Project: Magnus

This came as a result of one of the Lit­er­ary+ writ­ing assignments

Min­erva Chad­wick nee Hawk leaned against the rail­ing at the stern of the Hawk Fam­ily owned and oper­ated Mer­chant Air­ship, the Valor of the Sky. She stared at the writhing scene below, cap­ti­vated by her imag­i­na­tion of what cre­ated the dis­tur­bances she could see.

“Cap­tain, what kind of crea­tures live in the Rift?”

Cap­tain Nicode­mus Hawk handed off the con­trols of the ship to the nav­i­ga­tor and walked over to join Minerva.

“No one knows”, he said look­ing out over the rail­ing, “none of our devices have ever been able to pen­e­trate the clouds that you see, and no one that has ever ven­tured in has ever returned.“

“A bit melo­dra­matic don’t you think Captain?”

“Not if it’s the truth. Why else do you think we still have these mechan­i­cal air­ships? They are the only thing that can go over the Rift. No other elec­tronic device can even get close before it shorts out. Even the ones car­ried in air­ships go dead when they get close to the border. “

“So the field, or what­ever, that dis­able elec­tron­ics extends upward from the surface?”

“For as high as we have been able to explore yes. Some spec­u­late that it extends out­side the atmos­phere itself and into space.”

“Is that possible?”

“You are the one with the sci­en­tific mind Min­erva, you tell me, “ the Cap­tain smiled, “The only other thing I can tell you is that humans can­not stay too long near the Rift with­out get­ting very sick.”

“Almost like what­ever shuts off the devices is try­ing to shut off the body as well?”

“That is a good way to look at it.”

“How very inter­est­ing. How very inter­est­ing indeed. I would very much like to know what could sur­vive in that environment.”

“If any­one can find out, I believe it is you.”

Gen­eral Quer­cus looked out over the fields, sur­vey­ing the army that was now his. It was a task he didn’t want, but it had been his pre­dic­tion, a pre­dic­tion that had come true, that had made it happen.

Every year the armies of the Yard empire gath­ered up and choose sides. It had come, over the years, to be known as the Prun­ing. It had been com­ing ear­lier and ear­lier each year and this time Quer­cus and been ready. Ready to pro­tect and defend the Scythian strong­hold no mat­ter the cost.

In the dis­tance the yel­low flags of the Scythian army flut­tered, limp in the non-​​existent breeze. The day had turned hot, and early sea­son heat wave. It was hot enough to force the Gen­eral to turn up the sides of the com­mand tent while he gath­ered with the var­i­ous mil­i­tary lead­ers and advisors.

“Sir, you were about to explain your cur­rent strat­egy.” called out Viceroy Apium.

Quer­cus pulled him­self away from watch­ing the wiz­ards prac­tic­ing their magic, prepar­ing to defend the Scythian cap­i­tal from the yearly Prun­ing event.

“I’m send­ing a bat­tal­ion of troops to the west to the Hedge Moun­tains as well as east to the Gar­den For­est. The rest I am leav­ing here to pro­tect the city proper.”

“What of our rear flank?”

“We have an HOA in place with our neigh­bors there.” replied the General.

Viceroy Apium spoke up again, “I’d feel more com­fort­able with a Watch alliance. The HOA is merely an agree­ment not to attack, it doesn’t stip­u­late com­ing to our aid,”

“I agree with you Viceroy. How­ever ours is not to make pol­icy but to defend our nation for future saplings.”

“Sir!” exclaimed a sol­dier as he made his way to the tent while the oth­ers had been study­ing the map on the table.

“At ease Pri­vate Cera­sus. What do you have for me?”

“Sir, a report from Cap­tain Rud­beckia.”, The sol­dier says, pulling a sheaf of papers out of his back­pack, “He says he has encoun­tered the Fes­cue army just out­side the Gates of Fence.”

Every­one around the table looked up, mak­ing the Pri­vate very uncomfortable.

“Go on, does he say any­thing about esti­mated forces? What kind of hard­ware they have, anything?”

“Yes sir” replied the sol­dier, lick­ing his lips ner­vously, “He states there are a bat­tal­ion of Crab­Grass Tanks as well as Dan­de­lion and This­tle Aer­ial Assault ships. He also men­tions see­ing Clover trans­ports and a group of Rag­weed carriers”

“Very good, thank you pri­vate, “ replied Quer­cusl keep­ing the shock off his face, “You are dismissed.”

Gen­eral Quer­cus turned back to the map and began to again explain “I don’t expect….”. Turn­ing around he noticed that the sol­dier he had dis­missed was still there, still stand­ing at attention.

What is it soldier?

Well sir, it’s just…

“Spit it out son.”

“It’s just… there is chat­ter from the Squir­rels sir. They say they’ve seen Axes and Shears as well.”

Every­one around the table gasped as Quer­cus cov­ered his eyes with hind hand. “My god, they really are going to do it aren’t they. Well, we will give them a fight they will not for­get. This is a Prun­ing that will be sung about for ages to come.”

The other lead­ers gath­ered around the table began to cheer and applaud the Gen­eral who stepped back, and care­fully drew his sword, “For Scythia!”

“For Scythia!” came the rum­bling echo.-

“That is not nor­mal”, said Harley

“No, that is way past nor­mal” replied Phineas

The cause of their con­cern was a 6 foot tall ELF. Presently he was bran­dish­ing what looked, for all the world, like a toy gun. Only a few min­utes ago the ELF Com­man­der Faulkner and Cap­tain Remark­able had left on a mis­sion to res­cue the the CEO of the North Pole, one called Santa Prime. A being that wasn’t Santa, but appar­ently was one of many San­tas. A con­cept that still swirled around in Harley’s head.

Mostly how­ever, he was think­ing how he could score presents from all the Santas.

“I really hope that thing just shoots foam darts or some­thing.”, said Phineas inter­rupt­ing Harley’s thoughts.

“Hon­estly, I’m just hop­ing it doesn’t turn us into car­toon characters.”

The ELF solider stood in front of Harley and grinned. Not at all a pleas­ant type of grin, but more like an I'm going to get you kind of grin. It wasn't a grin Harley was par­tic­u­larly fond of and had every inten­tion of stay­ing very far away from.

Harley leaned toward Phineas and whis­pered," That's not nor­mal is it?"

"No," Phineas whis­pered back as he stared at the new­comer, " That is way past normal."

"Who are you?"

The ELF con­tin­ued grinning.

"In case you didn't hear me; I asked who are you?", Harley repeated.

"Call me Mel if you must."

"Mel?", chimed in Phineas, "What kind of name is Mel for an evil Yule Night terrorist?"

The ELF effected a look of mock indig­na­tion. It was eerily sim­i­lar to the _I'm gonna get you _​ grin, only with less men­ace. There was still plenty of menace.

"You've been talk­ing to Faulkner. I'm not a ter­ror­ist. Who am I terrorizing? "

"Um, " said Harley, "It's 'whom' and right now, me."

The ELF grinned again. That was enough for Harley. He turned and dashed across the con­sole head­ing for the other end of the room where he had stowed some of the gear Faulkner had left them before leav­ing with the cap­tain to res­cue the Santa Prime. He had no idea what any of the stuff did. He didn't remem­ber the instruc­tions Faulkner had given him because he hadn't paid atten­tion, fig­ur­ing there was no way any­one would find them out here in the Cloud.

He still wasn't sure how Mel found them, much less how he got on board. Come to think of it, he never got a clear answer for how Faulkner had man­aged it either.

He was going to have to pur­sue that line of ques­tion­ing fur­ther at a later time. Right now there was a mat­ter of the Evil ELF Mel on board.

Phineas real­ized where Harley was head­ing and quickly joined him. They both grabbed the first thing the came to, Phineas get­ting a large white and red bar­rel shaped object with what looked like a scope and a trig­ger. He shrugged, hefted it up to his shoul­der (not know­ing where else to put it) aimed in the gen­eral direc­tion of Mel and pulled the trigger.

Noth­ing hap­pened. The look on his face would have been price­less, and some­thing Harley would have teased him about for years, had he been pay­ing atten­tion. Instead he was focused on try­ing to fig­ure out the item he had pulled from the stash.

It was flat, about the size of a decent sized book and slightly thicker. There was a sin­gle but­ton on one side and what looked like a remov­able stick with a sec­ond but­ton on the other side. Harley removed the stick and vaguely remem­ber some­thing about not want­ing to be near when he pressed the but­tons. He quickly pushed the but­ton on the box thing and tossed it in the direc­tion of the Evil ELF Mel.

Now it's inter­est­ing to note that Mel hadn't moved. Well, in fact he had moved but only to sit down and watch with mer­ri­ment the activ­i­ties of Phineas and Harley. He watched with glee when Phineas failed to cor­rectly fire the CC Launcher. Not that being sprayed with hun­dreds of candy canes would have done much. True, it would leave a few welts but wouldn't stop him from his goal.

His mood changed how­ever when he real­ized what Harley had retrieved. A Gar­land Bomb. Some­thing he most def­i­nitely hadn't expected to see on this ship. Appar­ently Faulkner has been a lit­tle more pre­pared than he has expected.

His face fell as Harley tossed the bomb in his direction.

He turned and ran toward the door at the far end of the room in des­per­a­tion. His only hope was to out dis­tance the device. A hope that proved ulti­mately futile as Harley pressed the but­ton on the remote while the bomb was still air­borne. It det­o­nated between Mel and the Santa Trap effec­tively secur­ing him in place against the unit with fluffy, wispy, sil­ver ten­drils wrapped around the two. Not what he had planned and it put a seri­ous cramp on his day.

The whoop­ing from the other side of the room didn't help either.

"Nice shot Harley!", shouted Phineas

Harley danced in place.

Mel smiled to him­self. He had for­got­ten he was car­ry­ing a . He flicked his right wrist and dis­ap­peared. The Gar­land trap­ping him falling to the metal floor silently.

Harley stopped dancing.

"No fair!" he shouted.

Mel sud­denly appeared behind both Harley and Phineas with a soft pop­ping sound. They both turned to see him point­ing a small device at Harley. The device fired and green and red beams hit Harley, turn­ing him ice.

Phineas shouted and threw the CC Launcher at the Evil ELF, “Harley!”

There was a soft pop­ping sound behind Mel. He turned around to find a 6ft tall Dawger­ian Shep­ard dressed in a red coat and pants trimmed in white fur smiling.

The Shep­ard reached out to the shocked Mel and placed a small snowflake pin on his chest. A soft sil­very glow imme­di­ately enveloped the rene­gade ELF mem­ber, freez­ing him in place.

Phineas knelt beside the ice shaped lit­tle dawg, call­ing out the name of his friend.

He didn’t answer.

“No. Absolutely not. There is no way you are putting me in that… thing. Why don't you go?”

“Don’t be a baby Phin! I’d go but I have to stay behind to oper­ate it.”, Harley paused, “Unless you want to.”

Phineas looked over the con­trols for the San­ta­Catcher 5000, his eyes pass­ing over the hun­dreds of dials and knobs and levers and switches and other things that had to be pushed, poked or flipped and decided that it would be in his best inter­est not to attempt to oper­ate the device. How­ever that left him with the option of going into the thing and get­ting zapped to another part of who knew where.

“You have no idea what’s going to happen.”

“I do so! The blender I sent through last week and was fine.”

“Fine?”, Phineas shouted, “It came out in pieces!”

“Well, the fruit I put in it was blended wasn’t it?”

“So let me see if I under­stand this cor­rectly”, inter­jected Faulkner, “This device essen­tially encodes the object at a quan­tum level, trans­mits that data and recre­ates it at the destination. “

Harley just stared at Faulkner with his jaw gap­ing open, “In a nut­shell, yes.”

“Inter­est­ing.” Said Faulkner as he walked around the device rub­bing his chin and mut­ter­ing to him­self, “This tech­nol­ogy could help the San­tas tremendously.”

Phineas, in an effort to avoid hav­ing every­one for­get about his con­cerns, chimed in, “If I go, who is going to pilot the ship? Tell me that one.”

“I can put it on auto pilot”, replied Cap­tain Remark­able, “It can han­dle most basic nav­i­ga­tion chores. Besides, if we don't make it back it won't mat­ter anyway.”

Phineas glared at the cap­tain and flopped into a chair as he turned to look at Faulkner and Harley, “I don't like it.”

“Hon­estly, nei­ther do I”, said Faulkner, “I should be going with them.”

“You can’t, I need your help locat­ing the Mantle.“

“Be that as it may Harley, they will need some­one with them who knows how to deal with the rene­gade ELF team.”

“Rene­gades elves?”, asked Harley as he attempted to raise his bushy eyebrows.

“ELFs, yes. We believe that a rene­gade fac­tion of the ELF is respon­si­ble for steal­ing the Man­tle and kid­nap­ping the Prime.”

“And you think we need some­one to help us deal with them?”, asked the Cap­tain. ”We’ve dealt with pirates, I think we can han­dle them our own.”

“I imag­ine you can cap­tain, how­ever these aren’t like any pirates you’ve ever faced. These are highly trained agents charged with pro­tect­ing the world’s most valu­able secret.”, retorted Faulkner with a wary smile.

“World’s most valu­able secret? Isn’t that a lit­tle overboard?”

“Per­haps Cap­tain, but imag­ine if no lit­tle kids got presents on Yule Morn­ing. With­out the San­tas the Spirit of Christ­mas, the spirit of giv­ing and kind­ness wouldn’t exist. How do you think the world would react if they knew the truths?”, replied Faulkner.

Phineas paused for a moment, “Maybe. “

“Maybe?!”, squeaked Harley.

Faulkner watched as a minor squab­ble broke out between Harley and Phineas. He glanced to the cap­tain who just smiled and shook his head. Appar­ently this was a usual ocur­rance and he was con­tent to let it play out. Faulkner how­ever was in a rush, “We are get­ting off track. We need to res­cue Santa and retrieve the Mantel.”

“Okay how about this Faulkner, you and the cap­tain go after the santa-​​nappers while Harley and I attempt to locate the Man­tle? How does that sound.”

“You’re just afraid of meet­ing up with the evil elves.”, said Harley, teas­ing Phineas again.

“Evil Elves?”

“Well, they are evil and they are ELFs”, said Harley, “Evil sounds bet­ter than ’rene­gade’. It has a nicer ring to it”

“I’m not afraid”, said Phineas with air quotes, “The cap­tain was a mem­ber of the Knights of Orange, that makes him a bet­ter fighter than I am, and since Faulkner is the only one who knows how to deal with the bad guys it makes sense. Right Faulkner?”

“What you say does make sense.”

“How am I sup­posed to locate this Man­tle thing with­out Faulkner? Stick a candy cane in the tracker? Maybe a fruitcake?”

“You were able to pro­gram it to track Santa Prime cor­rect?” asked Faulkner

“Yes, but he’s not an inan­i­mate object.”

“Try to locate Santa Paws. He’s track­ing the Man­tle. You can trans­port or tele­port or what­ever it is you do to him.”

Harley thought for a moment. It wasn’t a bad idea, and if things were as Faulkner said, it would be a bet­ter plan. How­ever he had a feel­ing things weren’t going to go exactly as planned. They never seemed to. Real­iz­ing that was what made the adven­tures on the Daedalus so excit­ing, he made his deci­sion, smiled and said, “Okay then.”

—

Faulkner returned car­ry­ing a cou­ples of large bags which he placed against the back wall, “I’m leav­ing these for you two just in case. They are non-​​lethal and to be used for defense only. And Harley, no hacking.”

Harley let his face droop. He still planned to take a hard look at the con­tents, but wasn’t plan­ning to let any­one know.

Faulkner quickly gave instruc­tions on how to use each device as the Cap­tain returned from his cabin. He was dressed in an old black uni­form from his days in the Knights of Orange.

“Start cal­i­brat­ing the machine to locate Max while we fin­ish the final prep.”

“Wait, how are you going to find Santa if the machine is pro­grammed to look for Paws?” asked Harley.

“Oh, I for­got to tell you. As a Com­man­der of the ELF I have access to a tele­port.”, Faulkner said as he fas­tened his har­ness. He glanced over to the Cap­tain who nod­ded to sig­nal he was ready.

“We’ll return as soon as we get the Prime. Locate that Mantle.”

Phineas grinned know­ing that the expres­sion on Harley’s face meant he was supremely jeal­ous of the tele­port technology.

Faulkner grinned, flicked his left wrist and both he and the cap­tain vanished.

“I so want that”, said Harley with barely con­tained excitement.

Phineas kept grinning.

Phineas stared. He wasn’t sure if he was hugely impressed, or supremely ter­ri­fied by what he was look­ing at. Either way, it held him in awe.

“What were you try­ing to do?”

“I was try­ing to cap­ture Santa!”

Phineas did a dou­ble take at Harley. Being four­teen inches tall and twenty seven inches long might be aver­age for a Dawg of his breed but it didn't’ allow much room for a grin the size of the one he was cur­rently wearing.

“Why.”

“Because I want my pressies.”

“What does that have to do with cap­tur­ing Santa,” asked Phineas as he sat on a stool and looked around for the plate of cook­ies he had brought down.

“You have to cap­ture Santa so he will give you presents. That’s how it works.” Harley, real­iz­ing some­thing wasn’t right cocked his head and looked at Phineas who was eat­ing a cookie, “Isn’t it?”

“Um, no. You don’t have to cap­ture Santa for him to give you presents. He brings them to all the good lit­tle boys and girls."

"And dawgs," Phineas quickly added, "He leaves them for you under the tree. No cap­tur­ing involved.”

“Are you sure?” Harley asked nar­row­ing his eyes and star­ing at the metal con­struct designed to hold Santa.

“Yes I’m sure you nut job.”

Harley looked crestfallen.

“Well he must have some really cool tech­nol­ogy,” he announced cheer­ing up and danc­ing around the room.

“I’m sorry?”

“How else would he be able to travel around the entire planet in a sin­gle night deliv­er­ing toys to all the good lit­tle dawgs everywhere?”

Harley bab­bled as he dashed around the room twist­ing dials and flip­ping switches. The Santa Trap was fairly new and had never been tested until today, but it was based on a pre­vi­ous design so he was con­fi­dent this would work.

Granted the pre­vi­ous design had blown up rather fan­tas­ti­cally. He cast glances over at the large metal object sit­ting in the mid­dle of the room. It eas­ily stood six feet tall, was shaped vaguely like a bul­let and had any num­ber of wires and hoses com­ing out and going in.

To this day Phineas was unable to fig­ure out how a Dawg as small as Harley was able to build some­thing so large. It didn’t seem phys­i­cally pos­si­ble since he was only twice his cur­rent height even when he stood on his hind legs.

Appar­ently Harley ignored the laws of phys­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties. At least it the the only expla­na­tion he could come up with.

“He must to have a quan­tum deluxe time dila­tor or flux capacitor.”

“A what or a what?”

“Or maybe he’s dimen­sion­ally transcendental.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

Harley stopped fid­dling with the screen he was adjust­ing and looked over at Phineas, “No idea but it sounds cool,” He said as he smiled.

They both jumped when the bang­ing started. It had been a quiet knock­ing at first, and think­ing back Phineas real­ized it had been there a while, he had assumed it was sim­ply part of the machin­ery. The sud­den increase in vol­ume and inten­sity dis­pelled that illusion.

“When you guys are done chat­ting would some­one please let me out of here?"

Harley flinched.

Phineas sim­ply stared.

“Who exactly did you catch?”

“I… I’m not sure.”

“You said this was designed to catch Santa.”

“Well yes, but that doesn’t mean some­one else can’t acci­den­tally get caught.”

“Some­one else did get caught,” came the voice from the metal container.

Phineas crept over to where Harley sat on the desk, “Dude, you caught the captain.”

Harley’s eyes widened. He stood, jumped off the desk and began to trot quickly towards the door.

“Where are you going, are you actu­ally run­ning away?”

“I pre­fer to call it a strate­gic retreat.”

Phineas walked over the the cap­sule and began try­ing to pry open the cap­sule doors, “Get over here and help me get the cap­tain out of here.”

“Are you insane? He’s going to kill you if you let him out.”

“No he won’t, he knows who is respon­si­ble for this. You’re the one he’s going to kill.”

“Me?!”

“Who else on this ship comes up with these kinds of schemes.”

“Seri­ously, you’re just going to throw me under the bus like that?”

“You two are aware of the fact I can hear you right?” came the muf­fled voice again.

Harley blanched. Which for a black and brown haired Dawg was an impres­sive feat.

Harley trot­ted back over this his chair and worked his way back onto the table. After a moments hes­i­ta­tion he flipped a switch and pressed a cou­ple but­tons caus­ing the metal mon­stros­ity to shiver. As it the door opened as the ships cap­tain slowly stepped out.

“Heh. Sorry captain.”

“Harley, what. Are. You. Doing?” asked the rather annoyed Cap­tain Remarkable.

Harley froze, his ears erect and swivel­ing back and form, search­ing, “I hear something!”

Phineas and the Cap­tain turned to look towards the door.

Out­side there was a sound. A faint, quiet lit­tle sound that echoed through out the entire ship. A sound that slowly grew slightly louder. It sound, at first, like a hard rain when it fell against the hull of the ship. As it grew it changed. Now it began to sound like bells. Hun­dreds of small metal bells. The kind one might find on a sleigh.

Phineas turned to look at the cap­tain, a look of dis­be­lief on his face,”Santa?”

Harley grinned, “Santa!”