Chapter 11

Annie managed to keep calm faced and quiet through a quarter of the meeting. She sat and listened as Dale laid out logistic and organizational missions to the living dead that sat around the table – listening to them as they responded in turn. The people, the ghosts, the zombies, the revenants that Dale had brought to their headquarters in San Francisco, all of them were the reanimated souls of people with enough force of will, enough personality, and enough raw grit that they had come back with intelligence, personality, memories.

That was why Annie’s teeth ground together harder and harder as Dale said: “Now that we’ve secured the nukes in France, I want to begin reanimated and binding souls to the reactors in question. Local undead can do the rough design work – I’ve got the specifications loaded on the ClouDocs, just have your local sentients acess it with the passwords provided, and get to work inscribing the runes. Once the runes are complete, I or Annie will teleport to the plants and enchant them.” He rubbed his chin. “Can we get some local camera crews down there to film the process – we need to show people what we’re doing and why it is for the best. I’m sure knowing that their nuclear power plants will run, repair, restock and refuel themselves will put a lot of them at ease...”

Annie saw Heydrich incline his head and mutter an affirmation.

And that was the last straw.

She slammed her palms down on the table and stood. “Dale. Outside. Now.”

Dale, looking as shocked as if he had been flicked in the forehead, blinked at her. Then, coughing, he nodded. “Yes, well, you have your orders. See to it.” He stood and followed after Annie, who walked across the corridor and into one of the adjoining meeting rooms of the complex they had taken. In the distance, she could hear a murmuring sound – it was coming through the walls, but distantly. Like a surf’s roar on the seaside. She put it out of her mind for the moment. Instead, she glared at Dale.

“What the absolute fuck, Dale?”

Dale pursed his lips. “Is this about Heydrich?”

“Yes, it’s about fucking Heydrich!” Annie shouted – her voice breaking at the last as she flung her arms wide. “It’s about the fact that your council of sentient undead administrators, a sentence that I will never get used to saying or thinking by the way, happens to have a fucking Nazi on it. Not a neo-Nazi, not a Trumpist, not a Ecotist, but an actual literal real life swastika flying 20th century fucking goddamn Nazi piece of shit.”

Dale ducked his head forward.

“Do you know who he is?” Annie hissed. “I googled him during the meeting. He’s not just a Nazi. He’s the Nazi.” She scowled. “He practically designed the Holocaust. He was so bad the British made sure to assassinate him early just to make sure he was fucking dead. He-”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Dale asked, scowling at her, his head snapping up. “Don’t you think I knew that this army of mine would be have almost as many monsters as it would have heroes? The Confederates we have securing the eastern seaboard of North America are almost as bad – less industrialized, but just as brutal-” He stopped himself, shaking his head. “I have him under my control. Under our control.”

Annie pursed her lips. Then she turned to the door and felt the magic inside of her bones. She closed her eyes and channeled it up – shaping it into the spheres that Dale had taught her. The chilling emptiness of the void filled her, echoing out from her bones and she lifted her hands, her fingers twitching as if she was playing with a puppet. Her finger arched and she dragged a line of force from where she stood to the meeting room – and felt it hook and tug. A moment later, the door opened and the ghostly form of Heinrich Heydrich stood before them. His face was twisted with pain and his hand clutched at his chest. Annie frowned at him.

“Yes, fra-ah!” He gasped as Annie twisted her hands. He fell to his knees.

“I’m going to make this very clear,” Annie said, her voice soft. “Right now...” She looked down her nose at the ghostly figure, her fingers trembling. There was something horrible about pain – about seeing it. She listed the massacres she had seen printed on Wikipedia, a list of Eastern European sites, each one left buzzing with flies because of this man. When he had been alive, he had been a monster. But every second she saw his face, she felt her own guilt swelling inside of her – his teeth, bared in pain. His forehead furrowing. His hand clutching at his chest, as if he was being hit with a heart attack. Annie’s fingers relaxed despite herself. “Right now...” She said, her voice as hard as she could make it. “If I ... if I ever hear of you doing anything even slightly fashy, anything cruel, anything evil, I will ... personally have Dale tear your soul apart. I will have him forge you into soulsteel and use you as a fucking bidet. Got it?”

Heydrich nodded, his face relaxing as the pain faded.

Annie flipped her hand. “Go.”

The Nazi staggered to his feet and turned – blurring through the wall as he did so, not quite reaching the door with his staggering, drunken stance. Annie turned away from the door, her arms crossed over her chest. She wanted to be sick.

What was she?

“Annie-” Dale started.

“I have to do the ... the factory job,” Annie snapped, turning to go. Dale’s fingers brushed her sleeve – but he did not call after her. He simply stood in the room, his lips set, his eyes unreadable through the glimmering haze of her tears.

She strode down the corridor, in the opposite direction of Heydrich. Slowly, the roaring sound she was hearing from outside of the compound began to intrude into her mind – and she realized it was furious shouts and cries and chants. She paused at a junction between the office complex and the rooms that she and Dale had made their private rooms – and blinked a few times as she saw a revenant leaning against the wall, a rifle slung over his shoulder. He was almost her age and ... kinda...

Cute.

He had an easy little smile on his face, short cropped black hair, and a pair of ears that stuck out just enough to give him character without being radio antennas. He was dressed in a brown jacket that hung down to his thighs, with a thick scarf and gloves, which were currently off so that he could poke at (with considerable fascination and a deeply furrowed brow) a modern handheld. It looked like an Apple piece. He was cocking his head, and when his eyes widened, he looked even cuter. Annie tried to not feel a twinge of guilt for noticing he was cute. Instead, she started to walk forward – but this drew up his head.

“Ah, hello!” he said, his voice as unaccented as all the undead – their languages were translated via magic, at least, they were to her. It was even stranger to see it from aboriginals who had died centuries ago and were dressed in their traditional garb – hearing standard, broad ‘American’ accents coming from their lips felt like her whole life was being dubbed. “The Dark Queen of the Goyim herself.”

“Go ... yim?” Annie asked, her brow furrowing.

“Ah, nothing,” he said, then stood up straighter. “I am here from Poland but Dale has given me new orders.”

“Has he...” Annie frowned further.

“I am to guard you,” he said. “Best fighter of the sentient undead who isn’t more busy elsewhere.” He held out his hand to her. “Mordechai Anielewicz.”

Annie took the glowing, spectral hand. It felt faintly cold to the touch, but solid – he was doing his best to remain solid at least. Annie shook and tried to not release his hand too quickly. She still had a hard time not thinking about how long these people had been dead. Instead, she said: “Mordechai, huh? Uh, can I call you Mord?”

“No,” Mordechai said.

“Too bad,” Annie said, grinning at him. “I am the dark lord of-” She pulled out the phone. “The ... how do you spell that? Is it with a U?”

Mordechai actually smiled a bit. “G O Y I M.”

“Goyim...” She paused. “Oh. You’re Jewish?”

Mordechai looked pained as Annie started to walk towards the exit. “You, uh, don’t have many Jews around?”

“No, I- no, I mean, I do! I have!” Annie stammered. “Just, I’ve never heard the word. Maybe it’s fallen out of, uh, favor.” She paused. “Huh, translation: People of Nations. Oh! I get it. Dark Queen of Nations. Cause, I, uh, kinda rule the world right now.” Her smile faded as she saw Mordechai shrug one shoulder – as if to say, as you say. She felt deeply uncomfortable as she tapped in his name.

He’d died fighting people like her.

Annie frowned. She started to walk faster. “So, Mord ... Mordechai,” she corrected herself. “We’re going to be fixing up a factory. Uh, San Fran has a few factories, self contained consumer goods stuff, and we need to make sure that they run. Uh, and it’s important that people see why, uh, why this is good, what we’re doing. Since it is ... we’re not ... we’re not taking over the world to take stuff. Heck, I don’t want to even to run things, Dale and I are going to give up power the instant everything is set up.”

Mordechai lifted an eyebrow speculatively, but said nothing. They came to a set of double doors. The sound of chanting was louder now – set us free! Set us free! Set us free! - and shouting mixed between sounded like a dull roar. Annie gulped.

“Sounds as if things are going quite well so far,” Mordechai said.

Annie breathed in, her fingers touching the door. She closed her eyes, recalling the magic she had been taught. A bit of wood, a touch of void, a twist of shaping. That had been Dale’s genius, the methods that he had shown her when they had been quietly learning and planning for what felt like lifetimes. He had been alone on Arcadia, and he had traveled the world far and wide and learned the magic of many nations – and began to combine them. To see what resulted from forbidden combinations. The end result had been a subtle grasp of the final construction of spells. Any wizard could make a spell that would bring people into a deep sleep.

Annie cast out a net of magic that brought calm.

Not control.

Not compulsion.

Simple ... calm.

And when the door opened and she stepped out into the interior mall that served as the gathering place of the crowd of protesters ... into silence. The crowd was looking faintly shocked, as if they weren’t sure quite where their anger had gone. She saw it gathering in their faces again as she stepped up behind the line of skeletal troops in riot armor. They hadn’t done anything but hold up shields – since the projectiles that the crowd had thrown at them wouldn’t have been lethal or dangerous to living cops, skeleton cops were basically immune. Annie’s mind flashed back, suddenly, to watching a super cheesy cartoon as a kid.

SkeleCop, SkeleCop, she thought. He Cannot be Stopped.

“H-Hey everyone!” she called out, waving to the crowd. Then, coughing. “Y-You’re all free. Um. Right now. Technically. I mean, y-you were allowed to assemble here, right? I mean, uh, heh, you wouldn’t have been allowed to do that if we were really that bad, right?”

Several mutters came from the crowd. Someone who had clearly not been hit by the spell as hard as the others shouted, loudly: “You lying evil bitch!”

Annie clenched her jaw, then held up her hands. “Wait! Wait! My name is Annie Hernman DuPont. I’m just as American as anyone else here-” She winced as she heard more shouting and was glad that the distinction between the words was lost in the clamor and the roar. “-and if everyone here would follow me, I’ll show you what we’re about!” She snapped her fingers and a glowing platform appeared beneath her. She hovered upwards, Mordechai following, looking over the edge with wide eyes. A few people threw bottles – but she flicked her hand, the magic flowing through her as easily as breathing. The bottles hung in the air and she gently floated them to the ground, her jaw set as she focused on the platform, flying it over their heads. Wonder filled those eyes – wonder and fear, overcoming the calming spell. But she saw people moving to follow her, the press of the crowd shifting under her like the waves of the sea.

The procession she made was one that was filled with murmuring conversation – and it swelled. The crowd had been, compared to the population of San Fransisco’s massive, pyramidal shape, relatively small. A tiny fraction of people who weren’t utterly terrified of the ghosts and zombies that now patrolled their halls and broke up violence with nothing more than their presence. A zombie didn’t need to use force to stop someone – they just had to stand in their way and gently, inexorably, let the human wear themselves out against their undead flesh.

But she did see cameras in the crowd – cellphones, recording her flight as she made her way to the consumer factories on the lowest level of the arcology. Each arcology designed and built under the UN emergency council mandates had been designed to be self contained and self sustaining – but this took labor. Immense amounts of labor. The raw materials were mostly recycled from the city’s own trash, but the humans that worked the high temperature sorting engines – essentially plasma torches that atomized materials, then sorted them centrifugally into different atomic weights, allow the raw material to be turned into each individual element – labored for long hours on dangerous, boring jobs that couldn’t be automated. No computer system yet devised could manage the variables involved in the management of the recycling and factory lines.

And...

Well, there were plenty of aspects of the job that hadn’t been automated.

Because people without jobs couldn’t get money. People without money couldn’t eat. That basic relationship was the underpinning of the entirety of the American economy, the entire America society.

As they came to the factory, Annie was ready to take a crowbar to it. She hovered on the floating disk as the crowds millled around outside the factory. Since the factory was built into the arcology proper, it didn’t look like how the old pictures of factories looked. No huge bulky, box shaped structure here, just a broad, flat wall covered in warning signs and strips of yellow and black paint. The doors that were marked every few feet opened into the factory halls themselves, but Annie wanted everyone to see it.

“Watch this,” she whispered to Mordechai, then lifted her palms. The sphere of Earth and Air, twisted by her will, and then she blew along her palm, sending ropes of invisible mana arcing through the air. It touched the wall and slowly turned it into a clear, transparent glass. To all who were looking, it was as if the wall had dissolved away, starting in the center and working outwards, like frost under a blowtorch. The crowd stilled and filled with gasps and cries of alarm. Mordechai tensed, glaring at the crowd.

“Just saying, Miss Dark Lord,” he murmured. “This is a great way for you to get shot.”

Annie frowned. “The city has been disarmed.”

Mordechai snorted.

“And I have shields,” Annie muttered. She looked back at the factory. The interior still had skeletons daubing paint that Dale had designed – sympathetic materials (in this case, obsidian) ground up and spread into purple paint, glittering and gleaming as the skeletons daubed the symbols that they had worked out together above massive drums that would do the atomic sorting. She lifted her palms and closed her eyes, speaking aloud. “This is what we’re doing, everyone.” Her fingers spread outwards and magic crackled along her palms as she found the faint echoes of ghosts.

This factory had been in place for decades. Over those decades, some of the factory workers had died – and those echoes, those quantum vibrations, remained in the air, drawn and connected by sympathy and long association. She began to feed those vibrations, in time with their resonance. Building the resonance, so that the sound grew louder and louder. The daubed obsidian within the factory began to glow brilliantly. Purple lightning crackled within the factory and the crowd cried out. They surged backwards and Annie tried to focus only on her spell. She cried out a few last words – shouting the magical syllables that Dale had taught her.

The last of the magic slipped through her and she felt fatigue come in after. Bone deep fatigue, buzzing and throbbing through her body. Within the factory, machines began to move themselves – arms swinging, buttons depressing. The recycling systems whirred and glowed as the plasma torches came online. The crowd watched, mute and uncomprehending.

Annie turned back to them, resisting the urge to lean into Mordechai. “T-This factory!” she said. “Is the first in America to be run entirely by magic.”

No need to tell them that the long dead souls of old factory workers had been tapped to provide the expertise to guide the magic. It’d take too long to explain that said souls were quiescent and still, as sentient as an AI program. So, instead, she continued: “Once I have cast the same spell on each, this entire city will recycle and produce the materials you are used to for free. If you wish it, you can have it!” She beamed at the crowd.

They looked at her.

Some were looking shocked. Some horrified. But one started to clap. It was a young woman – thin and skinny and desperate. She clapped harder and harder and a few others began to clap as well. Annie felt her knees turning to wobbling rubber – and then someone shouted: “What is wrong with you?” and grabbed the clapping woman. “She’s a monster, they’re all monsters-”

The clapping woman grabbed for something in her belt. It was a mace can. The hissing sound of the spray was unnaturally loud in the air – and then someone else screamed. An actual punch was thrown and shouts filled the air – shouts of traitor, shouts of motherfucker, shouts of every kind imaginable. People stampeded towards the exits and Annie, her strength ebbing, flung out her hands. “Everyone! Sto ... stop! Stop!” She shook her head, reaching desperately for magic. Screams were coming and Mordechai had grabbed onto her arm.

“We have to get out of here,” he hissed.

“Nox!” Annie bellowed. She felt something deep and harsh tug at her body. She fed every bit of strength she had into it, magic flowing through her. She snapped her shield spell in half – and the spell she had crafted, of sleep, flung outwards like a net. The emotions were so high, the crowd so furious, that she felt the net fraying – but in the center of the crowd, people were slowly lapsing to the ground, sprawling across one another as they fell asleep. Blood streamed from wounded face. Some got only halfway done before the pain of broken limbs caused them to scream awake. But at the edges of the crowd, the net was growing thinner. Annie felt wobbly – but she held on.

One of the crowd was tugging something from their vest. It was boxy and ugly and clearly a gun – a Patriot, one of the 3d printable guns. Annie’s eyes widened. “Mord-” She started.

The gun roared.

Annie felt something rip into her chest.

She coughed.

Heat dripped pas their lips.

“Miss!” A voice, very distant, echoed in her ears.

A cute voice...

Annie tried to breathe.

Tried to drag in magic. She just needed ... healing...

The healing buzzed in her. Magic swirled.

The next shot struck and flared and there was nothing after that.

The Enterprise was the only place the meeting could have been held. Arcadia was too volatile, the Russian ships too small – in aggregate, their fleet was larger, but their ships were all designed without centrifugal sections. The Enterprise had security, it had comfort, it had size, it had gravity. But it still took almost two days of wrangling and shouting before the Russians agreed to alter their orbit to a polar one and to join the Enterprise. Now, like a gleaming string of beads, the Russians and Americans looped around Arcadia – each ship following stem to stern.

While the orbits were shifted and propellant was spent, the crew of the Enterprise worked their asses off to convert a meeting room to the size that would take the Russian officers, the representatives from Arcadia, and the adopted son of the Dragon Emperor.

“Not sure why we need an adopted son of the Dragon Emperor,” Helen said to Lucas as he thumbed through the book on magic. Isabella had been teaching him and Vidya in what scant few moments they’d had free, but Lucas had yet to get more than a spark of magic from his fingers. Helen herself was dressed in her best pressed uniform, adjusting her new lieutenant pins. She shook her head, looking deeply skeptical. “And I’m not sure about bringing Fire Heart up here.”

“Well, you are Lord Winsom,” Lucas muttered. He paused. “D-Do you think ... on Earth...”

Helen’s fingers paused in their fidgeting. She turned to face him and sighed. “I don’t have family I give a fuck about, really,” she said, walking over and sitting down on the bed beside him. “But I think your family has to be fine. There’s no way that this Dark Lord motherfucker can have taken the United States. Setting off MAD? Fine, that hosed us bad. But, ya know, the USAF is just a quarter of our military. And, like, by numbers, it’s not even the biggest. The Army is still huge. And have fucking guns. This guy’s from Arcadia, a planet that things pointy sticks is cutting edge.” She grinned at him, her voice cocky. “We got this.”

Lucas smiled at her, then leaned in and kissed her, hard. He still felt a twinge in his breast, a momentary fear, a worry that she’d draw back and snort and laugh. How many times would he have to be inside of her before he stopped worrying that this was all dream? When Helen drew back, she was grinning at him. “No fair waiting till I’m in the fuckin uniform, Lucas.” She paused. “Unless...” She grinned, slowly. “Do uniforms get you hot?”

Lucas coughed. “We, uh, we should get to the meeting room, right? The Russians are docking.”

Helen snorted.

When the door opened and they stepped out, Lucas found a rather strange tableaux between him and the elevator that would take them from the living quarters deck to the meeting chambers. There stood Mohammad, one of the Indian scientists that had been a part of the mission since day one. He had his back pressed to the wall and was standing up very tall, very straight, and very steadily faced. His hands were clasped behind his back. Almost on the other side of the corridor was Vidya, her finger casually pushing the elevator call button repeatedly – filling the air with a clicking and clacking noise. Vidya, despite her dusky complexion, was nearly beat red.

Helen glanced from Vidya to Mohammad to Vidya again. Then, smirking like a cat, she headed for the elevator, timing it just as the door whirred open. She stepped on as Vidya darted in. Lucas followed after, glancing confusedly back at Mohammad. The elevator door closed and the elevator began to ascend, the seeming of gravity reducing with every foot they traveled upwards. Once they hit microgravity, a dull chime filled the air and each of them flipped over, putting their feet against the ceiling. As they did so, Helen said, so casually that it nearly slipped past Lucas’ attention: “So, doc, how was he?”

Vidya glared at her. “Nothing happened. I’m married.”

Helen bit her lip, her good humor evaporating. “Uh, doc...” She coughed. “Did you and ... well, did ... I mean, you guys were talking right.”

Vidya sighed as the elevator began to whirr. From their old perspective, it was going in the same direction – but to their feet and their bodies, it felt as if it was going down, as they approached the opposite end of the great, spinning arm that was the center of the Enterprise. “It’s a ... I ... I never asked...” Vidya said, her voice soft. “I never thought to do it, and now he’s gone again and the Earth – I...” She put her hand over her face. Her voice had caught and Lucas could see her trying to control herself. He felt his own fears uncoiling inside of him. Helen, looking as contrite as he’d ever seen her, reached out and squeezed her shoulder.

“Listen,” she said. “We’ve got nukes. This fucker doesn’t stand a chance.”

Vidya let out a sound that was halfway between a giggle, a snort, and a scream.

The meeting room, by the time, they arrived, was filling up. The Russians had sent a trio of officers – none of them were Captain Markova. But they had also brought a rather stoic looking Chinese man. He was nut brown in complexion, hazel eyed, black haired, and remarkably tall and broad shouldered. His muscles looked as if he had been doing hard labor his whole life and he’d never quite stopped. But sitting on his shoulder, craning his head around wildly, was...

A dragon.

An actual, factual, real life dragon. Lucas, who had become increasingly inured to bizarre sights and impossible images over the past few months, still took a few moments gaping at the small creature. He was small as well – kittenish in size and attitude, with sleek black scales, a white furred ruff, and a kind of mustachio, like a Chinese dragon would have. His tail twitched from side to side and he stuck his tongue out into the air, then said – in a clear, piping voice that was obviously being translated with magic: “I like this ship! I like spinning! Also, whoa! You didn’t tell me that humans could have rainbow hair!”

He vanished and appeared, floating in the air before Helen. His wings didn’t beat, and yet, he hung there, his eyes wide as he leaned his head forward, bumping his nose against Helen’s nose. Helen waved her hand. “Hey!” she said. “Also, you can f-” She hastily adjusted her word. “You can talk?” she asked. In the background, Lucas could see Captain DuPont watching with a clear bit of amusement. The Captain had taken the news that he had been subtly influenced by the Dark Lord rather well, if Lucas was any judge of such things. But he had clearly relaxed considerably when the council of elven magi that Isabella had called up had then immediately purged his body of the connection.

“Well, I’d be kind of a lame dragon if I couldn’t talk,” the dragon said. “I couldn’t say ... hey there beautiful.” He winked at Helen. “Wanna learn why they call me the Magnificent Dawn? It’s cause I never come early, but I’m always worth it when I do.”

At that moment, a hand closed around the midsection of the dragon and he made a loud squalling sound as he was dragged back and shoved into what Lucas recognized as a stretchable kitbag, the kind astros in every service used to stow their personal belongings when traveling from ship to ship. His snout stuck out of the mouth of the bag, and the hand tugged hard on the cinch, tightening the bag so that the dragon could barely squirm. “I’m betrapped!” he squeaked.

“Hua,” the Chinese man said, his voice firm. “What did I tell you about flirting with women?”

“ ... do it often cause the last time I did it, it got you totally laid?”

The Chinese man sighed, slowly, then looked up at Helen and Lucas. “My apologies for my draconic companion,” he said, his reserve nearly as intense as the dragon’s bubbliness. Lucas felt like he was about to get the bends. “He’s an idiot.”

“If I was an idiot, would I do ... this?” The dragon squirmed. “Auh! Dang it!”

“The bag has been enchanted,” the Chinese man said. “Spacer First Class, Jianhong Qasim off the People’s Shield.”

“Holy shit, you survived that?” Helen asked, grinning. “How did you do that?”

“I didn’t,” Qasim said, flatly.

Before Lucas could make hide nor tails of that, the elves arrived. Fireheart was there, as was several others he didn’t recognize – and several he did, even if he didn’t know their names. The elven magi, one representing each of the elemental spheres of magic, were all looking various kinds of queasy and battered. It was clear that the flight had not agreed with them in the slightest. They took their seats – and after them came stranger creatures. A short, muscular man with a long beard. A girl who appeared to be bright orange and came up to Lucas’ knee. A statue that walked and was carved with a snarling, tusked face. Two elves that had skin the color of charcoal and glowing red eyes. A burly green man with fur cloth and a sword strapped to his hip, glaring about himself.

Even with several walls knocked down and tables added, the meeting room became hot with body heat, the filter systems of the Enterprise struggling until the Magi of Air cast a spell that glowed over her head, creating cooling air that rushed outwards and caused Dr. Mann – who Lucas saw had been in quiet conversations with the captain – to begin walking over, clearly fascinated. Isabella came in among the last of the arrivals, which included a woman who was as blue as Helen had been before her skin dye pills had worn off, but had four arms and a dress that looked like a sari. Vidya, who had been watching with as much fascination as Lucas, choked on a drink bulb at seeing her.

“This is amazing,” Isabella whispered to Lucas, beaming. “Where did you get that?” she asked, pointing at Vidya, who was still hacking and coughing, gaping at the blue skinned woman. Following the line of her gaze, Isabella frowned. “Oh, you’ve never seen a Vedic before?”