped her mind, but the man's big jowls were fresh and clear in her memory. They'd quivered like jelly while he gave the two postgraduates their final instructions. After that they'd been left to it -- with only each other and the bleeping excavation bots for company.

"He said to call them if we found anything... unusual," she continued. "Does that mean..."

"Jesus... He sounded like he was talking about minerals or something. Not..."

The two of them stared at the cavern wall. It was a large, lofty chamber. The bots and their predecessors had done their jobs well. But the thing they'd uncovered still took up a sizable portion of the rock face.

Professor Bonderbrand's words echoed in Simone's head.

"We believe the asteroid originated in the Sol System."

But if that were true, then...

"I'll send a transmission," Brian said.

"Already done. I sent it while you were sleeping. Then I had the bots uncover the rest."

"This thing... I mean, I'm no paleontologist, but..."

"That 'thing', Mr. Tabares, is the past," a deep voice said. It came from their helmets' speakers, startling them both. "And the future."

The two postgraduates span round.

Three people were descending the metal staircase that led down into the cavern from the station above. They wore sealed navy blue suits, like the students themselves. The foremost among them, a heavyset man, had his helmet's opacity turned down -- revealing a pair of prodigious jowls. His companions were a woman and a shorter, slimmer man, whose faces were hidden behind layers of cloudy blackness.

Professor Bonderbrand reached the bottom of the staircase and crossed the dark rock floor. When the others followed, Simone's gaze fastened on the male. The way he moved... He had a strange, tilting, almost gliding gait. He wasn't human. If he hadn't been wearing an opaque suit, she might have taken him for a Sussurra who wasn't yet accustomed to walking in humanoid fashion.

"Magnificent," the professor said.

He passed between the postgraduates and stood with his back to them, facing the cavern wall and its embedded treasure. The woman went to his side. A soft exhalation, almost a sigh, came over Simone's speaker. The alien didn't join them. He stopped a few paces behind the students. Simone found herself glancing towards him, certain his hidden eyes were on her. An awkward, unpleasant sensation slithered its way through her innards.

"Lady Ashdown?" the professor said.

The woman's left hand worked the clasps of her suit's right gauntlet. Each one opened with a soft hiss. Simone looked at Brian, but he just shrugged. The two of them had been told to stay suited at all times whilst in the cavern, despite its artificial atmosphere.

Her gauntlet came away, revealing a bare hand more weathered and wrinkled than Simone had expected. The postgraduates looked on, bewildered, as Lady Ashdown walked forward -- fingers outstretched.

"What're you doing?" Simone blurted the words out, and regretted them as soon as they'd left her lips.

The woman paused. She turned her head. And the blackness disappeared from her helmet.

Simone Renshaw's breath caught in her throat.

An old, severe face lay behind the now transparent visor. A pair of cyan gemstones blazed at her from where the woman's eyes should have been.

"Christ!" Brian Tabares whispered. His voice was a faint, distant noise at the back of her consciousness.

Lady Ashdown held her gaze for an eternity, and Simone's flesh crawled with the biting mandibles of a billion miniscule insects. They scuttled over every cell of her body, devouring her microbe by microbe -- until those cyan stones turned away. Then she exhaled, and had to steady herself before she collapsed. Her mind shook. It felt as though the universe had been given a hard kick, and all of reality now lay slightly askew.

The old woman reached out. Her palm pressed against a small portion of the yellow-brownness embedded in the wall. Every muscle in Professor Bonderbrand's body seemed to bulge and tense. A sinuous twitch undulated through the masked man.

"It's him." Lady Ashdown's voice was a moan, a gasp of pleasure that shed away decades and made her sound like a teenage girl. "Hail Kalaxia!"

"Hail Kalaxia!" the professor echoed.

Simone Renshaw didn't know what this all meant, but she sure as hell knew that things were getting far too creepy. She looked to Brian, and read the same thought on his paling face. It was time to get out of here...

They turned towards the other side of the cavern, where the metal stairs led away from the rock chamber and its bizarre denizens. But the mysterious man stood in their path.

The inky blackness faded from his helmet, and Simone screamed.

Crimson eyes glared. Tentacles writhed above a gaping maw.

Her body froze. Every muscle locked in place, rigid as iron. Even her eyelids refused to budge when her eyes started to water.

"Shall I destroy them?" the alien asked. His voice was a drifting, slithering thing -- so like the disquiet in her intestines that it might have been crawling within her guts, worming its way through her body.

"No, Multheru." Professor Bonderbrand's voice echoed on the edge of her perception. "They've done well. Make them forget."

Blackness took Simone Renshaw. Tentacles quivered amongst the shadows.

They wanted to know why she'd brought them there.

"You heard the sirens," Alison Haelia murmured. "I wasn't about to be found in a torched apartment with a bunch of dead guys."

We can't devour her here! There are too many people. Why a bar? Why not an alleyway? We could have burned her in an alleyway...

"It's a public place. Nice and safe. A good place to talk."

Safe? With that maniac? You recognized her! You know what she's done! And you haven't thanked us for saving you back there, by the way...

"Screw you."

"Sure thing, babe."

The man who was leaning next to her at the bar leered from a sweat-streaked face. Ali eyed him up and down. He was wearing a leather jacket that might have been made from a whole cow, and his beer-gut bulged at her like it was hungry. He stuck out a long tongue, lapping at the air.

This displeased them.

His eyes bulged and crossed. They stared down at the tiny flames which danced across the offending appendage. He screamed, though it emerged as more of a spluttering quack. Then he barged through the crowd, still spluttering and quacking, and disappeared through the bathroom door.

Ali shrugged, and reached for the man's drink. It tasted like... fire.

They approved of this.

"It's Satan's Breath," the barman said. "Vodka and Beltherian chilies."

"Give me a triple. And a..."

She asked for a pint of whisky. Without an 'e' in it, apparently. Fussy bitch. If you'd just let us burn her...

"...a pint of whisky. No ecstasy."

"A pint?" The barman raised his eyebrow.

Ali shrugged.

"I think she's an alcoholic."

"Fair enough..."

Great... So we're in a bar with a dangerous drunk madwoman?

"She's not drunk yet," she said, "because I haven't given her the drink."

"Hey, I'm working on it, kid..."

And why are you getting the drinks, like some kind of waitress? Maybe you should just ask for a job here... You'll need one, with McManus dead. Oh, and don't forget, he didn't even pay you before he died. At this rate we'll be sleeping in the gutter before the week's out.

"First of all, I'm getting the drinks so I can make sure nothing goes in them. That's just common sense."

Oh, now she develops common sense! We could have used some of that a little earlier...

"Secondly, shut the hell up."

The barman looked at her in a manner to which she'd long since grown accustomed. He was wondering if she was sane and, more importantly, whether she might be the kind of crazy that was bad for business. But when she swiped her creds, he gave her the drinks. Ali carried them through the room, to the booth in the back corner.

She slid into her seat and pushed the pint glass full of amber liquid across the stained table. Durlin's hand closed around it.

"So let's hear the rest," Ali said.

"Al-Husam is dead."

Emera Tresc waited for several moments, as the holographic faces around the table digested the news. This time none of them were there in person. She was glad of that. The grandmistress didn't want anyone to see the turbulent thoughts which surged behind her eyes.

"And Alison Haelia has escaped. We... We think she's with Durlin."

Bonderbrand's jowls clenched like the jaws of a steel trap. Multheru's oral tentacles fluttered. Lady Victoria Ashdown's cyan gemstone eyes shone with a deep, perturbing glow. She opened her mouth, and the grandmistress steeled herself for the onslaught. But Noir spoke first. The other holograms all swiveled towards the black mask and those blazing azure slits.

"Then we know where Durlin will go next..."

Noir's face vanished.