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Round Trip - Chapter 1

Author’s Note: Hi! Welcome to this blog of stories! I felt pressured to show something off, so here it is. Through this blog I hope to post some of the stories that are being written for this elaborately designed universe, and I hope I draw some interest in the universe while doing so. Posts on this blog will be rare but large, like this one. If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer them in periodic posts.

This is Chapter 1 of what I assume will be an 8-Chapter endeavor. OK, enjoy and all that jazz!

ROUND TRIP

A Doo-Wop Story

by Ian Nelson

CHAPTER 1

RIVER “BISCUIT” ESTESTA, BIG PATROL

MR. MERCER’S EXPRESS, Nexus Station SE

Twertosa, CL, Federated States of Tambia

21:54:12 local time

6 minutes to departure

roughly 4 ½ hours from Archa, Highrock

Wednesday, December 31st, 1997 CE

                 Playing cards are a seriously effective non-verbal communication tool, plus they look inconspicuous as hell no matter what you actually do with them. And as relaxed as the moment must have seemed to anyone passing by the crappy fast-food place, my head was spinning.

              Quirk, my brother, tapped my arm. He must have seen how stressed I was. As I looked up from my Al-Kola, he played a four of hearts in the center of the table. The signal for get ready.

              I looked towards the exit, and Jaun sighed deeply. I could hear his commander, Tippy Top, going off in his communicator. I guess he forgot to read the mission notes and she was reading it back to him. Jaun and Katano had complex expressions of fatigue, worry, and preparedness.

              Through the narrow exit we watched as he passed through the ticket booth into the concourse, bowing to the gatekeeper as a crowd, mostly metahumans, swarmed behind him. Then there he was, rushing through on his way across the station’s sub-zero temperatures: Our target, Destell-Onir Ambassador Wushe Gol’Tern, with his two bodyguards on his flanks.

              He had traveled over 750 kilometers today by metal chariot: a plan B, since his last checkpoint in Dóxa City had taken just a few hours too long on Monday. He had to make up for lost time, since his tour was to end at the New Year’s Summit, early morning tomorrow. Twertosa, the capital of Coolocc, was the Ambassador’s last stop today, before traveling back to Highrock’s capital, Archa, and the Destell-Oniri Embassy, tonight. And here he is, about to board the train home.

               Our mission? Make sure Mr. Gol’Tern’s train isn’t the end of the line.

               Sure, he has those two bodyguards for that. And sure, most of the time they’re effective. You shell out the big bucks, you expect good guards.

               Jaun abruptly threw down a five of hearts next to his drink without looking up. Mission is a go. I eased my breathing. Gotta look natural. Gotta look totally relaxed.

               But Marky, our “word from on-high” as we called him, had a hunch that Gol’Tern’s “guards” were planning something else. Of course, criminal backgrounds working bodyguard jobs usually are a bad sign, and he had some plan for the Ambassador that involved his survival. So our mission, if we chose to accept it (note: we had no choice), meant we get to protect the Ambassador at his most vulnerable position – isolated on a train car.

               Best of all, we work for tips.

               Katano played a card as a second signal, which I quickly glanced at. A six of spades. Keep it quiet. We’re gonna go.

              Quirk, Jaun, and Katano watched the Ambassador closely – he had slowed to give some money to a harpy street musician – till he passed the security check just beyond our door, then they turned back to our table and kept “playing”.

              Katano and I glanced behind us to Foley, who was tapping his foot to the nearly inaudible Parsivalen music in the restaurant, trying to gauge what Muffin Top, his commander, was planning next. He glanced up, and I expected him to say something we didn’t know. He just pointed to the train that just pulled in, a tall gray one, and mouthed the words, there’s our ride.

              Foley was weird. Is it culture shock? Maybe, but you never can describe how different Highrock Classifieds work from Tambian Classifieds until you work with them personally.

               Quirk glanced out the window to our right, following the Ambassador and his guards on his way to his train, the Cerberus, somewhere behind us. Right on cue, Jaun stood up from our table and started towards the exit. He stopped in the doorway, tapped the wall twice, and then went out quickly, heading through the windy concourse, tailing the Ambassador. Katano followed him soon after, her red dress’ beauty matched only by her determination in stance and posture.

              Turning sideways towards us, she pulled a card from her purse as a final word, flashing it towards the door of the Mr. Mercer’s. As planned, it was the jester: Split up. Good luck.

              Even though I knew about this next part of the plan, I still had to wake myself up. This was about to be a very, very complex mission. We had to keep it complex since those assassin bodyguards are going to be trained by the Highrock Monarchy, which essentially means that they aren’t going to be totally oblivious to any simple plans we could have tried.

              After a brief exercise in calming ourselves the heck down, Quirk and I stood up, with Quirk quickly taking the lead. Foley followed us out the door of the Mr. Mercer’s, and pointed to the Basilisk, signaling us to get aboard.

              Quirk turned to me. He had that glint in his eye, like he does whenever a mission starts. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

              I pushed him forward, gesturing towards the clock that said 9:57 PM / DEPARTING 3 MINUTES. “Save the catchphrases for later, eh, brother?”

              We’d be riding in a train parallel to our target along with the Muffin Patrol, just in case the scheme got a little too complex. Generally, if you want to assassinate someone inhabited by a caustic wolf spirit that makes its host invincible if his surroundings aren’t dead silent, the scheme was almost certainly going to get complex.

              I looked behind us, and watched the Tippy Patrol, Jaun and Katano, board the Cerberus alongside the Ambassador and his guards. Foley turned me back around, a little too forcefully, as we began boarding the double-size train behind it.

              The stewardess, with blond hair and a white and red uniform, was going through her usual spiel of “Let me see your pass. OK, thank you! Welcome aboard the Endossa Basilisk! We hope you enjoy your ride! Thank you for choosing Endossa Voyages!”

              We reached the head of the line fairly quickly. Basically, only a small crowd takes the 10 PM train to Archa, and if they were, they weren’t getting there before daylight.

              The stewardess began, “Let me see your pass.”

              Instead of pulling out a pass, Quirk quickly flashed her a… look. Describing it would take more than a few words. I hoped to the Powers he was doing something I overlooked in the mission notes and not just being a dork.

              She stopped short, then looked the three of us over. Then she winked and resumed being cheery. “Welcome aboard, friends! We hope you enjoy your ride!”

              I punched Quirk in the arm. “Tell me about these things that you do before you do them.”

              He turned to me. “Well if everybody knew about it, Riv, that wouldn’t be very sneaky of me, would it?”

              My anxiety hates him.

              Quirk and I proceeded on board, while Foley stopped for a moment. We didn’t have time to stop for him, but I assumed that stewardess was his patrolmate. We had actually never met the Muffin Patrol in its entirety, since they were from so much farther north near the city of Bander in Highrock. The Patrols that come from inside the wall in Highrock tend to be more secretive in their actions when they work with other patrols, which is actually nothing like Tambian Patrols. Big Top tells me that it’s something about chivalry, but I think it’s probably something a bit more than just principle.

              As soon as we were inside the train-car, I retrieved my communicator from my pants pocket and equipped it while Quirk took off his backpack and began to search through his things looking for his. I signaled him to get back up and move to the storage car, before he endangered the whole mission by looking through his pack at things that were definitely totally illegal to bring onto a train.

              “- lost, repeat, visual with the Ambassador lost. Target is out of sight. Orders please.” Katano’s voice whispered through the communicator on the Ambassador’s train, the Endossa Cerberus, unwavering and without breathing.

              “Hold on.” Tippy Top, somewhere hundreds of miles from here, anxiously searched for the diagram of the Cerberus on her desk. “O….K. Yeah, proceed stealthily and pursue the Ambassador. Don’t lose those guards.”

              “Copy.” Katano quickly muttered under her breath, unfazed.

              I spoke up as we waded through a wave of people towards the back of the train, masked by the hustle and bustle of the crowd. “Salve, this is Big, Biscuit speaking and Quirk standing by. Come in, Star Command.”

              “Hello, friends. This is Star Command, Tippy Top speaking.” Tippy took a breath for what seemed to be the first time since we started traveling to the train station. “How are you, guys? Enjoy the trip? Where’s your commander?”

              Big Top spoke up, sighing from what I can assume was a coffee cup. “Oh, hey. I’m here, I’m listening, don’t worry. You just seemed to have everything under control, Tippy.”

              Tippy nervously laughed as she rustled her papers some more, looking for schematics. “You kidding, dude? This is really, really stressful. We have to protect the Ambassador, Galaxy-Monk Wushe Gol’Tern. That’s such an honor, man.”

              “Doesn’t feel any different from a standard mission, honest. Security detail and all.” Quirk interjected, retrieving the remaining parts of our disguises from his backpack – the bow ties, the suit jackets, and the all-important geodes containing the T.U.X.es. “I’m trying not to stress, can you tell? By the way, name’s Quirk. I use chains.”

              Tippy rolled out a paper, probably a blueprint, on her desk audibly and laughed. “Good to know. And you, Biscuit?”

              I mustered up all my charisma and came out with, “Uh, explosions,” before Quirk threw a number of my costume pieces at me unprepared. I glared at him and he just smiled back.

              “Salve, everybody! How is our role list tonight?” Jaun, the most socially confident of this entire party line, spoke up and got us back on track, his scratchy voice coming through loud and clear. “Kat is already at the other end of the train, I’m sittin’ here in the dining car trying to look natural -- This is... ah... this is awkward. What are the Bigs doing?”

              “We’re just waiting for something to do,” I replied, honestly. I went back over my inventory, tucked in a suitcase, while whispering into the communicator on the floor of the storage car. “I’m not complaining. It’s been years since I’ve ridden on a proper train; gotta get used to it again.”

              “I’ll have something for you to do… I think… soon. It all depends on how quickly tonight’s events go down,” Big Top mumbled through his microphone. “I wonder where Muffin Top is.”

              Tippy drew a breath and replied, “How are we doing, Katano?”

               “Visual reacquired,” Katano interjected. “The guards and the target… are… wait a minute, what are they doing?”

               Tippy refocused, took a swig of her root beer, and examined the diorama again. “What do you mean what are they doing?” Her patrolwoman was dead silent. “Katano!”

               “A-apologies,” Katano whispered again, embarrassed she had made her anxious boss even more anxious by hesitating for a split-second. “They’re… standing in the caboose. Discussing something. They’ve separated.”

               Jaun said, “What’s going on, you think?” Amidst the noise of the storage car, I could hear in the communicator Jaun standing up from his things and moving to the back of his train, trailing his partner.

               “No clue. Can’t get in close, target… Ambassador is blocking the door, standing against it, from the other side,” she replied, stepping towards the window opposite the caboose. “No one else is in that caboose with the three of them. I can hear you moving, just stay put, Jaun.”

               Jaun sat down in a booth, trying to analyze a situation he wasn’t a part of. “Well! Good with me, I guess. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t. Tippy, this next move is your call.”

               Tippy was typing like mad, looking through records of this kind of behavior. “OK, OK! OK! Just… uh… wait for further instructions. Radio silence. Stake ‘em out. See if you can listen in. OK! OK, radio silence, for reals.”

Without warning, Foley stepped into our storage car, following the stewardess from earlier, kicking us both awake as he passed. They were keeping a quick pace as the stewardess led him to the wall opposite. The stewardess climbed up a gray employee ladder, and Foley followed quickly, giving us a thumbs up.

               Me and Quirk exchanged looks of is this guy for real?

               A voice, likely a golem based on its stilted intonation, spoke on the PA throughout the station, which we only heard muffled through the train car’s windows. “The Endossa Basilisk, train number EV3123, and the Cerberus, train number EV1019, is departing. All aboard!”

               Foley’s hand appeared through the hole in the ceiling, beckoning us upwards. We looked both ways for employees, then we quickly followed Foley up the hatch, suitcases in tow. I didn’t have time to check if anyone entered the car while we were entering what I can only describe as an “out-of-place office.”

               The room it led to was walled with dark brown wood, and was furnished with a bookshelf, an old-fashioned instrument panel, and a few miscellaneous appliances. On the wall was a portrait, oil painted, of a centaur, looked kinda like a scientist, with a scruffy brown beard and a long white coat, with pale spotted fur to match. The label read Gonen Bit’Atren, First Engineer of EV3123. Looked like the room was built 30 years ago judging by the lack of any miniaturization in the appliances.

The stewardess quickly pressed a button near a window to the top left car, and blinds around the room, apparently one-way walls, shut instantly, leaving it lit by a few newly-replaced incandescent bulbs and a red alarm light. Foley and the stewardess took a breath, then the stewardess dropped to the ground against the wall and threw her miniature hat across the room, revealing its microphone.

               Foley grabbed a book off the shelf – I recognized it as A Sorceror’s Guide to Secret Magics (personal favorite of mine, actually) – and quickly tabbed through it as he gestured for us to pull the ladder up. After we pulled the ladder through the miniscule steel hatch, shutting behind us, he nodded and gestured for us to relax a minute. We sat down at a table with steel chairs bolted to the train.

               “Well, here we are,” she said, exasperated. “Welcome to the Classified suite, gents. Name’s Redilee Masterton. Call me Red. Muffin Patrol.”

               Red held out her hand, and Quirk stood went to go shake it. “Hi, name’s Quir---“

               Suddenly, the train car lurched forward, and Quirk fell over on top of her.